Through all times and places, humanity has not changed. There are God’s principles of design that man can choose to live by or oppose, but the nature of man remains. But when man transitions into a Spirit led life, He may now supersede His own nature and become alive in the nature of God. That is the ultimate quest for mankind, to know His God, be filled with His Spirit, and begin to live in the eternal realm of life now and for the ages to come.
I want to put a challenge before you – are you ready? Okay, here we go! Pull out your Strong’s Concordance and look up the term ‘full time ministry’. I’m willing to award a prize to the one who finds the most references. As a matter of fact, I’ll gladly give an expensive gift to anyone who can produce one instance where that exact terminology is used anywhere in the original languages!
Let me save you some time. There is not one person in the entire Bible that is referred to as being in full time ministry! Isn’t it amazing how frequently we hear the phrase ‘full-time ministry’ and it’s not even found once in the Word of God? Perhaps we need to ask the Lord for a more Biblical paradigm.
Imagine the following scenario: There are two 30-year-old men standing in front of you. One of them is serving in a third world country and has diligently raised support so that he and his family could serve as missionaries for the next five years. The other man is a fireman in a city that is growing. This man is committed to being a Godly husband to his wife and father to his children. The amount of money that he makes is irrelevant to him as long as he keeps the Lord first in his life and is a witness for Jesus every moment of the day.
With the above scenario in mind, it’s unfortunate, according to the way many of us look at things, that the man in the third world country is considered in ‘full-time ministry’ whereas the fireman would be considered working a ‘secular job’ (by the way, the term ‘secular job’ isn’t found in the Bible either!).
Although this may sound a little confrontational and may ruffle some feathers, I believe that the term ‘full time ministry’ needs to be entirely eradicated from our vocabulary due to the unbiblical connotation that it portrays! Because it’s Jesus that has commissioned us, we are all called to be His witnesses whether we serve as a pastor or a plumber. The Lord doesn’t look down from heaven and recognize us by whether we’re in full-time ministry or not! We’re all His children and called to serve Him!
I’m continually grieved when I run into people who have given into the whisper of the enemy, who has convinced them that they’re not living up to their potential because they are settling for working a job that this age considers secular. There is a whole group of people who are reading this right now who feel like failures because they graduated from a Bible college or a school of ministry and are not employed by a ‘church’ or ‘ministry’.
Think of Moses for a moment…was he ever employed by a church or ministry? He lived within the confines of Godless Pharaoh’s house for the first 40 years of his life and then worked his tail off as a shepherd on the back side of the desert for the next 40 years. He was never written up in a magazine for his potential as one of the up-and-coming history makers of his generation. How sad it is that if he were alive today, many of our modern-day leaders would pay no attention to him because he wasn’t ‘in the ministry’. As a matter of fact, depending on where he went to church, he might even be rebuked for wasting the best years of his life!
Just this morning I was on the phone with a graduate who really felt that the Lord would one day have his family serving as missionaries in a foreign country. So, he quit his job (which, by the way, was a great source of income for his growing family) and prepared to make the next step toward the mission field. I listened intently as he shared with me that it seemed like the Lord was calling him back to his previous job because the time was not yet right to move overseas.
At this point, some of you might say, “Well, he just needs to step out in faith and do it because God’s word says, ‘Go!’” Although there is great truth in that statement, there is yet an underlying truth that requires us to not abort the preparation process so that when we do go, we are not going with our own power, but rather in the power of the One who has commissioned us.
It’s amazing to me that Jesus Himself, the Son of God, didn’t launch into His ultimate calling until He was thirty years of age! Looking at that from a worldly kind of wisdom, you might say that some of those youthful years could have been better spent seeing the dead raised and the blind eyes opened. After all, He would have gotten a tremendous head start on a ‘successful ministry’ if He began earlier.
Amazingly, when the Lord trumpeted from heaven that “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”, Jesus had not yet done anything that modern-day Christianity would refer to as ‘ministry’. God was pleased with His Son simply because He was a Son. That, my friends, is a truth that we must all embrace!
The value of our lives to our Creator is not based on what we do but rather on who we are! I want to encourage all of you that Father God loves you not for what you can produce for Him but simply because you are His son and daughter. Our ultimate eternal destiny on this earth is to glorify the Lord by being a demonstration of the Kingdom of God. That must take place as we preach, as we wait on tables, as we drive a taxi cab, as we teach kindergarten, as we practice law, as we counsel, as we mow lawns, as we break bread together, as we fish, as we fight fires, as we sell real estate, as we flip hamburgers, as we raise our children, as we…
I think you’re getting the picture. Be a demonstration of the Kingdom of God wherever it is that He has you serving. And, if you have yet to see His promises for your life fulfilled, keep hanging on to those things which He has spoken, remembering that “faithful is He who calls you, He will also bring it to pass”!
Amen Scott,
We have been there also, I know exactly what you mean. I agree,we need to know who we are in Him and walk . Then the Gospel can go forth in power. Becoming aware of what we do and if it is Biblical or not. To be secure with this truth. Thank you for sharing your heart of truth.
