What is ministry? It's kind of an abstract concept, I'll admit.

It's not made any more concrete by the varied examples we see throughout churches these days. A hundred years ago, a church might have just a couple of "full time" staff members, if that. Even mega-churches.

Now we have "facility pastors" and "communications pastors" and just about anything else you can append the phrase "pastor" to. Which has always been interesting to me. Like, do facilities need pastoring? I always picture a guy like preaching to the water pipes, or engraving verses on urinal cakes like phylacteries for the flushers.

But I digress.

I think that one of the biggest dangers to the western church is that pastors have convinced themselves that a call to ministry is a call to spend all their time and resources creating the best 60 minute experience each week.

We've boiled church down to the big show, whether we make it a big show or not. Many, if not all of us pastors would define the Church as the people—we have all the pithy statements to go with it. "The church isn't a building" etc.

I love the term used so often in Scripture that likens ministry to shepherding. Shepherds guide and protect a flock. I think that's an important definition to keep in mind.

We know that the Church is the bride of Christ, the body of believers who all submit to Jesus as savior. We get it.

What we believe and what we practice tend to be two very different things, however.

Functionally, we act as if church is only (or mainly) comprised of those Sunday services. Sure, we'll make the odd hospital visit, or lunch with someone in our ministry, but the lion's share of our time is spent preparing for Sundays.

Is that what you're called to do? Because I honestly am not sure if I see that calling in Scripture.

Are you called to ministry? Are you a shepherd?

What Is a Ministry Calling?

What is the example of ministry in the Bible? It's admittedly hard to find specifics. It would've been way easier if God via Paul would have included a handy little guide or job description with an explanation of benefits.

But He didn't.

The knee-jerk reaction might be to look at 2 Timothy or Titus, I know I did when I was researching for this article. Looking back, however, these passages are focused more on who a minister should be rather than what a minister should do.

So I had to hunt a little more. Obviously, Jesus' life is a great example. But you don't see many church leaders opting for the single, nomadic life, so it's not entirely applicable. Now whether that should be the model for us anyway is a post for another day.

Another example of ministry found in the Bible could be all through the book of Acts, though again, we are left without specifics for the full-time pastor (which is another subject I could tackle at some point).

Yet again, the commands for the Levites throughout different periods of the Old Testament might be a great starting point. We'll actually look at that a little here in a moment.

But I think to get a decent picture of what biblical ministry looks like, we can start to piece many of these examples together and get a relatively clear picture. Buckle up, it may not be what you're expecting.

The Aroma of Christ

In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul gives a pretty awesome picture of what the practical calling of ministry is like. In verse 15 he says, "For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing."

The picture there is not referring to the middle school boys' dorms at youth camp. The aroma is much better, and very much more worth spreading.

It's the aroma of Christ. The sweetness of the gospel. Salvation to those who believe. We get to be Jesus for people. In fact, for those called to ministry, being the aroma of Christ among the lost is one of the few specific pictures we see in Scripture.

Now, one of my wife's favorite stores is Bath & Body Works. She will spend our kids' college savings on candles and plug-ins and hand soaps and whatever else. In fact, that's the reason I'll probably be sending my kids to trade school.

Anyway, here's a fun fact about candles: when you light them up they smell great. But when you blow them out, the scent almost instantly disappears. If we want to have that aroma filling our house 24/7, we'd have to leave a candle running 24/7. Or use a plug-in, I guess, but that breaks my metaphor, so hush.

The same is often true of our impact in ministry. As soon as we close the doors and stop actively pursuing people, our influence wanes significantly. Now there are folks who are part of our inner circle that we do life with, and we continue to be "the aroma of Christ" for them, which is good and well. But we're also called to be the aroma among the perishing.

We can't expect the fragrance of the gospel to permeate our culture if all of our work is poured out to claim 0.59% of someone's week. What a weird number, right? Yeah, that's about how much time a church service takes of someone's week.

Think about how much you'll get someone for a month. The most devoted members probably make 3 out of 4 services, so at best, you're able to influence 0.44% of a devoted member's month.

Remind me why we put all our eggs in the Sunday basket, again?

No Fault Found

In our current culture it seems like the church is constantly under fire. And if I'm being honest, I don't always disagree with the criticisms.

What I see so often is people who have had bad church experiences calling out the church for hypocrisy. Church leaders (myself included) often defensively retort something about how all people are hypocrites or all people are works in progress.

While that may be true, it's not necessarily helpful.

At times when politics are absolutely crazy, and there's what appears to be a distinct party-line division of faith, Christians are known more for what they're against than what they're for. unfortunately, the vocal Christians tend to fumble about and make it seem like we're against compassion.

