The Cost of Doing Ministry
If you’ve ever worked in a business environment, there’s a common conversation that comes up. Changes in whatever market the business operates in cause the business to have to pay a little (or sometimes a lot!) more than they had been to continue selling their product or offering their service. Often this comes from taxes or regulations that governments roll out or sometimes the market changes requiring upgrades that are costly. Every time a business encounters one of these and the cost is significantly less than the opportunity to make money, everyone throws up their hands and says, “That’s just the cost of doing business.”
What they mean by that is this: There is a cost to doing business. Everyone recognizes it and everyone understands that if you want to make money, it sometimes means having to spend money. As long as there is money to be made, it’s worth the investment to generate a profit.
In the Kingdom, there is a cost to doing ministry. It’s not a regular, planned expense like it is in the business world, but they exist. For believers, the cost of doing ministry is more a question of when we pay the price, not if.
Because to truly serve others, it will mean learning how to deny ourselves. It will mean giving up things that others don’t or won’t give up. It will mean refusing to defend or promote yourself in a world where others do it all the time. It will mean speaking the truth when it’s unpopular and costly. It will mean going the extra mile when there’s no compelling reason to. It will mean laying down even your most “godly” agendas when brothers or sisters in your spiritual family need to be served.
Friends, the Kingdom of God is worth more than whatever cost is to be paid. Jesus said it’s like a treasure hidden in a field that was worth more than whatever a man owned. But we have to embrace the process of selling everything we have in order to buy the field it’s buried in.
It’s the cost of doing ministry in the Kingdom.
Photo Credit: Cash Paid Out No Sale by Thomas Hawk
The Missional Power of Doing Nothing
This will be hard to describe. Hang in there with me.
Often we think reaching people with the Gospel means that we are busy. We teach Bible studies. We serve the poor. We coordinate volunteers to go out and share the Gospel. The list can go on.
But the more I try and share the love of Jesus with people in my neighborhood, the more I find myself doing less on purpose. Why?
Lately, maybe over the last year or a little more, I found myself having more opportunities to share the Gospel with people as I was sitting around my house. Every time I was going off to “do something missional” I found myself having to turn away kids that were hanging out in our home. It became increasingly difficult to turn away the mission field that was showing up at my house to go find some kind of hypothetical mission field somewhere else. So I’ve had to reconcile within myself that being a normal guy hanging, trimming the yard, playing basketball with the neighborhood kids, and sharing the Gospel in everyday situations is one of the most fruitful things I can do. But often it means I have to keep my schedule light in order to make room for these opportunities.
One of the events that taught us this in a real way a few years ago was an outreach to our local park. We went on a walk one morning to explore where God might have our church inhabit a place for the Gospel. We took our kids with us and found a park in the middle of our neighborhood. Every Sunday that summer we’d show up at the park, play soccer or football, push our kids on the swings, and have lunch. Quickly other adults started showing up to play games. Many people returned week after week as we started sharing our food with them. (Missional Pro Tip: People flock to food.)
Because we live in an economically depressed neighborhood we would see other churches and ministries do outreaches in the park and in the neighborhood. The people who we knew from the park would tell us how much they loved us, because unlike the outreaches would come in once a summer, hand out food or supplies, and then disappear, we never left. They weren’t projects to us. They were friends. We shared the Gospel too, but it was in the midst of everyday interactions we had as we played with our kids.
This isn’t to say we don’t do anything. We actually share the Gospel and meet as a church and serve people when the need arises. We do all those things as a response to needs that we have the time to encounter because our lives aren’t busy with Christian programs and outreaches. Sometimes, it means confronting the itch to be needed and prove “we are really doing something.” Often it means saying “No” to over-packing our schedules. Sometimes it looks boring. But many times it frees us to be able to share the Gospel with someone we would have never had the time to encounter before.
It’s the missional power of doing nothing.
Discipleship Should Be Passed On
Yesteday I had a follower on Twitter ask me a question in response to a quote I posted by John Wesley. (This is a great time to mention, if you’re not following me on Twitter, you should.)
https://twitter.com/FanN2Flames/status/848892874024521729
This was followed up by the following comments:
https://twitter.com/FanN2Flames/status/848895155503587328
First, let me say that these type of questions are fairly common within the body of Christ. The sister from above was talking about a split between what average believers can/should share and the type of teaching that can/should happen in a church building. Even within the house church movement, I’ve met brothers and sisters who don’t believe they can make disciples or start house churches.
Much of this thinking comes from an over-complication of roles within the body of Christ. Somewhere along the way, each body seems to decide that there are certain people who could/should “lead” others and deal with difficult truth, while the rest should leave that job to those who can/should. This type of thinking keeps us from reaching the God-given potential, not just that we as individuals have, but that the body of Christ as a whole has.
Let’s start with some facts: Jesus tells the apostles that they are to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded them. Most of us think that involves things like loving our neighbor, forgiving, etc. And while all of that is true, we often forget that one of the commands of Jesus that we are supposed to teach is the one where He commands us to teach others to obey everything He commanded. The task hasn’t been completed until we’ve taught others to teach still more people to obey Christ in every way.
If you think about it, this has been happening, to some degree, for hundreds, nearly thousands, of years. Obeying Jesus is being passed from one person to another so that to this day there are still millions, if not billions, following Christ. Paul described this same process in 2 Timothy 2:2 where he told Timothy “[t]he things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” Paul wanted the Gospel to get passed down to multiple generations of believers because he had learned from someone else that his job was to disciple the nations the way Jesus commanded.
Brothers and sisters, that command hasn’t changed. There isn’t a lack of need for that kind of obedience just because there are many churches in our cities or because we have books, podcasts, and seminaries. The whole body of Christ should be walking out the Great Commission in some way in their lives. If you are a disciple of Jesus, you should be able to fully disciple others to the place where they can disciple still more people. This is a function of maturity, not special gifting and we should all want to grow up in Christ to the place where we are discipling others.
So while I’m hugely encouraged by churches that empower believers to share the gospel and teach the basics of the faith, I long for the church to empower believers to fully disciple and raise up believers wherever they are. Its only when we do this will we reach people who would never darken the door of the church. When we live out this reality we become the movement Jesus started and intended, doing the things he commanded.
*For the record, I actually love the passion in our sister’s question, because she is taking sharing the gospel and simple discipleship seriously.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 