What is your ministry? Or what do you do that is of service to God and others?

How you answer that question is critical. 

Pause and take a moment to reflect on it before reading on.

———-

No—really pause—it’s an important question to ponder before continuing and it will make sense in a moment.

———-

Ok, the reason I ask you to consider that question is because I have a hunch that when church going people are presented with this question we typically look to what we do within the church; serving coffee, manning the audio system, playing music, or what we do in other parachurch groups that serves the wider community, eg street chaplains.

I wonder how many people’s minds gravitated immediately to their workplace. I have a sense that there wouldn’t have been many. We have been so conditioned to think of work as something separate to ministry (with the exception of specific ministry jobs; pastor, chaplain and the like), that we really struggle to imagine our workplace as ministry.

I want to wreck that idea, tear it down, rub it in the dirt and try and get rid of it altogether. It is as if we clock on to ministry when we do certain activities but work is not a ministry space.

In writing this book I am trying to help people envisage their workplace as their primary place of ministry. I will be helping you reclaim the eight hours you spend each day doing what some would consider unrelated to ministry whatsoever.

It’s a paradigm that doesn’t come naturally to us, because our church culture has predominantly framed ministry in terms of what happens in house or in overtly ‘Christian’ activities.

And that’s not to denigrate what does happen in-house. I have long said “if you are in the family then you help with the dishes.” Everyone has a part to play in our family—but our family isn’t an end itself.

So I’m expecting June will be the final edit and then publishing of this book. I am off to visit my friends at Sunshine FM next week for a couple of days to record the audiobook. I learnt last time that recording an audiobook allows you to pick any errors, as the spoken word is read slower than a normal scan. I also believe audiobooks are increasingly going to be a huge slice of the book market in years ahead.

And the beauty of publishing thru Amazon is that they allow you to create samples where you can test your design, font and lay out before committing. Just in case anyone is worried—the cover above is not the finished product…