Ministry Leadership w/ Lance McKinnon
Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.
This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.
Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in context of Grace Communion International churches.
I’m your host, Cara Garrity, and today I’m excited to have Dr. Lance McKinnon as our guest. Dr. McKinnon is a professor at Grace Communion Seminary, and today we’re going to continue exploring our 2025 theme of Kingdom Living through the GCS course, Foundations of Christian Leadership, that Dr. McKinnon teaches.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. McKinnon.
[00:01:24] Lance: Glad to be here.
[00:01:25] Cara: Excellent. So, like I said, we have this year the theme of Kingdom Living that we’re going to be exploring throughout the year. And so, I’m wondering, what does Christian ministry and the foundations of Christian ministry have to do with the concept and the practice of Kingdom Living?
[00:01:47] Lance: Yeah, that’s a question about relevancy, right? How is this class relevant to our lives, especially for the Christian life? And that’s always a common question for just about anything. What purpose does it serve? Is this actually going to help me?
So how is it relevant to the practice of kingdom living? And when we talk about kingdom living, we’re basically talking about the Christian life, the life we’re made for. So, what this class aims to do in the context of ministry is to get underneath it to visit the foundations, specifically the theological foundations. of Christian ministry.
What that means in a sense, is we want to deal with what’s real. And that actually leads to the relevancy, right? I like to say, there’s nothing more relevant than reality. If you don’t have, if you don’t know the reality, then things are going to go off. When we’re talking about kingdom living, then we need to know the reality of that kingdom.
Whose kingdom is it? Most specifically, who is the king? That makes a huge difference in how you live in that kingdom. If the king is a tyrant, you’re going to live very differently than in a kingdom where the king actually likes you and is for you. With that understanding, the class begins really with a heavy dose of theology.
And it’s a challenge for this class because it’s actually a ministry class, so it’s not one of our theology classes. I have to feed people with a fire hose in the beginning. And for some it’s a review from our theology classes, if they’ve taken those. And for others it’s an introduction to it.
They’re going to get a heavy dose of some big building blocks, if you will, some foundational theological. And then from there, what I aim to do, what we want to do in the class is to integrate that into the practice of ministry. I think one challenge we often have as pastors, or even as students and seminarians, is we get in our head like, okay, I’m going to learn this theology. I got it. I figured it out, I know the terminology. I can spout out certain concepts and understandings. Okay, but so now let’s go do some ministry. Now we’re going to leave that behind and get busy, right?
And we separate it in our mind, like theology is over here — we do our work, and we get that done with. And now we go do the real thing. Now we’re going to do real ministry. But that’s not the way to think about it.
They actually go together. You can’t separate them because ministry has a shape. It has a reality. And we have to explore that, namely who Jesus is. Because He’s the ultimate ministry, minister, and it is His ministry. So that makes a huge difference in how we go about ministry, knowing that it’s His; it’s not ours. That in itself will certainly change how we go about it.
And one thing I do in this class is I try to expand it where it’s more than just ministry, because we’re not really just talking about things we do in the church or beyond. We’re actually talking about the point that you’re focused on in these podcasts, and that is Kingdom Living.
So, the things that are in the class, that yes, it gets focused on ministry and specifically towards pastors or leaders, because those are the ones who are typically taking the classes. But it’s much broader than that. What we’re really talking about is what we’re made for, what God created us for.
So, it’s not “this only applies to a pastor or somebody in Christian ministry.” It’s “no, this actually applies to everybody.” Everybody. So, it’s really the big picture type of approach. And then we take that and then work it out and how we do ministry in our churches.
For example, the way it’s structured — or I should say, part of the structure that kind of weaves throughout the class — is I really want the students to be asking and answering the question of who is Jesus. So that’s the big block. That’s how we approach it, not how we do certain things in ministry, but who is Jesus?
And that is the reality that will actually help us answer those other “how” questions that come up. So, one way I do that is I — and this is just a pedagogical way of slicing things up to graph something, so it’s not meant to make some kind of doctrinal statement. But in order to really focus on Jesus, I break it down to five things, and it’s His birth, His life and ministry, His death, resurrection, and then ascension and promised return.
