You are NOT in full time ministry.

If you tell others that you are, you’re part of the problem.

Someone came up to me the other day and asked me if I was in full time ministry. I told him that I wasn’t and he was disappointed. I’d been asked to pray at the front of the church and he had clearly hoped that I was a church leader in some way, and as I wasn’t, he maybe felt sorry for me, or sad that I wasn’t really stepping into all that God had probably called me to. Maybe he was sad that people were missing out, and that if I had a full time ministry more people would be brought closer to God.

I said “No” because I wanted to bring repentance. Metanoia. A paradigm shift.

Are you waiting for someone to commission you? Are you waiting to achieve some kind of academic or spiritual ascent in order to qualify for a role? How’s that Bible college application coming on? How far are you along the path towards being good enough to serve God? This all sounds like justification by works to me.

As soon as you receive Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, you are in full time ministry, because you are now alive in Him. You step into your commissioning. You were commissioned before you were born. You were actually born BECAUSE you were commissioned.

If you label yourself as being in full time ministry and, by doing so, separate yourself from the rest of us ‘ordinary’ Christians, you are bringing division. If you have chosen to serve the body of Christ as a career path, thank you! We are grateful and need more people to walk this road. This is an option, not the goal, or a demonstration of ‘taking your faith seriously’. You have chosen to serve the rest of us as we are all built up as A BODY into the fullness of Christ (Eph 4).

Faith without works is dead. Absolutely. But you will never be good enough in yourself to earn a commissioning by God. You work out your faith in fear and trembling. You move FROM glory TO glory.

The key is this word ‘Commissioned’. Look at it; two words – co & mission. Yes, your life is a collaboration between you and God, and we’re all here, as your family of faith, to support and encourage you in that. We need you! You were born at THIS time in THAT context (nationality, skin colour, gender, status) because everyone else who’s on this planet needs whatever expression of God you carry, in whatever way He sees fit. Only God knows why; and if you have a problem with your context, be careful:

Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker—
A piece of pottery among the other earthenware pottery pieces!
Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’
Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’? Isaiah 45:9 NASB

I’m actually serious – ask Him WHY you are you, here, at this time, with us; don’t quarrel though! Even asking “Why?” is a great step – because the Holy Spirit will reveal Him to you. This is the key. The answer to “Why?” is relationship.

 The glory which You have given Me I also have given to them, so that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and You loved them, just as You loved Me.  John 17, 22& 23 (my emphasis)

God’s original and enduring ‘why’ behind humanity is for the invisible God to be seen on this earth. The extent to which you step into being you at home, at work, on the bus, as you drive, as you play golf, is the extent to which you are fulfilling your full time ministry.

That’s because, actually, there is no such thing as full time ministry. It’s called life. This is the gospel of the Kingdom.

You ARE salt and light. And no, this doesn’t stop, or start, at 5.30pm, when you get to relax and do what you really want to do. Or at 70 when you retire.