You don’t need to be a pastor or a missionary to be involved in some sort of ministry. In fact, God has given all of us certain types of ministry and calling that we cannot escape from: calling at home, vocation and the local church.
Even though these three areas may look vastly different from person to person, without a doubt we are all called by God to serve and glorify him in all three spheres. I will briefly brush through and paint a picture of how it might look like for a random regular layperson like you and I to be serving in these areas.
Home
If you are the father of your household, the bible says that you are the head of your family. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 3).
This means that you have a God given duty to exercise your biblical headship, and one of the ways this should be demonstrated is by leading your whole family into some form of regular family worship or devotion time.
It is the duty of the head to create and foster such God honouring environment in the household and they are to exercise their leadership to make sure that their whole family is on board with the spiritual atmosphere if possible.
You don’t need to be as gifted as Billy Graham in order to lead the family service. Remember the person with 2 gold coins and 5 gold coins only made profit relative to what they have received from their master.
If you can’t teach the bible at all, simply getting the whole family to sit down every Sunday night and reading the bible together for 20 minutes and sharing will suffice, as long as you are acting faithful to the little that you have been given.
If you are the child of the family like myself, it is important to remember the fifth commandment – Honour thy father and thy mother. Millennials can unconsciously brush off this commandment and view it as something archaic and irrelevant, or simply set your own standard of what honouring means.
We might not take this commandment as seriously as do not steal or murder, but we have to remember that God thought it was so important that He indeed put this commandment in his top ten list.
When it comes to people at your church or people at your workplace, we constantly pray and think a lot about how we might serve them better and demonstrate Christlikeness to them, but unfortunately we do this less as children of the household on how we might potentially honour our parents more.
Vocation
Most of us will be employed at some point in our lives and will belong to an organization where you will be surrounded by colleagues from all sorts of background and religion.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians chapter 3, verse 23 – 24).
We are to practice true servanthood at our workplace as if we are serving the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Imagine yourself serving in a local church ministry or you are in a frontier mission field. You would go over ten thousand miles to serve the Lord and show exemplary self sacrificial servanthood in all you do and to all those you encounter with.
Now just apply the same attitude at work and to your colleagues. Are you slacking and procrastinating at work? Will you do the same if you were in ministry? Are you selectively loving few people whilst being uninterested to others? Will you only selectively love when ministering to a group of people?
Local church
Don’t sweat it if you are not a pastor, elder or deacon! You still have ways to serve outside of the traditional offices and positions in your local church such as being the treasurer etc. You might have guessed it already from the previous two paragraphs; servanthood is the key word of the day.
Just look around to see what kind of needs there are in the church and volunteer! Do you reckon you can help out with the dishes once every two weeks? Perhaps you might volunteer to come in once a month and help vacuum the church and help clean up the nasty toilets that no one wants to touch! You may even do this as a group and create this beautiful voluntary culture to foster further servanthood amongst your fellow congregation.
You are also not bound to the parameter of the church. Look around for needs around the members of your local congregation.
Are you a healthy young man with some free time? Why not offer to come around to mow the garden of elderly church members that have trouble even just walking? Why not volunteer to babysit the young ones so that you may allow young married couples some chance to revitalize out on a romantic date?
All it takes is some creativity, prayer, courage and a servant mind!
Start off with a small bite!
I think I mentioned plenty already. You don’t have to endeavour to take on a huge ministry project to be involved in a ministry. Let’s face it, we are not all Charles Spurgeon, Billy Graham or other awesome favourite divines and saints of yours.
However, not being a clergy is also no excuse for disregarding God’s personal calling at your home, vocation and local church. You are not free to just chill and do as your free spirited mind leads you.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans chapter 12, verse 2).
We are to constantly renew our mind and reflect upon ourselves and constantly seek the Lord to help us demonstrate true servanthood in our lives. May we not be complacent at our level of spiritual maturity but constantly battle to further our exercise of good.
Richard Kwon is from Auckland, a regular lay person who just loves the Lord.