My Philosophy of Ministry

Any personal philosophy of ministry must take into account certain elements. Among these are the basis, or source of the ministry, the nature of the one being ministered to as well as that of the minister, the goal of the ministry and challenges to that goal, and finally the pragmatic elements of how such a ministry would be carried out; all of this is done under the context of an overarching theory of ministry, a sort of thesis statement for the minister. In this case, the overarching theory is that of messianic-existentialism.
It would be helpful to define what is meant by the term “messianic-existential.” It is, in short, a personal philosophy that views humans as existential creatures who are in constant pursuit of purpose in their lives. As they search for this purpose, they struggle with four ultimate concerns, as identified by Irvin Yalom (1981). These are: death, isolation, meaninglessness, and freedom. To say that this philosophy is messianic is to say that the answer to these four concerns is found in the Messiah, and indeed the very purpose and goal of life is found there as well. The thesis of a messianic-existentialist is that Yahweh is rapt with meaning, and those created in his image are as well; the Creation has been marred by sin and that meaning is hidden-God calls some to lead the others back.
To begin with one must answer the question, who is God? Part of the answer is found in the name God chose for himself: I Am,” or more specifically, “I Am the One Who is” (Laney, 2004). The person of God is so majestic and awesome that any name that would set limits beyond the simple “I Am” is not worthy of him. The minister must first remember that this is who he works for; he does not work for an organization incorporated as a church-this is simply the region in which he works. He does not work for the people either-these are his target. He works for the eternal God who is omni-everything (just about) and who simply “is.”
There is more to be said about the person of God. He is, and this is important, the Father (Heb 12:6-11, John 6:27). Because he is the Father he will relate to people as his children, with discipline, patience, longsuffering, and joy. God has purposefully chosen to demonstrate his love in the manner of a father.
It is the Father who provides the basis for ministry because He was (and is) the first minister. He ministered to Adam and Eve after the fall, He ministered to his people as slaves in Egypt (Isa. 12:2), and He ministered to the world through His Son (John 3:16). Moreover it was the Son that the ministry of the Father is most fully modeled.
While Christ introduced the New Covenant to the people of God, his mission of redemption was not new. This was God’s plan and his ministry all along, Jesus was simply continuing what Yahweh was already doing (John 14:31). Likewise the minister is not creating anything new, he is simply carrying on the ministry of the Father as modeled by the Son (John 20:21). This is a weighty thing-carrying on the ministry of God. The minister must be sure to not minimize the authority given to him to carry on this task my Christ himself (Matt 16:19).
The nature of the ministry is such that it is less of a human task and more os a supernatural one. As the basis and the model for ministry are both found in the divine, so to is the power to carry it out. This power was first demonstrated on day one of the church when the Holy Spirit came upon God’s ministers (Acts 2:4) and it is the Holy Spirit who continues to empower God’s ministers for the supernatural task set before them (Eph 3:16).
It should not be surprising that ministry is in essence a Trinitarian function as it originated from a Trinitarian Godhead. Ministry has a fatherly element to it, and it is this fatherly element (the suffering, the patience, the discipline, the joy-all rooted in love) that is the basis. Moreover, just as the love of God was made incarnate in Christ, so to is it made incarnate again (albeit somewhat differently) through the minister, who will never be successful in starting a ministry of his own but must instead carry on the ministry of Christ. Finally, just as Christ was empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the ministry, so too are those continuing his ministry.
A fully formed philosophy of ministry must be aware of who is being ministered to. For the messianic-existentialist humans are first and foremost imago Dei. God states his intention
that man be made in His image in Genesis 1:26 and in the very next verse states that what he intended had been carried out. That the image of God remains even after the fall is made clear in Genesis 9:6 when God appeals to this fact as his reasoning against murder. Paul explicates this concept even further in 1 Corinthians 11:7 by saying that man is not only in the image of God but is also the glory of God. James appeals to imago Dei in exhorting believers to speak well to each other (James 4:4). Again, for the minister working under this philosophy this must be at the core of how one approaches his work as well as how one uses the tool of the ministry; a minister must use the tools of ministry to discover, point out, and bring forth the image of God in the individual.
