From Ministry to Mission

Depending on the circles that you run in, you probably hear or say the word ministry fairly often. But what does it mean? Look up the word...go ahead, go look it up. Dictionary.com is a great place to go...just open a new window in your internet browser and look it up. I'll wait...

Almost every definition speaks of professionalism, the formal office of clergy. But that isn't how we use it. We use it with the definition of service. I hear fellow pastors talking about "my ministry." I hear people talking about serving as a nursery worker, Sunday school teacher, or usher as their "ministry." Ministry in itself is great. It is great to follow the call of God to serve those around us. But it becomes a problem when "ministry" is what defines the church. For a long time ministry has been the running of programs at a church for the benefit of its members and with the attempt to reach outsiders. So we put on programs. We have have children's "ministry" and youth "ministry" and senior adult "ministry." The music "ministry" puts on Easter and Christmas programs.

Is this really the ministry that God has called the church to? It that it? Pay your dues in the nursery and you are doing your part in the body of Christ? Greet people at the door on Sunday mornings with a crisp bulletin and a forced smile and you are fulling the call of God on your life? The problem stems from our wrong view of the church. Even those of us who proudly proclaim that the church is people not a building have a tendency to fall into the trap of thinking that what we do on a Sunday morning for an hour is church. We begin to believe that singing songs, hearing a sermon and maybe even serving in a "ministry" is doing church. Until we change our vocabulary, we may never climb out of this trap.

God has given us one ministry. It is much more general and a lot less specific than we might hope. 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 says,

"All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ..."

Our ministry is Missio Dei, the sending of God. Our ministry is mission. Our mission is the Gospel. Until we show people the Gospel, that God has done what it takes to reconcile them to Himself, until we model for people the Gospel, until we teach people how to apply the Gospel to every aspect of their lives, we aren't being the church. The church is the the collective group of sent ones of God. How can we be called the "sent ones" when we only "do church" in the four walls of a building designated for Holy things? We are called to be set apart in lifestyle not in location. We are called to be like yeast, infiltrating the world and slowly changing it from the inside out. We can't do that by empowering people to do ministry...we have to empower people to be on mission.


Ministry means once a week.
Mission means every moment of every day.

Ministry compartmentalizes life.
Mission encompasses life.

Ministry tells you to serve.
Mission fills you with passion to serve.

Ministry speaks the Gospel.
Mission is the Gospel.

If people begin to understand the Gospel...that a Holy God has made a way for sinful people to know Him, experience Him and enjoy Him forever...and that we are called to live this out, tell others about it, and let that fact transform the way we exist...ministry will happen. People will begin to serve out of love and not obligation. People will serve because it is the natural reaction to a Gospel-transformed life. Ministry isn't bad...it's just not enough. It isn't the call God has on our lives...it is the overflow of missional living.

I pray that God would make us missional. That is would be a lifestyle and not just a catch phrase. I pray that our churches would be transformed by the Gospel and in turn, we would serve.