And when you look at how church leaders spend their time preparing for Sunday services, it's hard to disagree entirely. Sure, plenty of churches have great programs that help the community. But they're often all add-ons that still all desire to funnel toward Sunday. And through tactful delegation, most church leaders are pretty hands-off for those ministries anyway, because they "don't have time."

Why don't they have time? Well, they're prepping for Sunday, of course.

Paul encourages leaders in 2 Corinthians 6:3 when he says, "We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry."

I often hear that verse used to promote excellence for Sunday services. But what if it's talking about how leaders live their lives for the other 167 hours every week? Sure, we want our services to be good. But should we desire that excellence at the expense of doing real ministry in communities and intentionally shepherding the people under our care?

Think about when you stand before Christ some day and give an account, do you think he'll ask you about the perfect transitions or illustrations in your Easter service? Or will he ask you about the marriage that broke apart that you never checked on? Or the family whose rebellious child never made it into your calendar?

The job of anyone who would claim a call to ministry is, first and foremost, to shepherd their people. And then I would argue that it's to make in impact in the community. If your Sunday service prep causes the others to suffer, you might be doing it wrong.

We spend so much time, energy, and so many resources creating comfortable, exciting experiences that amount to a small fraction of our members' lives (see the percentages above again). Here's the thing: the opponents of the church notice.

They think we're in it for the notoriety and/or the money. And from the evidence they're able to see, it's hard to combat their point.

When we're so bent on making our services and facilities so perfect and amazing that when people show up for 0.59% of their week, they're impressed, but we can't bother to provide shelter or food for displaced people in our community, we're missing the dang point.

During the big crazy winter arctic blast in February 2021, churches across the south and midwest were lambasted by critics for not providing food and shelter to the homeless in their communities who were literally dying on park benches.

There might be a lot of decent reasons that kind of make sense for why churches made that decision, but I'm not convinced they hold water. Better to serve people and clean up the mess than not serve people at all. The passage above says to "put no obstacle" so that "no fault may be found". It doesn't say to "have a good argument for why you're not serving the community."

There is only so much time here on Earth, and our contact with others is so brief. We have to make the most of it, to hell with keeping nice things or having amazing, transient experiences each week. Which brings me to my next point:

Make Good Use of Your Time

After David and Solomon, very few of Israel's leaders were halfway decent. Literally, if "halfway decent" is the bar, there's still only like two or three who would meet muster.

One of these kings was Hezekiah. He was a devoted follower of God and sought to restore the temple and set the hearts of Judah back to the Lord.

One of his great acts was to call the Levites together and remind them of their purpose. In case you're a little rusty, the Levites were essentially the pastors of the Old Testament. They were the tribe specifically called and ordained to do the work of ministry among the people of Israel.

We see this narrative in 2 Chronicles 29. Verse 11 in particular ought to be a gut-punch for just about anyone: "My sons, do not now be negligent, for the Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him and to be his ministers and make offerings to him."

Some translations say something like, "don't waste any more time."

Yikes.

Paul himself echoes a similar sentiment in the book of Ephesians. Ephesians 5:16 says to, "[make] the best use of the time, because the days are evil."

Now going back to the example before of giving an account before Jesus of how we spent our time, think through your week and honestly ask yourself how that conversation might go.

I'll be honest, it's not uncommon for me to hit the end of the week and say, "It's Friday again? We just had the weekend a couple days ago."

Time flies, and the weeks skate by through our coveted routines. Week in and week out we work and work to put our Sunday best on the stage, when if we're being honest with ourselves, we're barely moving the needle for the kingdom.

Yeah, that last sentence hurt me, too.

Even when I see people completely broken and confessional at the altar (which is admittedly rare) within a week or two, they're back to where they were doing the same thing they were doing. I don't judge them for it. Honestly, I don't even blame them.

How could we expect anything different?

All of our ministry eggs are in one basket: 60 minutes on Sunday morning. And we want to believe that can completely transform the face of our cities, states, nations, or the world.

The calling to ministry is so much bigger than that. And as so many of us often say these days, "I don't have time."

That's the honest truth. We don't have any time at all to waste. And yet we find creative ways to waste it and we call it ministry. We're really good at convincing ourselves that this is the work God has called us to.

A shepherd doesn't only tend the flock with donuts and coffee once a week.

A shepherd walks with the flock, talks with the flock, and does life with the flock.

Are you a shepherd, or a weekly event coordinator?

A Disclaimer

I love the church. I love serving the church. And I love being on staff at a church.

I think there are a lot of things most churches do really well. And I think there are a lot of churches absolutely knocking it out of the park.

But the truth is we can do more. But it’ll be hard for us to do more while we keep our Sunday services on a pedestal.

Sunday is important. Church is important. The gathering of believers for worship is both important and commanded in Scripture. We should do it well.

But we should also recognize that this is not our only opportunity for ministry, and I’m not sure that it should even be our main opportunity.

We can do better.

Let’s feed the sheep.