christian-ministry

Being about my Father’s Business

by Rev. Dr. Diane M. Hoffmannchristian-ministry

I am the most enthusiastic, the most happy, the most fulfilled when I do my job as pastor, evangelist and minister of the Gospels in christian ministry.

I’ve been doing both working as a business professional for a living, and working as a minister of the Gospels in my spare time. But to me christian ministry comes first. That’s how I feel. That’s how I think every day of my life.

However, because I still have to work for a living, that takes away the amount of time I can spend on God’s business. So, I do what I absolutely have to do in the secular business world to get back as quickly as I can to God’s work.

Unfortunately, this creates a situation where you just don’t have enough time to do what you like best -- in my case, spiritual and theological work – for instance, this web site and other Christian activities in the local community.

Recently, I started a new project to reach out to the unchurched of my local community. As I did that I pulled out a book from my library that I read some time ago. This book is one of the best I have read on Christian ministry. I’m going though it as a review of what I had previously gleaned out of it.

In this book (I am glad to remind myself), I read about the reality that we, pastors and lay ministers, learn about christian ministry from trying more things that “don’t work” then things that do work in.

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of the book “The Purpose Driven Church” writes: “I wish I could claim that all our successes happened just the way we planned them – but it would be untrue. I’m not that smart. Most of our successes have been the result of trial and error and some of our discoveries were purely accidental.”

“We’ve never been afraid of failure; we just call everything an ‘experiment’. I could fill another book with stories of our failures and call it 1000 Ways to NOT Grow a Church!”

WOW, that makes me feel good. Because I know about it. And is it not the same with athletes and sports personalities? How many of them have shared the enormous amount of failures it took to achieve the success they are known for? All of them.

So it is gratifying to know that I’m not alone and I’m in good company in the work of christian ministry.

Psalm 145:4 – “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.”

Psalm 35:27 – “Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.”

(Old King James version)

Blessings,

Dr Diane

Article copyright(c) Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without changes and including the following author's name and resource box.

Dr. Diane M. Hoffmann is president of the Link School of Ministries, a Christian Correspondence & Internet School and Theological Reading Room that can be seen at http://www.linkschool21.com . She is the author of numerous Christian books, e-books, seminars and theological articles and tracts, including the 300-page book "The Horizontal Chronology of the Four Gospels".