So, using those five aspects of the life of Christ, I connect that to five aspects, if you will, of ministry. And that’s worship, discipleship, service, fellowship, and sharing or witness. So, I connect those, and there’s a lot of overlap. It’s not exactly one to one, but it’s a way of getting at these things that we typically call ministry in the church, things we do, practices, and connecting it to who Jesus is, because the reality is, we’re not doing something apart from Jesus.
So, Jesus is over here; we know who he is. But now we’re going to go do worship, and we’re going to do discipleship, and ministry, and fellowship; we’re going to do evangelism, as if it’s something detached from Jesus. Rather, it’s actually in Jesus that we have those things. Does that make sense?
So, it’s trying to help make the connection and integrate really the big theological concept of union with Christ. And that’s because that’s the reality. That’s actually where we are. We’re in union with Him. So, by making those connections, it helps as you go through the class, you work out some of that.
For example, worship, we talk about worship. And that’s a big umbrella ministry or purpose, if you will, that really encapsulates all of them. When you’re doing discipleship, you’re worshiping. When you’re doing ministry, it’s an act of worship. So, all of these, in a sense, can come under worship, but I group it with Jesus’ birth because that’s the incarnation.
So, we see the grand purpose that God has for us, and that is to be worshippers, to actually, as the Westminster Catechism puts it, to glorify. It says, “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” That’s another way of saying worship.
And C. S. Lewis makes the point that to glorify God and enjoy Him forever are one and the same thing. Glorifying God is seeing Him for who He is. And if you see Him for who He is and know Him, you’re going to enjoy Him because He’s that beautiful. He’s that amazing. That’s worship. That’s what we’re made for.
So, when God sends His Son in the Incarnation, He does so to bring us into worship. And you see that in the birth narratives, if you’re reading through at the Christmas season the birth narratives, worship closely tied to the story of the incarnation. Jesus comes on the scene; He’s born, and the angels come down and there’s a whole host of heavenly angels in worship.
So, it’s like when the kingdom breaks in, worship breaks out. And so, we see that worship is very much tied to what Jesus brings in His Incarnation, what He brings to us. He’s actually freeing us to enter into the worship that Father, Son, and Spirit have been engaged in for all eternity. So that’s where worship now becomes not just some task we do or something we do on Sunday or some ministry we’re involved in. No, it’s the shape of our entire lives and what we’re going to be doing for all eternity.
So, it’s a lot bigger than how we sometimes just think of ministry like this one aspect: we’re going to worship today. We worship every day and every minute of the day because that’s what we’re made for.
So that kind of helps make the connection between the foundations and what we do in worship. And we do the same thing with discipleship, connect that with the life and ministry of Jesus. We see as we go through the Gospel stories, what is Jesus doing in His life every single day? When He’s doing ministry, what is He doing? He’s actually following the Father. Everything He does, He’s following the Father.
Especially in the book of Luke, you see this very clearly — everything He does in the Spirit. So, He’s not out there doing His own thing making stuff up as He goes. What does He say? I can do nothing; I only do what I see the Father doing.
He doesn’t do anything on His own. He’s doing everything as a follower of the Father, and that’s discipleship. And so that helps us unpack when we talk about discipleship, what we’re really talking about is following Christ. And we put those together.
And then when we talk about ministry — I like to use the word service. It’s a little broader, and it helps us escape some of the baggage that we may attach to the word ministry. But I like to connect that to the death of Christ.
What we see on the cross, there’s actually a window into the heart and character of God. This is a God who makes room for us, who actually lays His life down for another. So, it’s not just this one thing He does when He’s on the planet, if you will, it’s actually His whole orientation. What we see in Father, Son, and Spirit, in that moment, it’s that God for all eternity has been laying His life down. The Father makes room for the Son, and the Son makes room for the Father. Their whole orientation is to lay Their life down for one another. That’s who God is.
