#ministry

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. ↗

— E.M. Bounds

#character #individuals #ministry #men

I would like to encourage you to stop thinking of what you're doing as ministry. Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it all messed up or not; whether you flush your own toilet or not. Your ministry is the way that you love people. And you love people when you write something that is encouraging to them, something challenging. You love people when you call your wife and say, 'I'm going to be late for dinner,' instead of letting her burn the meal. You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife sometime, because you know she's really tired. Loving people - being respectful toward them - is much more important than writing or doing music. ↗

— Rich Mullins

#ministry #the-church #love

One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary. ↗

— Bart D. Ehrman

#church #god #ministry #pastor #religion

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first. ↗

— Wayne Cordeiro

#jesus-christ #pastor #pastoral #pastoral-ministry #refuge

Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies. ↗

— Aldrich Ames

#agents #become #foreign #guys #intelligence

As I look back over fifty years of ministry, I recall innumerable tests, trials and times of crushing pain. But through it all, the Lord has proven faithful, loving, and totally true to all his promises. ↗

— David Wilkerson

#crushing #faithful #fifty #his #i

Our ministry also supports orphanages in the U.S. and overseas, thousands of poor children in Latin America, drug centers for addicted men, and a drug center in Israel. ↗

— David Wilkerson

#also #america #center #centers #children

We believe our music is our ministry and we love to spread it everywhere we go. ↗

— Clarence Williams

#everywhere #go #love #ministry #music

As far as spiritual influences in Christian music, I would say Crystal Lewis - a lot of her songs especially. The ministry she has through her songs has really hit me. ↗

— Stacie Orrico

#christian #christian music #crystal #especially #far

My ministry's always been one of social activism. I think a responsible minister must be at some levels involved in the social order. ↗

— Al Sharpton

#always #been #i #i think #involved