On January 1, 2010, I had the privilege of spending an hour talking with Tim Byrne in a hotel lobby in Lynchburg, Virginia. My family and I had been attending Winterfest which is a rocking Christian New Years Eve celebration held at Liberty University. The morning we were to check out of the hotel, I had gone down to the lobby to get a luggage cart when I spotted Tim sitting on a couch. Tim travels around the country using skateboarding as a way to share Christ with teenagers. He is a professional flatland freestyle skateboarder who in his first Pro Freestyle contest placed in the top 5 in the world. Tim had just spoken the night before to the over 8,000 teenagers and adults who were attending Winterfest.
I walked over to Tim and introduced myself and told him how I had been touched by what he had shared. He thanked me and then we began to chat a little. During our conversation I asked Tim about his background, where he grew up, etc. Tim told me about his growing up in Missouri, how he use to make fun of his mom going to church, and how he came to know the Lord. He also shared with me how he came to be involved with skateboarding and how the Lord had opened the door for him to skateboard professionally. As I talked with Tim further he made a comment that literally shook my spiritual foundation in how I viewed ministry calling. What Tim said that shook me to my core was, “I do not understand what it means to be called to ministry.” He went on to say that from the moment he accepted Christ he saw himself as being in ministry. The very next day, after asking Jesus into his heart, Tim began telling the men he worked with about Jesus. Tim, at the time, was a laborer on a State of Missouri road paving crew and he was sharing Jesus with some of the roughest men you will ever meet. These men immediately saw a difference in Tim’s life and were receptive to what he had to say. So from Tim’s spiritual perspective there is no ministry calling there is just sharing Jesus by using the skills and talents the Lord has blessed each person with.
This was a new radical understanding for me even though I had been saved for almost 30 years, had attended seminary, and had received a “call to ministry”. All my life I had made a distinction between “professional” ministry and “lay” ministry treating each of them as being separate callings from God. It had never occurred to me that there might be just one ministry calling from the Lord. This new concept about ministry calling began to occupy my mind for several days. I began to examine my ministry calling from the Lord by taking a closer look at Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (NLT) I read and reread the verse. I even looked up each word in the original Greek in order to get a complete understanding of what Paul was trying to say about a ministry calling.
What I came to understand about this verse was that there seems to be three precepts concerning God calling people to ministry. The first precept is God is in control of everything, “God causes everything to work together”. I understand this to mean that whatever God has given a person in the way of talent and skills are to be used as a ministry tool. To me this means that nothing in my life is “disjointed” from any other thing that God has placed into my life. What I mean by this is that how God has gifted me and skilled me reveals how He wants to use me. Let me illustrate this point this way. If God has gifted and skilled a person with the ability to communicate difficult concepts in an understandable manner then their calling is to share Jesus through a ministry of communication. One’s vocation then becomes how God intends to funds the ministry which could be through being a preacher, evangelist, school teacher, college professor, motivational speaker, author, writer, theologian, etc. From this prospective the ministry calling is not “Lord what do you want me to do” but instead it is “Lord how do you want me to use the gifts and skills you have given me”.
The second precept of ministry calling is Ministry is motivated by love for God, “those who love God”. The Greek word for love in this verse is the word “agapao” which we understand to mean “selfless” or “sacrificial” love. In Romans 8:28 the object of our “sacrificial” love is the Lord. This caused me to think about what Paul was really saying here because it seemed to create some conflict in my mind. I understand that God has a “sacrificial” love for me which is why he sent His son to die on the cross for my sins. I also understand that God calls me to have a “selfless” love towards other people. But in each of these understandings the love is directed at someone who is capable of sinning and hurting the one who is doing the loving. In this passage God is the object of love and He is not capable of hurting those He loves. So I began to delve deeper into the study of the Greek word “agapao” and what I discovered was the word for love also means “to be well pleased”. In other words, I “do ministry” because I am well pleased with who God is and how He has gifted and skilled me. This motivates me to minister from a position of love for God because I am satisfied by the love of God.
The last precept of ministry calling is All Believers have a ministry, “called according to his purpose for them”. The Greek word for purpose in this verse means “to have a purpose proposed for one’s self” or in other words “having a purpose in life.” But the meaning of this word goes much deeper than knowing what you are to do and where you are to go. The word picture that is being portrayed is that of placing the showbread, (the twelve loaves of bread that were offered to God every Sabbath) on a table in the front portion of the tabernacle. This bread had a very specific purpose and was reserved specifically for the Lord. This means then that not only do all believers have a ministry but it is a specific ministry serving a Holy God. Our ministry is reserved for God’s use and His alone. Everything we do in the ministry must point to the Lord. We have a ministry but it belongs to God.
Armed with this new understanding the two questions I now ask believers are “What is your ministry” and “How does God finance your ministry?”
James L. Kraft, the founder of Kraft Foods, served as a deacon and the superintendent of the Sunday school in his church in Chicago. When Kraft was a young man he said his goal in life was to become rich and famous by making and selling cheese. He began his journey towards his goal by buying a wagon and horse named Paddy. Every day he and Paddy would deliver cheese to the local markets in Chicago. Kraft would get up early in the morning, load his wagon full of cheese, hitch up Paddy, and then deliver the cheese before it had time to melt and spoil. Months went by and it seemed that no matter how hard Kraft worked he just did not seem to be making any money.
One day, after having delivered all his cheese, Kraft stopped his wagon and began to talk to his horse Paddy. He said, “Paddy, there is something wrong. We are not doing it right. I am afraid we have things turned around. Our priorities are not where they ought to be. Maybe we ought to serve God and place him first in our lives.” That night when Kraft got home, he made a covenant with the Lord that he would put God first and work at whatever the Lord directed him to do. Kraft made a decision that his life was about ministry to the Lord and he left the funding of the ministry up to God. Many years later, James Kraft made the statement, “I would rather be a layman in the North Shore Baptist Church than to head the greatest corporation in America. My first job is serving Jesus.” James Kraft like Tim Byrne understood that ministry is a calling for all believers and one’s vocation is how God funds the ministry.
Let me end by asking this, “Are we funding a ministry or are we funding a lifestyle?”
