Is ministry a career path?
I’m helping the Rev! magazine team with the Nov/Dec issue and this morning I was working on an interview that the publisher, Dave Thornton, had with Reinhard Bonnke. I won’t give it away, but one of Bonnke’s comments really jumped out at me: “Jesus didn’t die to provide careers for us. He died for the lost to be saved.”
When was the last time you heard a pastor say that God was calling him or her to move to a smaller church with a lower budget? Yeah, me neither. Why do you think that is?
But hey, in other jobs if a person does well doesn’t he or she have a right to expect a promotion?
In his book Brothers,We Are Not Professionals John Piper says, “We pastors are being killed bythe professionalizing of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the professionalis not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave ofChrist. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of theChristian ministry.” Now I’ve been to John’s church and I can testify that he believes in pursuing excellence. That’s not what he’s referring to. But he is saying there’s something wrong with the idea of ministry as a profession.
All Christians accepted a calling to be a minister when they claimed the name of Christ. There’s nothing wrong with being paid to do that, but we need to keep in mind that God–our true supervisor no matter who employs us–has a different definition of what constitutes a “promotion” than we do. Our ultimate reward comes after this life, not necessarily during it, and it will be based on how faithful we were in serving Him wherever He called us.
