For many people the word "minister" basically means "someone who preaches, visits hospitals, marries people, and buries people. The problem with this is, it is WAY TOO CLOSED MINDED. As a pastor I am recognized as a minister by Christians and non-Christians alike. But the reality is, anyone who calls on Jesus as savior and lord is a minister of the Gospel. As Ephesians 4:11-13 states, some of us are prophets, evangelists, pastors or teachers etc. Even if that isn't what it says on our paycheck it's what God has called us to do. Each one of us has a role in spreading the Gospel and each one of us does it in a bit of a different way. I personally get to preach God's Word, train up leaders, pray for people, and even the occasional counseling session. You may do it through intercessory prayer, service, teaching Sunday School, raking your neighbor's lawn, providing a meal, sharing the plan of salvation, etc. No matter how we do ministry, I believe there are three "D's" that help us be as effective as possible in doing ministry for the glory of God. I like to call it "Ministry in 3-D" (Special Shout out to Josh Bergland).
Drive. You have to be driven. You have to have passion to do what God has called you to do, in order to be as effective as possible. Consistently sitting on the couch eating Doritos will not make for a dynamic minister of the Gospel. No matter how talented, learned, or revered, if you don't have an inner motor focused on helping people see Jesus more clearly you will not minister to the effectiveness that God desires for your life.
Discipline. Discipline is just as important as drive. Ministry is an incredibly weird thing, in the fact that normally you don't have a boss breathing down your neck. Most of us don't get paid to do ministry and those of that do, are given much freedom on the how, when, and where of accomplishing the task than almost any other profession. For me, drive comes incredibly naturally. I wake up wanting to accomplish things, but I have to work on being disciplined. To put in golf terms, I can drive the golf ball 300 yards down the fourth fairway, the problem is I'm on the 1st tee box. Discipline allows me to harness the drive and get in pointed down the right fairway.
Discernment. Discernment is being able to see what is of God and what is not. We live in a world, where the majority of people reject Christ with their mouths and/or their everyday lives. So the ministry is huge and the opportunities are endless. It is incredibly important to be an effective minister, that we know what we are doing is of God and not our own ideas. When we tap into what God desires, we tap into God's power. When God's power is in something the possibilities are endless.
To go back to our golf analogy, Drive is being able to hit the ball 300 yards, Discipline is hitting it down the right fairway, and Discernment is making sure we are at the right golf course! When we put these three things together, we can accomplish great things for the glory of God, because we are ministering in 3-D (bad joke, but don't care
:-)).
In Him,
Pastor Dylan