The Bible does not limit its exposition of anthropology to imago Dei, but goes on to speak of the dichotomy of the human being. Jesus tells his disciples to “not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matt 10:28). One can see from this verse and others like it (James 2:26, Ecc 12:7) that persons are both material and immaterial in essence. A minister must view those he works with holistically, and therefore must take into account that the person sitting in front of them is both organic and spiritual in nature. These two very real facets of the human being interact constantly, producing a unified whole that the Bible calls a living soul; the Greek word for “living soul” is psuche, from which the English word psyche is derived (Breshears, 2004). Such a term is most often used in the world of psychology, which is often frightening to those in the ministry. The two schools of thought (psychology and theology) have nothing to fear from one another though when each is used in its proper context. While psychology debates which attributes belong to the organic brain and which belong to the emotional mind, theology answers by saying that all of one’s attributes can be attributed to the psyche, the soul, the unified living person that exists as an interaction between the immaterial and material parts. The mind, which is the subject of psychology, is an expression of the somatic, spiritual person, which is the subject of theology--healing such a person is the subject of ministry.
One may at once notice that many elements traditionally considered part of the ministry seem to be left without a place in what has been presented thus far, and this is a true. Such elements are not within the scope of this philosophy for this philosophy is primarily concerned with the healing of the soul-repairing the damage done by sin and leading the individual to their purpose in life: participating fully in the life of God. The definition of a minister asserted by Gregory the Great, that of “a physician for the soul” (Purves 21) is fully embraced here.
The physician for the soul is of course first defined by the same truths that define those he ministers to; he is both material and immaterial, a living soul, created in the image of God. He is also a believer, one who has been saved by grace through faith (Eph 2:8). He has repented and been baptized and is filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). His mind has been renewed (Rom 12:2) and he is doing the work of sanctification with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12).
Finally, a minister does not become what he is purely by choice, for who would freely choose to come under stricter judgement (James 3:1, Heb 13:17)? Rather, authority is endowed by God (Rom 13:1) and the minister is called and sent by Him (John 20:21) to shepherd (1 Peter 5:2), to serve (1 Cor 4:1) and the reconcile (2 Cor 5:20) that God’s people may participate in His life.
The goal of ministry under this philosophy, as mentioned earlier, is to bring healing to the soul. Scripture teaches how this is to take place. “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isa 53:4-5). Various interpretations about what it means to be healed in this context abound, but what can be agreed on is that at the very least Christ’s work on the cross brings spiritual healing. If the basis of suffering is spiritual, as scripture indicates it is, it stands to reason that the basis of healing will likewise be found in the spiritual. It is in bringing the individual closer and closer towards Christlikeness, towards the fruits of the Spirit and away from the influence of sin that healing can come to the psyche and the Messiah can answer the questions of existential angst.
As to the angst of death, Christ says that for the believer there is no such thing. As to isolation, while humans may never fully participate in the consciousness of one another, they can fully participate in God and rid themselves of isolation. To the overwhelming anxiety of freedom and the consequences that come with it, the Messiah offers grace, forgiveness, and a chance to start over. The final concern is likewise the most important: a sense of meaning. The author of Ecclesiastes recognized the necessity for a sense of meaning, and had trouble finding such a sense in any aspect of life. “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Ecc 1:14). Further in the book he says, “Then I thought in my heart, "The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?" I said in my heart, "This too is meaningless” (Ecc 2:15). Because he must ultimately die and preserve nothing which he has made, because he can not share his wisdom in a more intimate way, because of the randomness of life, the author concludes in the beginning that life is meaningless. However, he does not stay with that conclusion. After deciding that the world is in God’s hands, that He has in fact set a time for everything and that His work will last forever, the author surmises that his life has meaning because “God will bring every act to judgement, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil” (Ecc 12:14).
The final assessment of the author is critical, for it is according to one’s sense of meaning that he will order his values, and it is according to his values that he will order his life. God calls the minister to reconcile the people that their sense of meaning may be restored and their values ordered according to God’s, that they may live a life that brings Him glory.
The work of ministry is the most glorious, the most important work that can be done in this world. It is the work of continuing the incarnational ministry of Christ; it is the only work whose yield lasts into eternity. Nothing glorious, nothing of eternal consequence, comes without a price. The very fact of Christ on the cross is testimony to this. From Moses to Paul, scripture is replete with stories of God’s ministers facing challenges and paying the price; Christ himself promises as much when he said, “You will be hated by all because of my Name” (Luke 21:17). Richard Baxter names the source of this hatred in saying, “If you will be leaders against Satan, he will not spare you. He bears the greatest malice against the one who is engaged in working the greatest damage against him” (Johnson, 2005).
Satan will do his best to disqualify the minister and destroy the ministry done through him; one sure attack will be temptation to sin. What the minister must realize is that it will not look like sin when he is confronted with it, for that is an enemy that is easily dealt with. As Platinga states in his book, Not the Way it’s Supposed to Be, sin is nothing more than hijacked virtue (Johnson, 2005). The temptations a minister faces will not be to vice, but to virtue. Because he is loving, Satan will send him the woman in desperate need of love. Because he is forgiving, Satan will tempt him to overlook a brother’s sin, to the detriment of the ministry. Because he is a servant, Satan will try and replace God on throne with the congregation instead.
Indeed, sometimes the very people one ministers to can become the greatest challenge. Few people outside the ministry understand the rigors of the job, and even if they do understand they are not always easy to work with. When one’s passion is seeing a heart given to Christ, one can not help but feel pain when a heart turns from him. Yet if this was the experience of the Master, then it will also be the experience for his pupil.
The minister would do well to remember that he has not been placed on the battlefield unarmed, but rather God has proved offensive weapons with which he may confront Satan’s attack (Eph 6:10-20). The minister must also remember that rewards given in a temporal world are likewise temporal, but the rewards which he must wait for, those will be eternal.
Finally, a philosophy of ministry must encompass pragmatic as well as philosophical elements. The first pragmatic element under this philosophy is that a minister must model the belief and subsequent behavior he would like to see in those he ministers to. It is a well known theory of learning that people will imitate what they see their leaders do before they will ever do what their leader say. There, as Paul exhorts his charges to model him as he models Christ (1 Cor 11:1), so to must one continuing Christ’s ministry model the Master’s behavior for those ministered to today.
A second pragmatic element of an incarnational ministry under this philosophy is that of service. The very term for minister in the New Testament, “diakonia,” implies that he is a servant. The minister carries on the tradition of Christ, who came not be served but to serve (Mark 10:45); first God (John 13) and then others, and he equips others to do the same (1 Tim 4:5).
A third element is compassion. The need for this can not be overstated if one wishes to be an instrument in the healing of souls. True compassion, as modeled by Christ, is not one that forgets wrongs but rather forgives wrongs (John 8:1-11). It is a compassion that looks through the eyes of the Advocate and not the Accuser and points people in the direction of Christ, who makes all things new.
Finally, a minister is one who has come under submission to his Master (Col 1:25-28). When the minister realizes that it is his job to glorify God and be a conduit, that it is in fact God who does the real work of ministry, then he can be free to enjoy the journey on which God is taking him, fully submitted and accepting of what his Master has planned. He need not work tirelessly to convince others that he is good, he need only let God’s goodness shine through him; nor does he need to please all those who demand something of him, for there are many, he need only please the One whom he has submitted to.
A messianic-existential view of ministry acknowledges those concerns which are normal to every human after the fall, and posits that the Messiah has answered every one of them. It views people as living souls and God as the Great Physician. The minister too, by God’s calling, is a physician of the soul, a conduit for healing. He seeks to carry on the incarnational ministry that started with the Father, was modeled by Christ, and is empowered by the Spirit.






Works Cited
Breshears, Gerry. THS 502 Class Notes. Western Seminary: 2004
Johnson, John. DMS 501 Class Notes. Western Seminary: 2005
Laney, Carl. BLS 501 Class Notes. Western Seminary: 2004
Purves, Andrew. Pastoral Theology in the Classical Tradition. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 2001