Of course, it doesn’t come with pain and suffering in the Godhead; it’s full of joy. That’s what life is all about, is making room for the other, that relationship.
Of course, when Jesus goes to the cross, He has pain and suffering because He’s having to fight against our orientation where we resist that. We don’t know how to lay our life down for one another. We live for ourselves, and Jesus has to undo that, so He goes to the cross. And that’s really, to me, where ministry springs from.
Ministry or service is participating in the death of Christ. When we serve another, when we do ministry, we are, in a sense, we’re laying our life down and focusing on the other. So, it’s not a task that we do to mark off the list. Oh, now I’ve done my service, now I can actually have a little time for myself.
But rather, it’s actually entering into, a little more deeply, the life we’re made for. Because we’re going to be serving for all eternity. And sometimes that could be like, really? That’s a bummer. Because our thinking is we don’t want to serve. I want to be served. We go on vacation; I want to be served. That’s the way we tend to think about things.
But when we really understand the joy and fullness of the eternal life of God and we see that They actually for all eternity have been serving one another, we have to repent of the way we think of service. And we’re actually made for service, and that’s where real life is.
That’s where the joy is. Yeah, in a sense, we’re called to die to self. And that’s very difficult, right? It’s really hard to go to the cross, to take up the cross daily and to die to self. However, there’s a resurrection.
To the resurrection, I link to fellowship because it’s at the point of resurrection that Jesus becomes the head, the new head of humanity. The new creation has begun. And if we go back to the garden, we see the fall. What essentially happened, what is the net result of the fall is loss of fellowship. Adam and Eve are now hiding in the garden. Why are they hiding? They have been alienated.
Their minds have been distorted. And now they are fearful of this God who has always been for them, Who’s there. But now they’re hiding. The resurrection is undoing all that. So now we’re being restored back to proper fellowship. In fellowship, we’re actually participating in the resurrection. The resurrected life of Christ is one way to look at it.
And then for the Ascension, when Jesus ascends, I like to link that to mission, witness. And I use the word sharing again to expand what’s going on there. This is one I think that gets truncated and tricky really quick.
People tend to think that evangelism is something we do here and now. It’s a task that we can only do in this lifetime. And we do it so other people can be saved, can come to know the Lord. But when the curtain rolls up and this life is over, we’re done. We’ve done our work. We put our time in. We don’t have to witness anymore. No more missions. No more evangelism.
But I think there’s a bigger way of looking at this. Witness and evangelism is actually part of the heart of God. In this way, God is a sharing God. He shares everything He has with us. And actually, in Father, Son, and Spirit, they share everything with one another. Everything’s shared. Nothing is held to themselves.
So, when God comes to us in Jesus Christ, He’s actually sharing Himself with us completely. And the Ascension is the culmination of that. Jesus ascends back to the right hand of the Father, and sends the Spirit, right? So, what is the Spirit? The Spirit is actually the life of Father and Son — that relationship, He’s sharing Himself with us.
So that’s what I would actually call mission; that’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to share with others this life of God. We’re trying to share who God is so others can be brought into it. And that’s a sharing that won’t end when the curtain rolls up.
So, we’re in the kingdom, right? We’re talking about kingdom living. For all eternity, we’re still going to be sharing. We’re going to be gazing upon Christ and sharing with one another how beautiful He is. We’re never going to grow tired of that. It’s like sharing something marvelous in this world as an analogy. Maybe it’s a sunset or some beautiful scenic overlook or something.
And you want to share it, right? You want to, wow, look at this and look at that. So, you’re always sharing it. But with Christ, it’s that we have a personal relationship with Him. C. S. Lewis brings this out. I think it’s in The Great Divorce. He does a good job in helping us picture this.
That is, in our personal relationship with Christ, it’s going to look different than, say, yours, Cara, or someone else’s. Because I’m unique. I’m a distinct person. And so that relationship’s going to have certain nuances that others don’t have. So, in the kingdom, I have something specific to share about the Lord that I have come to know.
