So as many of you know...we took 15 students from UNT to a leadership week in beautiful Bellingham, WA. Many of these students are freshmen or sophomores and are brand new to our ministry. They have stepped up this last year and begun to lead their peers. This week is an intensive training for them, and in order to reflect upon the truths they learned I wanted to tweak the purpose of this blog to be a place where they can write their thoughts and reflect every week or so on how they are applying what they have learned. I will also continue (and do a better job ;) of posting to this blog questions and thoughts that arise from my own ministry and time with God. One of
the biggest questions I continue to have about ministry is how to balance maturing God's followers and planting seeds among the rest of God's children. It is so hard to balance these two even in light of watching Jesus' life. Jesus seems to invest heavily in the apostles, specifically in the three, while still setting aside time and energy to bless deeply those people he comes across. But this distinction presents a major issue when applied to us. Jesus really didn't spend much time around non-Jews, because it wasn't his calling. So how then do we apply his ministry style to our own? Should we look at Paul? When we look at Paul we see such a different lifestyle. He certainly makes time to be with the followers of Christ yet his calling seems to be to the non-Jews primarily. In fact, we don't really seem to have a good sense of who his community consists of apart from knowing he was sent out from the church at Antioch. He seems more like a traveling consultant to the churches then a consistent community member. An
d the Apostle's ministry doesn't shed too much light on what our lives ought to look like either, because we don't really have much information about it. So how as a minister, and as an individual disciple, should I balance planting seeds in non-Christians' lives and helping develop disciples? I know what my current mode of operation is, i.e., I pour into disciples and rarely plant seeds as I go. While I don't think these two activities are wholly exclusive, I certainly think they often require different skill sets and a different set of priorities and a different ordering of my schedule. And even if these two endeavors are more similar than I give them credit for, you simply can't do both at the same time so at least you must determine how much of either you are going to do. I think in my ministry one loses out to the pressing needs of the other. I long to bring both together in a life that is purposeful yet responsive to the needs of the environment I am in.
the biggest questions I continue to have about ministry is how to balance maturing God's followers and planting seeds among the rest of God's children. It is so hard to balance these two even in light of watching Jesus' life. Jesus seems to invest heavily in the apostles, specifically in the three, while still setting aside time and energy to bless deeply those people he comes across. But this distinction presents a major issue when applied to us. Jesus really didn't spend much time around non-Jews, because it wasn't his calling. So how then do we apply his ministry style to our own? Should we look at Paul? When we look at Paul we see such a different lifestyle. He certainly makes time to be with the followers of Christ yet his calling seems to be to the non-Jews primarily. In fact, we don't really seem to have a good sense of who his community consists of apart from knowing he was sent out from the church at Antioch. He seems more like a traveling consultant to the churches then a consistent community member. An
d the Apostle's ministry doesn't shed too much light on what our lives ought to look like either, because we don't really have much information about it. So how as a minister, and as an individual disciple, should I balance planting seeds in non-Christians' lives and helping develop disciples? I know what my current mode of operation is, i.e., I pour into disciples and rarely plant seeds as I go. While I don't think these two activities are wholly exclusive, I certainly think they often require different skill sets and a different set of priorities and a different ordering of my schedule. And even if these two endeavors are more similar than I give them credit for, you simply can't do both at the same time so at least you must determine how much of either you are going to do. I think in my ministry one loses out to the pressing needs of the other. I long to bring both together in a life that is purposeful yet responsive to the needs of the environment I am in.
