Reframing Success in Ministry: Investment
In February 2008, I spent a week with Spain with 50+ missionaries. It was a great time, except that many of them were sick. Some could not talk, some stayed in their rooms because they felt so bad, and a couple had to be taken to the hospital. I had not been sick in years. Yet the day after I got home, I started to feel like death. I was down for eight days.
Two days later, I realized that I had not spent much time in my Bible for almost three weeks. So I hopped in my thinking chair and opened up my Bible to Second Corinthians and started reading. I just wanted to read something from God. I read the entire book that morning. However, what captured me most was the first few verses of chapter 3. So I stopped to spend some time there. These verses say,
1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. 3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (ESV)
Can we take a journey through part of this passage?
In 3:1, Paul addresses the topic of commendation that comes up several times in the letter. The phrase “commend ourselves” might seem to point to boasting and “again” might suggest that Paul has been accused of being boastful and the comment that he is not commending himself shows how touchy he is about the subject. (1)
However “to commend” does not mean, “to boast”. Commendation was an appropriate way of establishing relationships. Understanding this word in the ancient context helps us see that in self-commendation a person does more than introduce himself; he actually entrusts himself to another person. This is a social issue. (2)
It appears that there may have been some tension between Paul and a few people in Corinth. The logic then goes that if Paul commends himself again to them he would be admitting “he had done something to jeopardize the friendship and must do something now to regain their trust” (3) Paul’s argument appears to be that he shouldn’t have to commend himself again, or even bring letters of recommendation.
Not that letters of recommendation were bad. They were important to initiating and developing friendship at that time in history. Letters were the way to introduce fellow Christians to other Christians as they went from place to place. However, what he wonders aloud in the writing of this letter is: “Do I really have to have someone else vouch for my faith and for my apostleship? Is our relationship really that strained?”
Now here is the money quote. “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation…” I love this phrase. It stopped me dead in my tracks when I read it. David Garland says on this verse,
“Paul contends that he needs no letters with them because they are his letter of recommendation. The imagery again is striking. Instead of something written on paper with pen and ink, he pictures a divine letter inscribed on human hearts by the Spirit of the living God. The Corinthians are Paul’s letter to the world, having been engraved on his heart, known and read by everyone.” (4)
N. T. Wright comments that “[I]f anybody wants to find out what sort of person Paul is, what sort of a Christian worker he is, then they should look at the church in Corinth and draw their conclusions.” (5) Wright goes on to say,
“His ‘qualification’ comes from God, and God alone. And the only ‘letter of recommendation’ he needed, the only one he could ever have, is written not with paper and ink, not even with a chisel in a stone tablet like the law of Moses, but in the living beings, the persons, the prayers, the decisions, the love, of this community in Corinth, where to date he had done his most thorough work.” (6)
The validation of Paul’s ministry was that he had preached the gospel of Christ to those in Corinth, and God mightily changed their lives. Despite the fact there were problems in their church, these people had come to Christ and were working out the impact of that transformation every day. They were not perfect. However, the fact that God had worked in them through Paul validated the ministry of Paul and his role in the kingdom of God. He carried the memories of their transformation in his own heart, and it was an encouragement to him. Paul was living out God’s calling and watching a church grow up in Christ. The investment Paul had made and the seeds he had planted were slowing bearing fruit. It was for this reason that he could rejoice. It was not in the numbers, but in the maturation of those in whom he had invested his life.
