Mission verses Ministry

I've been thinking a lot about Mission verses Ministry this week. Last Sunday at church my pastor made a comment that I've been pondering all week. He said that the best place to recover from the exhaustion is to live in the mission. I wrote that down and then immediately wrote beside it - "how do you do that?".

I've served in ministry for 8 years now and with increasing frequency I find myself wanting to do anything else. It's a battle that I fight with myself. I love to see people's lives changed - to get to have an impact on them. At the same time, I feel worn out and like there's no season of rest that's adequate. So, when Ray made that statement it caused me to stop. At first I was skeptical - thinking, "he's an extreme people person....the ministry energizes him". Then I thought, "he doesn't do college ministry and travel 4 months out of the year so it's much easier for him to make that statement". Finally I decided that he was plain nuts and didn't know what he was talking about. (If you'd have seen Ray at Mardi Gras or even at breakfast this morning you might tend to agree with me).

However, the statement has come back to my mind again and again this week. I was talking to my friend Joe about Alan Hirch's book, "The Forgotten Ways" on Monday. Joe asked me what I liked about the book and I had forgotten (ironic considering the title). I grabbed my book and flipped it open. It landed on a page that talked about some of the problems of churches today. One was that they are ministry, not mission focused. As I saw these words, something clicked in my mind. I began to wonder....is the reason I'm so exhausted because I am living in ministry, not mission?

I remember going down to Mexico City in the spring - it was so freeing to do ministry there. Everyday I felt like we went out to see how the mission would be lived out that day. I've felt like that a few times as we've gotten started this fall (in-between phone appointments and paperwork). I think that my problem is I don't really live the mission (to bring the love of Christ to a hurting world - or the way we say it within Crusade to create movements everywhere so that everyone knows some one who truly follows Christ). That mission compels me - it excites me and it is indeed a place of rest. It doesn't leave me feeling under the pile or pressured - I feel free to open my eyes to what God is doing and be part of it. Somehow, I get that confused with ministry (a way to live out the mission). Ministry becomes the center - getting my "to-do" list accomplished...even if that means I can't get to campus or I don't have time to engage in the lives of other people. Making sure we have the best plans to reach our goal (I'm not against planning - it just seems like we talk a little about mission and a lot about how to do the ministry). My favorite one is creating meetings so we can solve the problems of the ministry. Some how the problems seem to grow and my desire to see the mission accomplished seems to fade.

So I've decided that Ray is probably not crazy after all (at least on this topic). That the mission is what energized me.....it's what I can live out in the midst of any circumstance of life. Now my challenge is how to live for the mission not the ministry. When I live for the ministry, I start to demand a "normal" life. I want my rights. I want the right to live in a safe place, to be cool when I want to be cool, to sleep when I want to sleep, to not have to give too sacrificially of my time or resources, and to get to move to the place I want to live and have all the comforts of life but at the same time call myself a radical disciple of Christ. When I live the mission, nothing is too great a sacrifice in light of the sacrifice that Christ has made for me.

So the challenge is to live in the mission - to find rest in the mission. It's not an easy place to be. I'm better at ministry because I can control that. But the mission brings me to life! Maybe that's one of the reason's Christ said, "I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly".