Elements of an Electrifying Ministry

This is a message for all you young preachers out there who have your sights on growing a big church. We are easily swayed today into false impressions of what successful ministry is, but go read the book of Acts. Did Peter end up as the pastor of a mega church, with everyone applauding him and admiring him? Did Paul end up with a big TV ministry that raked in millions every month? Where did we get this nonsense that to be successful in ministry means commercial success, material success, big buildings, and fancy auditoriums, and country club amenities all wrapped up on a beautiful campus with plenty of parking? This is not the biblical standard of success in ministry, but our own worldly standards that we borrowed from society and applied them to the church.

Most men fresh out of seminary can't wait to go build a big church because ministry success is viewed by brick and mortar and numerical numbers. It's easy to get fooled into believing that just because a pastor has overflowed crowds and a huge church campus and an upbeat worship team that God's smile is on that man's ministry, when it could be Satan behind him just as well. I want us to re-examine what ministry is this evening, friends, and look at it in light of scripture.

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 16 and verse 9. For it is here where we get a what vital ministry really is, and we find it is vastly different from our view of it today. Satan raged against the Christ of the Gospels after one of his sermons, his audience tried to throw him down a cliff. All hell came at him in the form of human dupes, which were the religious leaders of his day.

Jesus went about doing good, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, and he ended his labors, nailed to a ignoble cross with two common criminals as his last companions, because all his friends deserted him. We want admiration from our congregation, so we preach nice little messages that don't upset anybody. The problem is they don't save anybody either, but it's okay so long as we grew our church and look successful within our denomination.

But when we examine scripture and the man God used, we find a different brand of success. Look at 1 Corinthians 16 9 where the apostle Paul describes his ministry. For a great door and effectual is opened unto me.

Let me pause here friends to say this is the positive aspect of his usefulness. Now let's continue with our text. And there are many adversaries.

This is the negative aspect which always accompanies the fruitful ministry for the glory of God. There is a positive and a negative. A great door and effectual is swinging open for Paul, but waiting like a lion in the bush is the devil ready to pounce.

And there are many adversaries. This negative and corresponding positive go hand in hand, just like electrical polarity, but where there must be both a positive and a negative present in every electrical circuit. For the electrons to flow, there must be the positive to the negative.

So too, in a God called ministry, you will find these elements present, the negative and the positive. The title of my message this evening, friends, is the elements of an electrifying ministry. Just go read and examine the life of George Whitefield, and you will find a man who could hold the attention of 30,000 people in the rain, while he preached in the open air, and while the glory of God was poured out on his hearers.

But at the same time, Whitefield had rotten eggs thrown at him, and pieces of dead cats. One time he was stoned by a violent mob in Ireland, and was almost killed when introduced to a New England minister while in Boston. The minister informed him he was originally from Ireland.

Upon hearing this, Whitefield removed his beaver cap and bent over, pointing with his finger to a large scar on his forehead, and replying, ìThis wound, sir, I received while preaching Christ in your country. We all want our ministry to end with roses thrown at our feet, and not rotten eggs or stones thrown at our heads. The positive and the negative go all together.

They are so altogether different from our view of what ministry should be. The apostle Paul finished his ministry not with applause and cheers, but with abandonment and a fallen axe. His labors for Christ and the gospel were unmatched in the scripture record.

Let me read you his laundry list of his labors. In labors more abundant, he planted churches all over Asia Minor. For the glory of God and the sake of the gospel, now look at the corresponding negative.

In stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews, five times received I, forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned.

Thrice I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I have been in the deep. In journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.

There you have it friends, the positive and negative that makes an electrifying ministry, one that alarms, awakens, thunders, woos, and wins many to Christ Jesus in lives of transformation. The Apostle Paul was an absolutely electrifying preacher, that if you heard him, you would experience the electrifying shockwaves of the Holy Ghost in conviction of sin. But for the positive to exist, there had to be a corresponding negative.

I'm afraid today we just want the positive. We want to be accepted, acknowledged, and appreciated. So we lean more to please folks with their messages, so we can have a positive ministry.

Meanwhile our congregations slide on right on down to hell. Let us pray.