For Now We Live
A week after reading I Corinthians, I read I Thessalonians. Again, I was struck by a magnificent phrase, this time in 3:8: “For now we live”. Here is the context:
6 But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us, as we long to see you- 7 for this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction we have been comforted about you through your faith. 8 For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. (I Thess. 3:6-8, ESV)
Let’s look at this short passage for a moment. In his commentary on 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Michael Martin gives a short description of these verses:
In the lengthy sentence that makes us these verses, the primary statement is “we were encouraged” (v. 7). The news brought by Timothy (v. 6) was the cause of the encouragement. The distress and persecution of the apostle was the context into which is came (v. 7a), and the hopeful express in v. 8 is its outgrowth. One of the purposes of Timothy’s visit was to “encourage” (the same verb is used in v. 2 and v. 7) the faith of the Thessalonians. Timothy’s return with good news encouraged the missionaries. Mutual encouragement implies mutual concern, respect, and a capacity to minister to one another. (7)
Now to the money quote, “For now we live”. On first read, it may seem that this issue is a quality of life issue. Paul’s joy is enhanced by the news that this church is persevering in the faith. Yet, the message is stronger if it is taken as a hyperbole rather than a simple statement about the quality of life. “The one who hears her lover say ‘I don’t think I could survive without you’ accepts the sentiment as genuine if (hopefully) not literal. Here, near the end of the section expressing his thankfulness for and his hopes for his spiritual children, is an appropriate place for such a grandiose statement by the church’s spiritual father.” (8)
Now think with me for a moment: in the midst of persecution and struggle, Paul wasn’t worried about the size of the building, or the offering the church had, or the number of people there on Sunday. The one thing that brought Paul a sense of joy – a joy that is so great that he had to express it in an extreme way – was the faithfulness of the church. Their perseverance impacted his own life and encouraged him to stand firm himself in the midst of distress and persecution. For this spiritual father, it isn’t about “how much” or “how many”, but simply, “how”.
Investment
The effectiveness of our ministry endeavors is not the size of our building or the number of people we have baptized. Paul helps us understand that what brings success is the impact of our investment. Every week, pastors, ministry staff, and those outside traditional church ministries invest in those people God has placed under them. These ministers may scour the scriptures to hear from God and teach those people or they be teaching a small community group or serving food at a shelter. When they teach, or listen or relate or pour a cup of soup on a cold day, they are making an investment. The hearts of those they invest in are like soil and seeds are being planting within that soil. When one of those seeds take root and begins to sprout and grow, as ministers we can turn our face to God and hear Him say, “Well done!”. When we water and fertilize the seed that has sprouted so that it has what it needs to continue to grow, we can look to the heavens and see the smile on the face of God.
Every week, I look into the eyes of a people who once were living in darkness but have now seen a great light. I did not lead them all to Christ. I did not baptize them all. However, I have seen these men and women wrestle with the scripture, listen to my teaching, and model my actions. In addition, I see them blossom.
One example is a young lady named Angel. Five years ago, Angel was a young lady who was young in the faith. She read the Bible in KJV because that is all she had, though far too often she didn’t know what she was reading because of the antiquated language. She struggled with words and understanding the scriptures but despite that read parts of the Bible I had not read in some time. I bought her a modern translation with study notes because every week in our small group I would get questions about some really difficult passage that I would have to pull out my own translation just to understand. “Why did he do that?” she would ask. “I don’t understand what God’s saying here in Zephaniah. Can you help me?” Two and a half years after I baptized her, she came to me and wanted my business advice. She wanted to start a company selling organic soaps and body creams and grooming products. She wanted the packaging to have scripture on it and a note about Jesus in the box. She has often taken ideas from my sermons and created original paintings, some of which hangs in my office.
Her husband is not a Christ-follower, but despite that, her house is covered with artistic expressions of the scripture. She called me one day and asked me about a series of paintings she had been inspired to create. She wanted to a painting based on each day of creation. Her was afraid that by creating a series of paintings that represented each day of creation she might be breaking the commandment about no graven images. I told her it wasn’t. Now there are seven paintings in her house, each of which represent the seven days of creation.
Angel is my “letter of recommendation”, as are many more like her. Our church has trained and sent out over 100 missionaries to all parts of the country. Their jobs have taken them to mission fields all over North America. For a church that was averaging 70 five years ago, sending out 100 missionaries has been devastating to our numbers and income, but not to our success. You see, each one of them take the investment that I and many others have made in them. That investment changed how they understand church, God, and their role in the mission of God. I remember the day that I was observing people after a morning worship gathering. I remember hearing the whisper of God in my ear saying, “They get it!” It was that day, that I realized that in the eyes of God I was indeed a success. Now I live!
Success is not how many you have. Success is the investment you make in what God gives you.The new ministry metric must contain obedience as well as investment. Neither quantity or size are a consideration.
Notes
1. David Garland, 2 Corinthians (New American Commentary), 154
2. Garland, 154-155.
3. Garland, 155.
4. Garland, 157.
5. NT Wright, Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians, 29.
6. Wright, 30.
7. 1, 2 Thessalonians (New American Commentary) Martin, 105.
8. Martin, 107.
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Tags: Investment, Ministry, Success
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