And so, I can actually share that with you. And you’re going to have something unique and specific to share about the Lord that you know. So, for all eternity, we’re going to be sharing this. And we’re going to — it’s going to be fun. So, we’re still going to be on a mission, right? It’s just, it won’t be sharing with people who may be resisting it.
We’re going to want to share and receive from one another a little more who this God is, and since He’s eternal and as great as He is, we have all eternity to do that. And we will never grow bored of it. It’s hard to picture that because we tend to truncate mission to just this life and I would like the students to see beyond that. No, you’re actually participating in the life that you’re going to have for all eternity. And that expands a little bit and maybe helps remove some of the fear that we sometimes have with mission.
It doesn’t have to be that scary. It’s just sharing what we know of Christ, sharing who He is from our experience and what we’ve seen and from the way He’s revealed Himself to us in His word.
So that’s a very long answer to your question, sorry about that. But the reason why it’s a long answer is we’re trying to deal with the foundations, the theological foundations in the class and how that unfolds into the practice of ministry which is just another way of saying practice of kingdom living, actually living out the reality we have in Jesus Christ.
[00:21:01] Cara: Yeah, absolutely, that is such a rich course. It sounds like it really explores a rich full, holistic picture of what that looks like for a Christian ministry to be founded on and reflective of the full ministry of Jesus. I especially really love that image, this idea of mission as sharing and sharing that’s eternal because it’s reflective of who God is eternally, not just something that is an action on this side of eternity.
So, thank you for sharing that. And it does sound like this course is very rich, so this might be a hard question. But if you had to say one major takeaway from the course that would develop our practice of Kingdom Living, what would that be for students that might take this class?
[00:22:13] Lance: Yeah, actually it’s a fairly easy answer for that one because it is one of the main theological foundations that affects everything. And that is basically our union with Christ. We hit that the very first week, and it’s woven all the way through. So, understanding union with Christ is critical for ministry and life all together.
It changes everything. It really is the difference between grace and works. And it’s what God has accomplished in Jesus Christ. He has brought us into relationship with Him in a very intimate way in the Spirit. So, I’ll use this analogy, and it’s just an analogy. Sometimes they can get you in trouble, right?
But I don’t use this in my class, but it’s a way of talking about this aspect of union in Christ. Because what it does is it opens up the understanding of participation and that’s how we engage in ministry. And that’s how we engage in Kingdom Living. It’s a life of participation. But in order to participate, there has to be something to participate in.
And that is our union in Christ. So, this is my analogy. Just don’t let it go too far. It breaks down. But I like to look at union in Christ like this. It’s God has come down in Christ and given us a big hug. I know that’s kind of syrupy, but He’s given us a hug. And I use the word hug, H U G, to stand for holy union with God.
So that’s what He’s done in Christ. He has embraced His creation. He’s embraced us all in this holy union with God. Okay, so that’s one aspect of it. That’s the union, right? But it’s a relational union, which is why I like the picture of a hug. We are to respond to His embrace. There’s a response; it calls us to respond to it.
So, if somebody gives you a hug, what is the fitting response? It’s to hug back. So that’s the response. We embrace His embrace. So that’s what I would call participation. We’re not doing something new or different. We’re actually participating in what He’s giving us. So, we embrace back. We return the hug, which means something, right?
If you ever hug somebody, you have to actually conform to their shape. You can’t just hug in any old way. You hug according to how they are, who they are, right? So, there is a specificity in our response. It’s got to fit who He is.
For example, if you’ve ever hugged somebody who didn’t want to be hugged, have you ever done that? It’s a really awkward moment, right? Maybe they fold their arms, and you hug them and they’re just stiff in your arms. That’s a really awkward hug. And that’s a picture, I think, of what it means to be an unbeliever. It is to think that God doesn’t love us, that He doesn’t embrace us. Maybe we picture God is standing there with His arms folded, scowling at us, doesn’t want anything to do with us.
