Ministry Quotes

This is the need of the church today. The church is not in great need of miracles, gifts, teachings, or knowledge. Today the church needs the ministry of Christ.

I've got to tell you that my vocation, my true calling, is serving others. Medicine is my avocation; it's part of how I answer my calling, but it's not all of it. I minister to bodies, but I also minister to hearts and souls.

This leaves us with the urgent question: How can we be or become a caring community, a community of people not trying to cover the pain or to avoid it by sophisticated bypasses, but rather share it as the source of healing and new life? It is important to realize that you cannot get a Ph.D. in caring, that caring cannot be delegated by specialists, and that therefore nobody can be excused from caring. Still, in a society like ours, we have a strong tendency to refer to specialists. When someone does not feel well, we quickly think, 'Where can we find a doctor?' When someone is confused, we easily advise him to go to a counselor. And when someone is dying, we quickly call a priest. Even when someone wants to pray we wonder if there is a minister around.

I was going to stop pretending that just because we were in ministry we were perfect. I was tired of wearing the mask of ministry, and knew that I needed to start living the life.

A piece of paper doesn't make you a pastor any more than making predictions makes you a prophet.

The purpose of salt is to change the nature of what it invades without calling attention to itself. Attracting attention to yourself in the Kingdom of God is like seducing the bride because you are the best man of the groom.

As missional leaders we need to see God as:Bigger than the problems we endure.Bigger than the pressures we experience.Bigger than the people who criticize us.Bigger than the pain we suffer.Bigger than the praise we receive.Bigger than the pride in our hearts.

If you have a ministry, dedicate yourself to it, do everything with love and with a clean heart

What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people?" Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions.

I had rather have God for my banker than all the Rothschilds.

He was driven to use the prerogatives of his profession, to act the parson.

Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect.

The Resurrection is most clearly needed and most clearly revealed in those communities that are constantly seeking to correct and transform the world through the wisdom and power of the Word of God made flesh in their lives and actions in history.

the heart of a prophet is not his own to bestow.

Second Corinthians speaks concerning the ministry, which is constituted with, and produced and formed by, the experiences of the riches of Christ through sufferings, consuming pressures, and the killing work of the cross. The ministry is not merely a matter of gift. A person may be able to speak fluently and eloquently and give many good illustrations and proverbs, but this is just a gift. What the church, the Body, needs today is the ministry.

Every place is now God's temple, and His people can as truly serve Him in their daily employments as in His house. They are to be always "ministering," offering the spiritual sacrifice of prayer and praise, and presenting themselves a "living sacrifice.

God's plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God's method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

Peace is the opposite of dreaming. It’s built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don’t even see. It’s a messy business, bringing peace into the world.

Great is our calling, We dare not be idle.The saddle is in place,And Jesus is bridle.

we have faith to sit in a chair, and continue to believe in its foundation that holds us up. If we have faith in God, the foundation will hold us both up, so its our decision to take the seat and trust him.

To instill the values for the culture was and is the responsibility of the leadership, and staff alignment was critical to its success. It started with both board and staff. They realized that they needed to share the same value system that says, “I am the equipper, not the doer.” If not, there were going to be immense roadblocks to effectively mobilizing people for ministry.

We think in terms of apostolic journeys. God dares to put His greatest ambassadors in chains.

The imitation of Christ is the joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.

The key to being a successful pastor is to be able to minister supernaturally, be a pastor without tears, in learning of Him, learning from His life.

John Quincy Adams' depression was treated by his aunt with some reliable remedies, first sleep and then compassion. She said, " He was half cared for by having someone to care for him.

After Jesus' fast, he began healing, rescuing, redeeming. The Spirit filled up the emptiness Jesus created, launching him into ministry. In some supernatural way the abstinence from food was the catalyst for Jesus' unveiling; the real fireworks were next.

She had been carried away by the need to defend herself.

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person.

To fully communicate with people, you need to find tactics that would interest them

If it was bliss to be alive, to hunt was rapture.

Our success in ministry is not to elevate us but to glorify Him who has called and equipped us

The deeper irony is that the evidence of sin that are always found in and around the body of Christ may become indirect intimations of its holiness. It could not be a holy church if it had clean hands, as if severed from its task of saving sinners and healing human hurt.

