The very first week of classes here at the Missionary Training Center, was also the first week of work detail. What is work detail? Well as my pastor during Junior high would say “I’m glad you asked.” At the Bible School we prettied it up and called it “campus ministry”. As a child growing up, you probably called it chores. All the students here take on various jobs around campus, my assignment: Grounds Crew.
My very first (hot) day working on grounds crew, we were taken to a large hill and instructed to pick up any rocks larger than a baseball. Now from what I understand, Missouri literally grows rocks. Free rocks! This proves to be a good thing around campus when looking at the nice rock walls, fire pits, and shore lines. It also provides plenty of “exercise” when preparing the way for landscaping in front of a newly constructed apartment building. There were big ones, small ones, but mostly ones the size of your head. It was quite the exhausting task to say the least. Therefore it must have been work… right? Well not so fast. It wasn’t a chore done for myself. It was for the Mission, so it must have been ministry.
The Bible School must have had it right. Campus ministry it is.
Well… I did sweat a lot. Must have been work.
I think you get my point. It seems somewhere along the line work and ministry started to become thought of as mutually exclusive, or at very least different. The problem I think comes when we think of our lives as just that our lives. Eventually we all realize our lives are hard and messy. So we decided to give Jesus a try. Then we give him a portion on our lives on Sundays. “During the worship day, at the worship hour, in the worship center, where we sing worship songs, led by the worship pastor.” (Pastor Ken Lumley) That is the sacred time where we hear from, and interact with the people who are called to the ministry. The next day we head back out to do our secular work, so we can earn the money to drop in the offering plate. This way the sacred ministry people can continue to minister, to us during the sacred hour of our otherwise secular week: and thus the cycle may continue.
What we’ve done is wrongly compartmentalize our lives into the sacred and secular, instead of looking to Jesus as the Savior and Redeemer of it all. (Pastor Chuck Marshall) You see Jesus did not save you for your Sundays. He saved you to glorify him with your life. All of it. There is work to be done, and God’s desire is for His whole church to be involved. When the church works, corporately or individually, ministry is supposed to happen. Ministry should not be categorized by the work that we do, but rather the reason we do it.
Why do you do what you do?
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
(2Co 4:5)
to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
(Eph 4:12)
-Mike