But in Jesus, what we actually come to see — and this is why Jesus, one of the reasons Jesus came, was to give us a revelation. He came to help us see, no, this Father actually loves you, and His arms are wide open for you. He has embraced you, so you can hug back. But what we do, instead, when we don’t see that full revelation, is we fold our arms.
And we don’t embrace, we don’t participate. And that’s actually a picture of hell, if you really want to get into that topic. That’s a good illustration for it. You’re actually refusing the grace that God gives you. And that makes it very awkward. And it’s not like the Father is going to say I’m not going to hug you anymore; I’m done with you. No, He’s always going to hug us.
And if we want to resist for all eternity and stand there with our arms folded and stiff, then that’s going to be hell for us for all eternity. So that analogy of union with Christ, like I said, I don’t really use that in my class. Maybe I will.
But I think it does apply when we’re talking about ministry or anything that we’re participating in what He’s doing. But that means it has a shape; it has a direction. We can’t just do anything we want, and say, oh, I’m participating in ministry. No, because it’s His ministry. It’s His hug, if you will.
And it’s got to conform to Him. It’s got to be fitting, if that makes sense. So that would be the main takeaway that kind of runs throughout the course. Because the last assignment in the course is the paper where the students are to work through these aspects of ministry, work through worship, discipleship, and fellowship and so on, and articulate a philosophy of ministry.
That takes into account these theological foundations and a primary one that I look for if students are listening. I want to make sure they understand what union in Christ means and how that affects all five of those areas of ministry and how you’re going about it. Because if you go into ministry without understanding that you’re in union with Christ, ministry is going to be a burden, it’s going to be fearful, and it’s going to chew you up, especially for pastors. Pastors can really get chewed up in ministry if they think they’re doing something for God and not participating with God. Huge difference. And it does have a huge effect on the experience of pastoring or doing any kind of ministry, really, if we see it that way.
So that, I would say that’s the major takeaway. The number one thing I hope students get, if they don’t get anything else, is to understand that aspect, that they’re in union with God. And therefore, it’s all about participating in what He’s doing.
[00:28:45] Cara: Yes, and as you talk about this course, and that key takeaway, that you want to make sure students get from the class, it’s really clear to me that our theological understanding of ministry does impact our practice in ministry.
[00:29:08] Lance: Yeah, that gets right to the relevant aspect of it, especially for those who are engaged in ministry or consider themselves ministry leaders. Like I just mentioned, ministry can really chew you up if we don’t understand whose ministry, it is and who we are participating in.
Yeah, when we talk about healthy leaders, healthy church rhythms one implication to make that practical is we really have to define what we mean by healthy, right? And the only way to do that is, again, to know the reality. So again, there’s nothing more relevant than reality.
Being a church leader, being a pastor or even just understanding what the church is, who the church belongs to, all those kinds of things will determine what we mean by healthy. I’ll just tell you this experience. When I got my doctorate, I did my dissertation on healthy church.
And what I wanted to do was, similar to this class, I wanted to find the foundations of it. So, what do we mean when we say healthy church? What does that mean? What are we actually measuring, right? So, I went through this grueling process of studying, and I’ve read every book I can find on healthy church.
There’s lots of them, and what I discovered a lot of times is a lot of the material written on Healthy Church really is just church growth material repackaged as healthy church approaches. So, we talk about being healthy, but when you really get into some of the material out there, what you’re really finding is church growth measured by numbers.
And that’s not bad; of course, yeah, we want our churches to grow numerically. However, that’s not the best way of measuring growth to determine health because for example, you can have some cults, some pretty odd types of churches, if you will, that are growing exponentially. But I wouldn’t say that’s healthy, right?
Because that’s not what the church is. And you can think of other examples of that. Cancer, for example, grows, but it’s not healthy growth. So, you really have to define what it is that we’re talking about to understand what growth really looks like. And so what we’re talking about is relationship with the Lord.
So, what is growth in that term? How do we measure that kind of growth? And we would measure it with faithfulness. It’s being faithful. In other words, we trust this Lord that we belong to. And the more we come to know Him, the more our trust in Him will grow. That’s probably a better way of measuring health. Are we growing to know the Lord, right? Are we growing in our faith? Are we growing to trust Him?
It’s funny, as I went through this long process of writing this dissertation and studying in all these books and all these different authors and looking at all these different case studies and trying to figure out what it is that healthy church really is and what is the practical implication of it, and in the end, I just laughed. I was like I’ve gone through all this work, read all these books, and written hundreds of pages, and in the end the takeaway I got was this: prayer and study. That was it. You got to be kidding me. All this — I didn’t need to write a dissertation to come to that conclusion, right?
Seemed like that’s something I should already know. But it was really that simple. It really was, because prayer and study really is a direct participation in the life of Father, Son, and Spirit. That is how we humbly come before Him and receive the life He has for us. And that was actually really eye-opening for me to see that it’s really that simple.
And we just tend to complicate it like crazy in the church when we start getting into ministry and trying to be effective and efficient and successful. And what happens in our culture, terminology, and concepts, and ideas infiltrate what we’re doing, and we forget that health is determined by our relationship in Christ. It’s not measured by other secular measurements.
It doesn’t mean there aren’t other things that obviously are part of the church, but the primary, the center, the focus is that — especially when it comes to healthy leader — we were talking about the five areas that I divide the class up in.
I actually have a section where I talk about what does it look like to be a healthy leader, or say a pastor, to be more specific. And I use each of those things. For example, the first one on worship: a healthy leader is first and primary a worshipper of the Lord. That’s what it means to be a healthy leader, is to be a worshipper.
And the opposite of being a worshipper of the Lord is called idolatry. And idolatry leads to bondage, whereas Christ-centered worship, leads to freedom. And I’ve heard, I don’t remember who said this, but someone said that he has found that pastors are some of the most free people he’s ever met, but they can also be some of the most bound people, if you will, in bondage.
So, it depends on your orientation, who you’re worshiping. And then as a disciple, a healthy leader is a disciple, right? There’s always so much talk about leadership, and there’s we talk about leadership in the class a lot. And I think sometimes we get confused because leadership, typically in worldly terms, is being top dog and everybody follows me and does it my way. But that’s actually not the picture we get of Jesus as a leader.
Essentially, you don’t really — as you go through the Gospels, you’re not really being told that Jesus was a great leader. He was actually a great follower. Everything He does is following the Father. He only does what the Spirit leads Him to do. And sometimes we’ll say, “Oh, how do you know you’re a good leader? Look behind you and see who’s following.”
And I say there’s some truth to that, but it doesn’t really hold up to how Jesus led, right? Because when He went to the cross, first, He didn’t look behind Him. He set His face to the cross and He went forward. But had He looked behind Him, He would have found that nobody was following.
So, does that mean Jesus was not a good leader? No, He was a great follower. He was following the Father, doing His will. And in doing that — yes, I’m using words here, semantics but — in doing that, yes, He was a leader but challenged people’s understanding. And when we talk about leadership, we’re really talking about following.
And maybe here’s another quick analogy to illustrate this, and it falls apart pretty quick too. But in Christian circles, in ministry, I say especially for a pastor, you can’t be a good leader without being a good follower. It’s like these — I don’t know, there’s probably a term for this — but have you ever been in a big dance?
This happens at camp dances at times. Somebody will start a line, right? And you put your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you, and somebody puts their hands on your shoulders, and this line forms, and the line worms around the dance floor. You ever done that?
I think that’s fairly decent picture of what I’m talking about. So, whoever starts the line, I guess you can say that would be Jesus Christ, and we’re just following Him. But somewhere in that line, when you’re a leader, you’re only an effective leader, as long as you’re following the person in front of you, right?
Long as you keep your hands on that person and follow in step, then the person behind you can follow the lead. But are you really being a leader or are you being a follower? The best leaders are good followers. That analogy does break down at some point, but it’s a picture of understanding leadership as a disciple.