That amount of time is to be converted into some products, benefits, goods, services, welfare, ministry, but most of us actually truncate this amount of wealth on daily basis.

If you will study the history of Christ's ministry from Baptism to Ascension, you will discover that it is mostly made up of little words, little deeds, little prayers, little sympathies, adding themselves together in unwearied succession. The Gospel is full of divine attempts to help and heal, in the body, mind and heart, individual men. The completed beauty of Christ's life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty -- talking with the woman at the well; going far up into the North country to talk with the Syrophenician woman; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart, that kept him out of the kingdom of Heaven; shedding a tear at the grave of Lazarus; teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; preaching the Gospel one Sunday afternoon to two disciples going out to Emmaus; kindling a fire and broiling fish, that His disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore after a night of fishing, cold, tired, discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of God's interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed in what is minute.

It was well to be Martha and serve, but better to be Lazarus and commune.

I find that I keep offering God my service when what He wants is my fellowship

Always have a book to read, instead of indulging in vain conversation. Strive to learn English....Remember this, that you cannot commit some loved sin in private, and perform the work of the ministry in public, with facility and acceptance.

Most people like it when the pastor says, "family is priority." What they don't like very much is when the pastor actually chooses his own family as the priority over them.

Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.

What is important to God is that you remain faithful to Him in your ministry

A true Christian lives and labors on earth not for himself but for his neighbor. Therefore the whole spirit of his life him impels him to do even that which he needs not do, but which is profitable and necessary for his neighbor.

Change the value system of the people you are ministering to

I am called to minister to people and inspire them to do more not to advertise them and have them swell up with pride.

Freedom in the Gospel does not mean license. It means opportunity.

Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day.

If you want your ministry to have ‘it’, more important than anything else we’ve discussed, you must have ‘it’. When it has filtered through your heart - the rare combination of passion, integrity, focus, faith, expectation, drive, hunger, and God’s anointing - God tends to infuse your ministry with ‘it’. He blesses your work. People are changed. Leaders grow. Resources flow. The ministry seems to take on a life of its own.

Find out the needs of the people you are ministering to and help them overcome their fears

You can leave the Word of God to wound and kill it need not be yourselves cutting in phrase in manner.

In the earliest days of World War II when London was undergoing the blitz but the United States had not yet been drawn into the hostilities, the US ambassador walked the streets during the hottest of the bombing and ask people at every level of British society what he could do to help. What a picture of our role as ambassadors of Christ's coming Kingdom!

The deeper you go in ministry, the more the enemy wants to be an irritant in your marriage.

Kingdom is a signpost to the holy.

But God's love is big enough to touch any life, to make light out of any darkness. Jesus came that we might have life, so that no more would we have to die in depression, anger or pain. He loved people back to life. He would go anywhere, talk to anyone. And wherever He went, He would stop for the one-- the forgotten one, the one who was rejected, outcast, sick, even stone dead. Even a thief who was dying for his crimes on the cross next to Him. In the Kingdom of God's love there is no sinner who cannot come home.

Don’t wait for people to locate you. Rather, reach out to people and help to bring them to Christ

Dear church, John the baptist died for exposing the sins of others. Jesus died to actually pay for the sins of others.John was great, but we should not follow his model. Our model is Christ. So lets stop telling the world how bad their sin is and lets start sharing how good the Father has always been.

God never loses sight of the treasure which He has placed in our earthen vessels.

The author reveals a cultural change that took place when clergy were paid based on a tax on the land's value rather than what it produced. This meant that, while parishioners could suffer through a terrible year, clergy would always have a comfortable one.

A student is engaging, attentive, notes details, and shows effort in learning.

The needs of the people around you should your utmost priority

Working for love is a curse. Working from love is a ministry.

Some people will not make the decision to give Jesus love back no matter how great his love is. These folks are who I call “grace users”. They just take advantage of the Lord’s love and kindness. True disciples will love the Lord back. When someone truly opens their heart and falls in love with Jesus, wanting to be his disciple will come naturally to them. Christ’s love is compelling.