many ministering thoughts

I'm continuing to learn so much about the nature of ministry (I hope I'll never stop learning!). I've been blessed, because the Lord continually impresses upon me the necessity to wait on him. Ministry is simply my involvement in his activity, and so I can never gauge my effectiveness based on immediate results; God's processes and activities are so far reaching and nuanced that if I try to judge my progress based on my broken notions of effectiveness, I run the very real risk of burying his plans in my worries and conceptions. I wrote about this a little more expansively in my September 3rd post titled "Progress."

It is truly a blessing that the Lord continually reminds me of this. Because I wait on him - because I expect him to move (but as he will, not as I would have him!), I'm able to patiently and confidently engage in ministry. In Christ, hope truly does spring eternal - any battle I fight is already won! In that way, this is the easiest job on the planet.

And that common debate - arguing about the line between divine sovereignty and human responsibility - is not so much a debate when the two sides happen at the same time. What do I mean? We talked this Wednesday about the word responsibility: rooted in response. As our knowledge of God's divine sovereignty expands and grows, and as we truly find him as the only thing which fulfills in this world, then the only proper response is one of responsibility. It isn't a truly temporal notion as so many responses are. Rather, it's a continually growing response. True response (true Christian living) only occurs as we further grasp the extent of his sovereignty! As such, as I continue to learn that God is the lord of all in this world, I continue to respond in faithfulness and the ministry grows. If I, or any Christian, were to stop the process of understanding God, then our response would slow and eventually stop.

I'm finding, too, that it is so necessary to talk of knowing God as a process. We never know God, we simply know more of God. We never know God - we're continually getting to know God. Often, that process is a process of remembering rather than learning, and we're constantly in need to reminders as to who it is we serve. I wonder if the fall effected our memory? I wonder if our fully redeemed humanity will feature a redeemed memory - full and complete? I wonder if a redeemed memory is necessary for eternity to feature a continually growing knowledge of God and an eternal progress, rather than the common backsliding we experience here on earth.

All these thoughts were not the point of this post, though. I wanted to think mostly on the multi-variated nature of ministry. That's an absurdly difficult way of saying that I've been thinking a lot about how to minister to many people in different places at the same time. On any given night of HYPE, we have students who need, as a leader recently put it, "bottle food, milk, and solid food." They're all at such different points. It only reinforces the fact that true ministry happens at the interpersonal level, not at the preaching level. Only by getting gritty with the details can ministry truly happen.

But it still brings up questions about what I teach. I'm up front, with about a 25 minute lesson. We've been looking through John for the past two months or so - we're on John 4 right now. Much of what I'm teaching from John 4 I owe to my own youth pastor from way back when, and it is good stuff. But to what extent do I balance 'real food' and 'milk' for these young adults? Some need that simple, "See Spot Run" messages, those straight forward, "You need Jesus!" messages. Some need Barth's insights. How do I cater to both?

In the end, I simply teach and pray; the Spirit will speak to both. It's only the Spirit of God who could ever speak to both. What a blessing it is to do the work of God - the All-Mighty. And it all comes full circle, doesn't it? In the end, I simply need to entrust my teaching to a proper response to the sovereignty of God.