Andrew Purves' book,
The Crucifixion of Ministry, should be read by every person who has served in ministry for over three years whether working in a church or a para-church organization. He says some things which you have always known, but when you read how he says it, it can't help but penetrate your perspective on serving Christ. The crucifixion of ministry is about dying to one's ministry and tapping into Jesus' ministry. Below are a sampling of quotes from the book which I have underlined and plan to reflect on over and over again.
There is little, maybe nothing, we who are ministers of gospel can do that really change things. If anything worthwhile is to happen, Jesus has to show up.
Our ministries in themselves are not redemptive. Only the ministry of Jesus is redemptive.
Ministry should be understood as a sharing in the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ, for wherever Christ is, there is the church and her ministry.
On a 2002 Study of Clergy... Of the study's sample group, 62 percent of ministers have little spiritual life! Excessive demands on time, conflicts within congregations and between ministers and members, loss of personal spiritual life and loneliness account for a deep malaise with our professional and personal lives.
We are tired, often overworked, usually over-stressed and underpaid, theologically confused, often ill-educated for the tasks before us, bored and probably guilty for feeling that way. Whatever the reasons, national figures show that around one-third of ordained persons leave the ministry after five years, never to return. It's that bad! The rest of us continue to drag ourselves out of bed in the morning and labor on.
A Doctor of Ministry class once insisted to me that about 90 percent of their time was taken up with congregational administration of one kind or another. I wandered, Whatever happened to the Word and Sacraments?
Whether we are 'successful' or 'unsuccessful' or somewhere in the middle, we get in the way. Whether we minister with mediocre skill or with truckloads of competence, whether with small success or with much public acclamation, God brings us to the point where our reliance on what we can do is killed by God.
The second crucifixion enables us to see the glorious freedom of ministry expressed by Paul: Not I but Christ. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me" (Galatians 2:20). Everything we now do is built on this foundation. Jesus Christ stands in for us. As in faith and worship, so now also in ministry, he does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This is what I mean by the vicarious humanity and ministry of Jesus Christ. We are bumped aside by God with whatever forcefulness is required, so that Jesus stands in our place.
Jesus is not a big deal; he is the whole deal! He's not a name on a list; he is the whole list!
To ministers let me say this as strongly as I can. Preach Christ, preach Christ, preach Christ. Get out of your offices and get into your studies. Quit playing office manager and program director, quit staffing committees, and even right now recommit yourselves to what you were ordained to do, namely the ministry of Word and Sacraments. Pick up good theology books again: hard books, classical texts, great theologians. Claim the time and energy for study for days and days at a time. Disappear for long hours because you are reading Athanasius on the Person of Jesus Christ or Wesley on sanctification or Augustine on the Trinity or Calvin on the Christian life or Andrew Murray on the priesthood of Christ. Then you will have something to say that is worth hearing.
Let most of what you do be dominated by the demands of the sermon as if your whole life and reason for being is to preach Christ, because it is. Claim a new authority for the pulpit, the Word of God, Jesus Christ, over you and your people. Commit yourself again to becoming a careful preacher of Christ. Don't preach to grow your congregation; preach to bear witness to what the Lord is doing, and let him grow your church. Dwell in him, abide in him, come to know him ever more deeply and convertedly.
The past week has been busy and fruitful. As part of the starting the new diocese, I attended informational meetings in Chattanooga, Augusta, and Atlanta last Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights. Each meeting went well with a lot of very thoughtful and insightful questions. I came away excited that folks were talking as if they were not interested in playing church, but sharing Jesus Christ with a needy world.
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