I believe a better term to describe what we call "full-time ministry" would be "vocational ministry". What the author is addressing is the fallacy that those who do not have all their time devoted to ministry are not ministers at all. Due to our mindsets being influenced by such terminology, we embrace applications that steer us away from the proper perspective. I know some who actually minister more in their roles in the business community as opposed to sitting in a ministry office behind a desk all day. This article is all about adjusting our mindsets to affect our perspective so that we come to the place of acknowledging that if we are born-again, we are in ministry by default.
When all said and done it is what God calls you to do for him. The way and the means do not enter into it. If we do it all for God with a whole heart and we know that we are in the will of God. It does not matter what we do or how we do it. He is the one who decides. It can be cleaning the toilets or very prominent up front. We are all the same to God and he rewards us the same.
The plumber or fireman you refer to are as able as a “fulltime” minister but they TOO are commanded to preach the Word in power. The only hesitation that I have toward your article is that many interpret such messages as “I can just be a plumber”, to which the answer should NOT be ‘It is great to just be a plumber and a witness by your life” but rather “You aren’t just a plumber if you are a Christian – go to your plumbing job and everywhere else in the power and Word of God and fufil the Great Commission there – otherwise go wherever the Lord tells you – raise the dead, heal the sick, preach the Word, teach believers there.” Also, why do we question the one who says God told him to go more than the who believes God told him to stay? Did they hear God? Bottom line is we need to hear from God and respond. Further, the apostles did devote themselves wholly to prayer and the ministry of the Word. Acts 6: 2-4.We must ALL be fulltime minsters regardless if the Lord provides our daily food through a job or love offerings or by a raven. T
Thank you for your ministry!
There is no biblical place for full time ministry since every believer is called to be Full time. There is however clearly in the New Testament ministry that was supported by the churches to allow there to be an ability to give attention to necessary matters in the Local Church and beyond.Clearly in Acts 6 the apostles appoint men to do certain tasks to allow them to focus on prayer and the ministry of the Word.
The more moot point is this in our North American World how many of those who are supported by churches give themselves to active daily spirit filled ministry.
Having myself been supported by the Lord and His people( not always His people) I have recognized that being willing to work in a “secular” situation is a part of the mandate. Paul worked alongside Aquilla and Priscilla at making tents but also thanked God for the financial support he got from the churches
No one has “the right” to support and should check their own lives out to see if they in fact are giving themselves to the work of ministry or merely preparing great Sunday messages, which I always managed to do whilst holding down a full time occupation
Interesting article… reminds me of the scripture: Proverbs 18:21 – Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it shall eat the fruit of it.
“full time ministry” are words describing what someone is doing. It seems that it depends on HOW they are said and what emotions/feelings are motivating the speaker of the words.
Everything we say out loud we usually think about first and I believe the Bible says to “take our thoughts captive’.. ‘examine’ them… this is the time to question ourselves…if we speak our thoughts…will they bring life or cause death?
I have witnessed those who say those three little words with great bitterness and anger… and unbelief.. and other times I have witnessed those same three little words spoken in a what could be described as idolatry.. worshiping the person because of what he/she does. Either way it isn’t good.
But I also know that it is a descriptive way to describe those whom have set aside their wants and sometimes needs to minister the gospel to others.. to me that is what it means. There are many ways and means in doing that.
I have no problem with the words.. unless I hear someone using it to bilk the kind generous hearts of God’s people.
I initially strongly agreed – then remembered that some (the apostles) knew they were called to spend their time on prayer and the Word, not in ‘waiting on tables’ (distribution of charity to widows of the community). Yet.. Paul chose to work as a tent-maker to support himself while travelling and preaching. So there can be variety.
However I have seen arise in a local church a conception of ‘the leadership’ as distinct from ‘the Body’ – with all church decision-making supposedly lodged only in the former. Yet this ‘leadership’ have vacillated on whether two female co-pastors we had were (or suddenly overnight were not) part of the presbytery; continued to officially identify one man as a ‘financial trustee’ when he had been ill, absent and incommunicado for several years; and misled the congregation about various matters of office-bearers, finance and supposedly thorough investigation of complaints. Such is the fruit arising from a deluded concept of ‘leadership’.
Is there any biblical basis for having a title, ‘the Pastor’ of a church? (where Pastor effectively means Boss, whose word replaces communal consensus as to what the Spirit is saying, and is not subject to any prophetic correction from within the congregation?) So-called ‘Independent’ churches, especially, can easily by this route come to be cult-like enclaves, without checks and balances, where to question ‘leadership’ is seen as to ‘lack faith’, and where a congregation is ‘led’ only as soundly as the dominant personalities there.
While I broadly agree with the points the author is making, I believe that there is no such thing as part-time ministry.
Once we have heard the call of God to follow His son Jesus, we are ALL meant to be in full-time “ministry”, whatever our walk and wherever it takes us.
We are all to be lights and witnesses to the redemptive, life-changing, hope giving, blood and love of Jesus.
Peter, I am in full agreement. We who are in christ are ALL in full time ministry, regardless of the context… God bless you – Robert Ricciardelli