First and foremost, we’re disciples. That’s what it is. Because if we start thinking we’re leaders in the sense that I’ve got to get people to point A to point B, that’s going to crush you. It’s going to wear you out. Whereas, again, look at Jesus, He goes to the cross, nobody’s following Him, but He goes for the joy put before Him.
He doesn’t get to the end, “Man, I didn’t get anybody to follow me. I’m a failure.” No, not at all. He’s following the Father wherever that leads.
I think that gives a lot of freedom for pastors who may feel like their ministry was a failure, or they’re not good leaders. Again, how do we measure that? Faithfulness. You’re faithful to the one you’re serving, and the one you’re following. And that’s the third thing I would talk about is healthy leaders are servants.
That’s what ministry is, serving. However, it can’t be self-serving. That’s sometimes what actually happens where self-serving leaders do things that, in the end, serve ourselves, and that leads to bondage. But we’re serving Christ that leads to freedom.
And that’s one of the things that comes up in one of the books we have in the class that was really an eye-opener for me. And that was understanding that when we do ministry, when we’re serving, we’re not actually serving our communities, our churches, our supervisors. We’re actually serving the Father. We do ministry through the Father.
I never thought about it that way. I always think, don’t we serve, don’t we minister to the world? No, not directly. We minister to the Father. This is what we see Jesus doing. He actually is ministering to the Father for the sake of the world.
So, there’s a difference there. So, for pastors and church leaders to understand that our service is to God. First and foremost, that’s our service. And then, because of that, as a result of that, there’s a benefit to the world. So yeah, we can say we serve our communities, and we know what we mean by that.
But just to help understand, there’s a freedom in knowing that what we’re doing. And our service is primarily to the Father. So, what that does is it frees us up to follow what God is leading us to do. And it protects us from the bondage of basically being enslaved by our community or even our church members.
If we think we’re serving them directly, then we’re going to need their support, their praise. We need to know they’re following us. But if our service is to the Father, for the sake of the world, then we just serve Him. And we don’t have to fret about people not liking our service, if that makes sense. Because sometimes serving God means sharing things that people don’t want to hear.
There are passages that our culture doesn’t want to hear these days. But if you’re really going to do ministry and be faithful to God’s word, you’re going to have to share those aspects of Kingdom Living may lead to some crucifixion, if you will, because people don’t want to hear it.
But you don’t have to worry about that. If people reject what you’re saying, that’s okay because you’re not actually serving them, if that makes sense. It’s confusing because you are serving them, but you’re serving the Father by doing His will. And that is actually the greatest service you can render to the world.
But then the last thing you have for healthy leaders, I’d encourage them to understand you’re a person. You are a person. So, individualism can lead to bondage. If we’re leading from an individualism type of thinking, that’s going to lead to bondage. But person or people in a relationship — that’s what it means to be a person. You’re in relationship.
So, leadership is always going to be in relationship primarily to God, to Jesus Christ. And then that will flow out into our relationships with others.
And the last one — I actually used a whole book for this because I think it’s a great perspective. It’s The Steward Leader by Scott Rodin. Healthy leaders are stewards. They’re stewards, meaning they’re not owners. They don’t see their churches as their churches. It’s the church, it belongs to Christ. Their ministries aren’t their ministries. It’s Christ’s ministry. And so on.
They’re just called to be stewards. And that really helps us think through some of these issues. And, again, it feeds into the understanding of we’re participating. This is not our show. It’s not what we’re doing. It’s what the Father’s doing. It’s His ministry. Jesus is the head of the church; we are not.
And that really frees us up. It makes ministry actually a lot of fun because we don’t have to worry about the results. God gets the results. He just calls us along to participate. And it’s a lot of fun. I think about the disciples following Jesus. They probably had a lot of fun along the way.
They got to see some pretty amazing things that Jesus did. The disciples did not turn water into wine. Jesus did, but they got to be part of that. That’s pretty cool. And ministries are a lot that way.
