What is Christian Ministry (First Proposal)?

Christian Ministry as Incarnational

Nouwen’s book ‘In the Name of Jesus’ puts every priest and minister into his rightful place in the world of professionals. It tackles the root of every priest and minister’s identity. It sets the parameters and the sphere of influence of his role in society. In doing so, the Christian minister becomes more fruitful (not necessarily relevant) in his field. His identity is clarified and his role becomes meaningful.

The past centuries saw the multifaceted roles of the Church ministers especially the clerics. As a priest in those times means he has to be everything for the people. He has to know farming, to be engineers and church builders, to be skillful in crafts and means of livelihood, to take care of the sick in the town, to act as judge and peacemaker. He did these for the people.

Why was this so? It is because, most people in those times especially in the Middle Ages and specifically in Dark Age, were ignorant, illiterate and passive. They were very weak in many aspects and an average intelligent priest can suffice for all their needs. Life in those times were crude, so much so, people could have nowhere to go but to the Church. And so, the model of the church structure is parochial. The church is the center of the village, and all activities centered on the parish. The minister would just have to wait in his hallowed convent for people to come. And surely, they would come. Where else?

But in this modern time, other people are doing the things what the minister was doing before. In fact, they are more skillful, talented and professional than the priest. It seems that everything that the priest was doing before, has been snatched away from him and people were not coming to him anymore. People now prefer the ‘lay’ professionals to answer their needs.

To be a priest-minister today entails that we have to be professional lovers of the Lord and of His people. If everything today was done by professionals, then what is left for the priest-minister to do? There is only thing left. And that is, to be ‘signs and bearers’ of God’s love to other people. And he has got to be very professional in this. Or else, his identity is in question.

St. Paul admitted that the ‘episcopoi’ are God’s ambassadors and as one of the ministers, he urged the Corinthians to be reconciled with God (2 Cor. 5:20). I believe with conviction that this is the meaning of being a Christian minister. Why? Because this is who Jesus and what Jesus is. For God so loved so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (Jn 3:16).

Precisely, this is what Henri Nouwen mentioned in this book by way of a question: ‘Do you know the Incarnate God’? And he goes on saying: there is an enormous need for men and women to know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that reaches out and wants to heal (p. 24). To be ministers today is to incarnate God’s love, to make it real, to bring it into people’s lives, through our very own lives. So, I affirmed what Nouwen wrote that to be a Christian minister today means to be ‘irrelevant’ in the eyes of the world. St. Paul’s language is more discouraging. He describes his ministry as folly to the elite people of his time – the Greeks. He writes to the Corinthians:

For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Cor. 1: 22-23).

In doing so, we participate in Christ’s very own ministry. A ministry which proclaims the most irrelevant message in the eyes of the modern time. But not for God. For this message is no other else than the message of God’s great love for us. Indeed, doing Christian ministry today is Incarnational.