Sunday worship
10:30 am
Sunday School
9:30 am

What Is Ministry?

--Pastor James

One of the longings of Pastor Felix and myself is to see every member of our church being involved in ministry, whether it be inside or outside the church. We strongly believe in the priesthood of all believers. Ministry is not merely for ordained, professional clergy. It is for all Christians. If all of us are called by God into ministry, what then is ministry? This is such a simple, innocent question, yet how we answer this question will have a tremendous impact on what we do in ministry.

I think of ministry as navigating a ship in the vast ocean of human needs. As we become involved in ministry, we will be surrounded by the sea of insatiable human needs. Many people will come to us, expressing their needs, desires, and opinions. Sometimes we feel like a tiny ship, being tossed up and down by the waves and being completely at the whim of ocean currents. How do we know which direction to steer our ship? How do we navigate in such turbulent waters of human needs? What is ministry?

To answer the question, we must first be aware of the temptations that obscure our vision for ministry. Before Jesus engaged in His first act of public ministry, He had to face the temptations that His mission entailed. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness in order to be tempted by the Devil. Almost always, temptations come through something that is good. The essence of temptation is half-truth, not lie. The Devil took that which is good -- bread, in this case -- and incited Jesus to produce it: "If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread." Dostoevsky, the great Russian writer, rightly saw this as a temptation to distort Jesus' mission. In his book The Brothers Karamazov, he has the devil figure interrogating Jesus:

Do You see these stones in this parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after You like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient, lest You withdraw Your hand and deny them Your bread. This is precisely what happened in John 6, the story about Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. It is clear from the Gospel stories that Jesus was concerned about the physical needs of the crowd and provided abundantly out of compassion for them. However, when the crowd realized that their needs were met by Jesus, they came back and tried to make Him their king by force, in effect, demanding Him to continue to meet their needs (John 6:15). Just as the devil figure in The Brothers Karamazov insinuated, the crowd ran after Jesus like a flock of sheep because their needs were met. The story takes a dramatic turn when Jesus withdrew from the crowd and flatly refused to do what they were demanding Him to do: "I tell you the truth, you are looking for Me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill" (6:26). He then went on to explain the true purpose of His ministry -- not to feed them with earthly bread, but to feed them with Himself so that whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood may have eternal life. Jesus wanted to give them much more than physical bread. He wanted to give them Himself. But the crowd did not like what they heard, and most of them deserted Him, no longer following Him from that point on.

To me, this story is a haunting reminder of the temptations in ministry, but at the same time, it offers a hopeful vision for our ministry here on earth. Just as Jesus had compassion on the crowd, we minister out of compassion that flows from God's infinite mercy for all creation. Yet we must be careful not to be driven by needs alone, for "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). Our ministry shall not be driven by needs alone, but by a purpose that proceeds from God.

We now come back to the question that was raised at the beginning: What is ministry? The answer comes from the abundant examples of ministry in the Four Gospels. We have already been answering this question by looking at how Jesus responded to the needs of the crowd in the feeding of the five thousand. Every act of Jesus reveals something about ministry. His compassion for the crowd, His refusal to meet their demands, His confrontation with them, His declaration of the truth -- all of these reveal something about ministry. If the goal of our spiritual life is to imitate the life of Jesus Christ, then the goal of our ministry is to imitate His ministry. In the vast ocean of human needs, Jesus Christ is the North Star, which stays fixed and always points us to the right direction regardless of where we are. In whatever ways we understand ministry, one thing is clear. His ministry is the one by which we evaluate the faithfulness of our ministry. His ministry, as shown in the Gospels, is the guiding light by which we gauge the direction of our ministry. How does Jesus' ministry inform the vision of my ministry? What would Jesus do in my ministry situation? What does it mean to be faithful to His ministry? Ministry is much more than meeting the needs of people. It is participating in the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill God's purpose for the world.

It is my prayer that each of us, in each of our ministry situations, would be faithful to the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ.