MW- Who do I do Ministry for?

New Year's Resolution: Shorten my posts. Let's see if I can do it!

Who do I do ministry for?

I went to a soccer game yesterday (which was about 15 hours after this should have been posted, so you can tell I’ve been procrastinating so far in 2012). I went there to see to of my youth kids play soccer. I played soccer once as a kid but they’ll be the first to tell you peewee soccer in Kentucky and High School soccer in LA are very different things. The only other sporting events I’ve gone to are a few swim meets last year. I don’t really understand sports but I understand that attending them are absolutely essential to my job.

I was contacted by this guy who is leading a ministry out in Bell, which is pretty close to me. We had met briefly at a conference in October and he had remembered me because of my beard. He was trying to get some people together to do a make-shift winter camp. After we Facebook’d back and forth for a while we going to meet up and have coffee tomorrow morning.

This past thanksgiving I talked about how our church asks people what they are thankful for and this year a mom stood up and said she was thankful for me and for the youth ministry. It brought tears to my eyes.

At my ordination I had 3 youth kids come up and talk about the ways I had impacted them and one of the things that always came up was the fact that they wore button up shirts with the sleeves rolled up and that was because of me. It was such a little, stupid thing but it was this visual representation of how I impacted their lives.

I was mulling around this question as I went in to 2012 and I realized there are a ton of right answers but in them there was one obvious theme. If I said I do ministry only for youth kids I’d be wrong and if I said I did it to support other churches around me I’d be wrong. If I did it for parents, or for other pastors, or to impress women I’d be wrong, even if Kate swoons every time I preach. :-)

I think even if I said I do it all for Christ I’d be wrong. I absolutely do ministry for Christ, that is my main motivation, but as I adopt Christ into my heart I realize that His motivation is others.

Who do I do ministry for? Anyone but myself.

We do ministry for others.