#ministry

Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Miss Granger?” asked Scrimgeour. “No, I’m not,” retorted Hermione. “I’m hoping to do some good in the world! ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#hermione-granger #law #ministry-of-magic #death

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

I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea. ↗

— John Chrysostom

#difficulty #disturb #feeble #gales #great

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

God flourished my ministry and my career of creative thinking, communicating and writing back 50 years. ↗

— Robert H. Schuller

#career #communicating #creative #flourished #god

Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there. ↗

— A.W. Tozer

#ministry #work #art

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. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#ministry #life

She wisely reasoned that my chosen husband was no ordinary man, that his whole life was absolutely dedicated to God and His service, ad that I must never, never hinder him by trying to put myself first in his heart. ↗

— Susannah Spurgeon

#wife #life

Fred dislikes the idea going into the ministry partly because he doesn't like "feeling obligated to look serious", and he centers his doubts on "what people expect of a clergyman". ↗

— George Eliot

#ministry #popularity #life