My Ministers
I was thinking (very gratefully) about the ministers in my life. The first one I thought about was the senior pastor of my home church with his sermons. I also thought about our church’s minister of pastoral care often checking up on me and encouraging me. But then I thought about my “minister of insurance” at State Farm, faithfully tending to the financial risks related to our car and home in an earthquake and fire-prone location. My “minister of health” is Dr. Jean Rhow of Kaiser-Permanente, not just treating any sickness or injury I come down with but pushing and guiding me into healthy habits.
My “minister of property management” is Jon Shahoian of Lapham & Associates. My “minister of teeth” is Dr. Indu Sharma. My “minister of retirement savings” is Ms. Kuanmei Huang of TIAA, a brilliant investment manager—relieving me of any concerns about a complicated part of life today. I have to mention my great former “minister of fitness” Brenda Oakes Ernst back in Boston. I have deteriorated without her ministry in my life. My primary ministers of music” are Margena Wade-Green and Ginny Halstead, responsible for gospelized and countrified inspiration in my soul. My “minister of Zinfandel” is Dave Rafanelli of Rafanelli Vineyards up near Healdsburg. My “minister of personal technology” is Keith Criss of Tradigital Works in Oakland. It’s a huge staff, I know. This is not a joke. And these are just some of the main ministers in my life.
See where I am going with this? It is just plain unbiblical and wrong for us to reserve the name “minister” only for church professional staff. There is an exception made in some political contexts where people talk about the “foreign service ministry” or “ministry of the treasury” and the like. But we have all heard things like “he is leaving business to go into the ministry.” Or a question like “is she in full-time ministry?” As my friend Al Erisman likes to say, “Every Christian is in full-time ministry.” “Ministry” means “service.” It couldn’t be clearer: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord. . . It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Colossians 3:23-24). Whatever you do.
The great 16th century Protestant Reformer Martin Luther put it this way:
“There is no true, basic difference between laymen and priests . . . a cobbler, a smith, a peasant—each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops. Further, everyone must benefit and serve every other by means of his own work or office so that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, just as all the members of the body serve one another.” (“To the Christian Nobility,” Luther’s Works 44:127-130)
Bottom line: YOUR work is a ministry in service to God and to your neighbor—no more or less than the work of our pastors and religious professionals. It is a holy and wonderful vocation. Do it for the Lord . . . and in the way the Lord would want you to do it. You are one of God’s ministers. And be sure to look highly upon—and express your thanks to—all the other ministers around you that God uses to serve you.
—David W. Gill www.davidwgill.org