moving plea from john piper

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.

Gospel in the New Year.

It’s January 1st… but don’t worry, I’ll spare you all the New Year’s cliches and personal anecdotes. Much of how we celebrate the coming of a new year in our culture is rather odd. We count down the last minute like time isn’t really just some arbitrary way of measuring the repeating of events. We gather in homes, in bars, concert halls and even in the streets to “ring” in the new year like it won’t come if we don’t welcome it. What’s up with the toast thing anyway? Why do we clink our glasses and drink “to” the new year? What does all of this mean???

Sure, I may be cynical but all of this and more runs through my brain each year as I trudge off to yet another party to hang out way past my bed time to watch a ball drop in New York. (which by the way is an hour ahead of my time zone…so I miss it in real time)

Last night I starting thinking out loud. As we were cleaning up the cups and plates just 2 minutes after midnight, in the anti-climatic glow of 2009, I asked this question: “Why is the celebration of the New Year a big deal in almost every culture?” Because it is! Think about it. Every different form calendaring has an inherent New Year’s celebration. So when the people in the room heard me ask this seemingly outlandish question and responded in awe, I asked it another way. “What is it about a new year that is so captivating to human beings?”

Think about it. No matter one’s religious, political, or cultural slant…we are all enthralled with the celebration of a new start, a brand new year. There is something so mystical about the clock striking midnight on January 1st that we gather by the droves to celebrate together. Why?

Why would people cram themselves into time square to listen to the Jonas Brothers? Why would senior citizens, who go to bed every night at 9:30 on the dot, stay up until 12:01? What could possibly drive the entire world to lay aside work, responsibility and schedule to consider the beginning of a new year some sort of holiday? (holiday = holy + day)

And then it hit me… it’s the Gospel.

Though we are fallen and depraved humanity we still have within us this divine imprint because we were created in the image of God. Because of this, I believe we have innate longings and drives that even sin could only mar yet not remove. This fascination with a new year is only a fascination with the Gospel.

Everybody wants a chance to start over. People love to sit down, look back at the past year, all the mistakes and failures and look to the future with hope that it will get better. And even though it is just a chiming of bells in a clock, somehow we believe the one second that separates December and January can cleanse our sins.

The truth is, it can’t. We prove that each year as millions make “New Year’s resolutions” and within a few weeks millions break them just as easily because we are broken and cannot save ourselves.

People need the Gospel.

People long for it. They run from churches and run from the Holy Spirit and His convicting of sin. Though proud humanity brazenly rejects the Gospel in every “Christianized” form, their actions betray their hearts’ deepest need.

The human condition cries out for redemption. The apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that God has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation by which God appeals to people, through us, to be reconciled to Him.

May 2009 be a year where we love the Gospel…honor the Gospel….live the Gospel…and preach the Gospel. To do this we must first preach the Gospel to ourselves daily, repent of our own sins and live in the wonderful truth that God saves sinners, even us. With and only with this frame of mind will we begin to live on mission… loving God because of the Gospel, loving people towards the Gospel, and restoring our communities and cities with the Gospel.