What is Your Ministry Area?

Peter 4:10 As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

                As a Christian you are probably enamored by the idea of working for the Lord, serving Him daily, and maybe even surrendering your whole life to His desires.  There is an entrancing and romantic ideal around the whole concept.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that is awesome!  In fact, I think that is a core desire that God Himself has placed inside of each one of His children.  It motivates you to honor Him with your service and to share the love, forgiveness, hope, grace, fulfillment that God has so graciously given to you.  It causes you not to forget His sacrifice and to long for being a living vessel of the Gospel message.  The problem with this is, you probably already are but are diminishing the work God has carved out for you while revering only the work God has assigned to others.  Let me explain.

                If I were to ask you, “What is your ministry area?” you would likely give me a list of churchy duties and religious aspirations.  Or conversely, you might shy away from the question completely and say, “I am not a preacher and I don’t really feel called to be a missionary.”  In an effort to keep this short, let me cut to the chase and say, in either answer you would not have answered my question at all.  Those things comprise about 0.01% of the ministry areas to which God has called His people.  Don’t let me offend any pastors but I think you would all agree that there is an average of 1 pastor to 100 members of the congregation.  Surely that does not mean that 99% of the church is not in ministry.  I believe we are missing the mark on this.

                So what is a ministry area?  A ministry area is simply finding the place where you can best honor God by serving in areas which combine the things you are passionate about with the people for which God has given you great compassion.  Put another way, it is the intersection where your gifts, talents and abilities collide with the population for which God has uniquely created your heart to bleed.  And yes, a pastor has the gift for preaching and his heart bleeds to shepherd flocks of God’s children, but that is not the only ministry area God has made available.  Yes, a missionary is gifted with empathy and dedication while having a fearless passion to spread the Gospel to those who have never heard, but aren’t there more options?  Is God not a “manifold” God? 

                I would like to propose that many (if not most) of you are currently serving in your ministry area as we speak.  Unfortunately, you may not be honoring God with it because you think it less than honorable, mundane or ordinary.  You don’t have the starched collar, you haven’t warn a robe since your graduation, no colorful linens, and the only special hat you have has a fish hook on the bill and smells like catfish bait.  But Paul warned us against these demeaning thoughts.  1 Corinthians 12:17-18 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?  If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.  He even goes on in this passage to exclaim that on those members which we have deemed to have less honor, we are instead to bestow a more abundant honor.  In other words, Paul understood that a church filled with 100 pastors and no flock was worthless, but rather a church should be filled with 100 ministers while only 1 pastor.

                An elementary school teacher has gifts, talents and abilities geared towards teaching, educating and motivating.  Likewise she also has a passion to shape young, beautiful, clean slated minds.  She does so for the glory of God by ensuring her motives are not just to get through the day but rather to invest her resources in being loving and patient while instructing our youth in such core values as treating each other with respect, discipline, self-worth and a desire for growth.  She is serving God valiantly within her ministry area!  Although she may not have the title of a vocational minister, she is thriving right where God has planted her.

                A business man has gifts, talents and abilities such as leadership and administration.  He also feels compassion for young business owners who are struggling in many of the areas where he found himself lost and hopeless in previous years.  He works diligently within this ministry area to honor God by mentoring other professionals and training business men and women how to treat their customers with respect, honor their employees, run their business according to a high level of integrity and ethics, and even by showing grace where sometimes wrath seems the just solution.  God is well honored in his ministry and this man doesn’t even wear a cross necklace.

                A cashier at the local “buy-it-all-in-one-place” store struggles to figure out how she is going to afford $10,000 a semester to go to seminary.  But she must find a way because she wants desperately to be able to serve the Lord as a profession so she can do it 40+ hours a week instead of just being a greeter at church on Sunday mornings.  Meanwhile she patiently assists the elderly man who insists on writing a check for his groceries.  With 7 scorned shoppers glaring at him, our dutiful cashier calls for a manager to come by and assist with the transaction.  (Aside: Come on, it is 2017 people!!! You are still writing checks?)  While they wait, the man converses with the young cashier and she is able to brighten his day by asking to see pictures of his grandchildren.  Later she tells a little girl how beautiful she looks in her new dress, she smiles at someone who hasn’t been noticed since he can remember, she works a little over so that a co-worker can take a longer break, and she prays as each man, women and child goes through her lane.  But at the end of the day she takes of her smock, kicks up her feet and sighs, “When oh Lord are you going to put me into service for Your glory?”  Can’t you see that she has missed it?  He has already commissioned her yet she is seeking to abandon her post so that she can go to school and “finally serve the Lord in ministry.”  Wait!  

                Let me encourage you, bloom where you are planted.  If God calls you somewhere else, then go.  But don’t abandon your post because you think you are not serving Him there.  What are your gifts?  Who are you passionate for?   How can you do that to glorify your Savior? 

                Do you make people feel good about themselves and work in retail?  How can you use both of these pieces to honor the Lord?  Do you make people laugh and enjoy being around students?  How can you use those two things together to glorify God?  Do you love snow skiing and have compassion for the underprivileged?  How can you use that to glorify God?  Do you love to read and enjoy spending time with the elderly?  Do you not see your ministry area there?  Do you not see that God has uniquely cut you to reach these people with your talents and that a missionary might not be the adequate choice?

                Perhaps your ministry area may is not even about people but rather places and/or things.  If your passion is animals, honor God by using your gifts to defend and care for the rest of His creation.  If your passion is your home town, glorify the Lord by restoring historic buildings or pouring yourself into the politics that make a town great.  If you have a great nostalgia for your local YMCA and gifts of organization, make your YMCA the crown of the neighborhood with programs benefitting the five block radius surrounding your home.  These are tremendous ministries but require men and women who identify themselves as ministers and take up the responsibility of a beating heart longing to honor the Lord and dedicated to being a part of something bigger than just existing. 

                Do you know your ministry area?  Are you content with serving God where you are planted or do you think you just happened there by chance?  God is, in fact, manifold and has given all His children great gifts; world-changing gifts such as a great smile, patience, eyes of wonder, mechanical prowess, fixing clogged sinks or even growing tomatoes.  Use those gifts to serve someone who needs them.  The faithful servant of God does not long to be a hand when God’s people need a toe, but also refuses to be a toe if God has created him/her to be a heart.  Pray, seek and then go serve.  Whatever you do, do it with excellence and you will bring a smile to the face of God.