Life as Ministry

Lately I’ve been trying been trying to pinpoint the moment on the World Race (life) when I stopped doing and started being. I think I found it. I think it was about the moment I decided just to be me. You can read about that moment here.

The reason I’ve been pondering it is because I know what a difference it made. When I decided life was ministry (thank you Kathryn Gironimi), it freed me to just be. To stop striving and start abiding. It was such a radical difference that I’d forgotten until recently it took me nine months on the race for this shift to occur. I remember being so frustrated in Australia (month 2 of the race) because we didn’t have any assigned ministries. I had this fierce desire to meet needs, to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but I wanted to know what was expected of me—what time I needed to be at ministry, what ministry exactly was, how I could best prepare and best serve.

Because I didn’t want to fail. I was afraid to fail. I carried this tremendous weight of needing to be the perfect missionary, using every minute of every day so epically wisely that it would be worth my supporters’ money for sending me to the nations. When I couldn’t do that, I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t understand that ministry starts with my relationship with the Lord, and then within the community He has blessed me with, and then with going on and making a difference. I didn’t realize the nations or the least of these was sitting right next to me, needing a touch from God.

For the next six months, ministry picked up again, and it was not a question of what was expected. I didn’t usually have the schedule for more than a few days if that, but I had relinquished that need of control and fear of failure. I began to trust God was speaking through me even when I didn’t know what to say, and that He was moving even if I didn’t see it. I also was walking through a LONG season of brokenness and learning to depend more on the Lord than on myself.

To say a paradigm shift occurred in Romania probably doesn’t give that day enough credit. The day I decided to just be and live as God is calling me to. When Kathryn coined this phrase, “Life as Ministry,” it struck a chord in me. WHY do we make such a big deal about going out to do ministry? It’s never been about what we do. It’s about who we are and who we listen to. Jesus walked intimately with His papa and did what He told him to do. That’s all we are called to as well.

Ministry starts here. It starts now. It’s this paradigm shift of who is the nations, who is the least of these. This idea of just being so caught up in God’s love and grace and mercy that we can’t help but share it with all we meet.

Does it matter if our schedule looks like we only “do” ministry for four hours a day? Answer: No. If I choose to live my life as ministry, then ministry is a 24/7 job (though I’m finding as a leader this is definitely true anyways!).

Life as ministry…it’s a beautiful thing.