When I was a pastor, there were things that happened that I did not expect. Responses and certain things that happened that I didn’t do that. I know I didn’t do that. That was pretty amazing. That’s when ministry is a lot of fun, when you hold on to it loosely, and you just participate, and you see what God does. He does some amazing things. But where it gets scary is when we think we’ve got to produce the results. We got to do something amazing.
We got to get this person to respond in this way, or we got to get this end result. Then you just start beating yourself up when you don’t get those end results, but when we can relax and just faithfully serve Him, and then see what He does with it, ministry can be a blast. It really can be.
And there’s a lot of freedom in it. And I really try to help students see that. Because I was a pastor for a while, and I’ve seen pastors get chewed up in ministry. And really, it’s because of not seeing who God is and our relationship to Him. So, it makes a huge difference, especially for church leaders.
So that’s another long answer to your question.
[00:45:00] Cara: Lance, thank you so much for sharing. And I think as you share, it has become really clear that the foundations and especially the theological foundations of ministry have really significant implications to our practice of ministry and how we grow and develop as healthy leaders.
And so, I want to encourage our listeners and our leaders to look into this course, to talk with your leadership team, to talk with your supervisor and consider if, and when an appropriate time would be for you to take or even audit this class. Because it sounds like this is a course that is relevant to any of our ministry leaders in GCI.
So again, thank you so much, Lance, for giving us a lot to think about, a lot to meditate on and for teaching this class. We really appreciate all that you have to offer because of all that God has given to you.
And as is our practice with GC Podcast, I’d like to end our show with the word of prayer. And so, would you be willing to pray for our churches, our pastors, and our ministry leaders in GCI?
[00:46:29] Lance: Yes, love to. Thank you very much. Now let’s pray together.
Our heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for this opportunity to explore a little more of who You are and the difference that makes in knowing You and participating with You.
Lord, we thank You for Your word to us, that You’re always speaking to us, calling us to Yourself. And today we think specifically of pastors and leaders in ministry, those who are actively serving You in the church. And we thank you for the great privilege that is and the opportunity that it gives to grow in knowing You a little more.
And as we grow to know You more, we do grow in faith. We grow to trust You because You are trustworthy. And so, I just want to ask a blessing on our pastors, specifically church leaders in our churches who maybe are struggling, who are feeling the weight and burden that we place on ourselves in ministry and ask that You can free them. Help them see You in a new light, to see You for who You actually are, and where there can be a freedom, a lightness that comes, that light yoke that You give us that comes in knowing You.
So, Lord, we just ask that blessing on them, and we thank You for being a blessing. God, You bless us, and You call us into ministry not to burden us and not that You need us but because You love us, and You want us to enjoy the life You’ve given us to share in. And there’s so many opportunities in ministry to participate in the life of Your Son that You sent to us. So, Lord, we thank You, and we love You for all the amazing things You’ve done for us, and for who You are. And we just pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
[00:48:18] Cara: Amen. Well friends, that’s all we have for today. So, until next time, keep on living and sharing the gospel.
Thanks for listening to the GC Podcast. We hope this episode inspired and equipped you to lead with health and purpose. We would love to hear from you. If you have a suggestion on a topic or if there’s someone who you think we should interview, please email us at info@gci.org.
By Heber Ticas, Superintendent of Latin America
By Luis Soto, Pastor and Regional Director
By Cara Garrity, Development Coordinator
By Linda Rex, Elder Emeritus, Hope Avenue Champion
By Eliana Navarro, Youth Leader, Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Colombia
“If you go into ministry without understanding that you’re in union with Christ, ministry is going to be a burden. It’s going to be fearful, and it’s going to chew you up, especially for pastors. Pastors can really get chewed up in ministry if they think they’re doing something for God and not participating with God. Huge difference. And it does have a huge effect on the experience of pastoring or doing any kind of ministry, really, if we see it that way. The number one thing I hope students get, if they don’t get anything else, is to understand that aspect, that they’re in union with God. And therefore, it’s all about participating in what He’s doing.” Lance McKinnon
