What will you do in the crematorium queue?

This was the tagline from the MTS Challenge conference I attended. Catchy huh? But It makes me think that yeah, we have a limited time on this earth and we need to make the most of it.

For those of you not familiar with MTS Challenge here is what MTS say about it:

“Challenge has been established to challenge men and women to give up their lives for Christ and the preaching of the gospel. God is raising up a new generation of servants of the Word.”

I went to the conference with no real agenda and found it to be a fantastic time. Here are the interesting things I took away from the conference.

1) Ministry is to an audience of one
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4:3-4 “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” It only really matters what God thinks of our ministry in the end. People’s encouragement and praise is nice but it’s not why we should be feeling good about ministry.

2) Ministry is serious
I remember Mark Driscoll saying at BYPJ “If I stuff this up, it totally counts.” Going into ministry is serious in this life. You have the power to convert people but if you stuff it up, God will judge you more harshly. Firstly on this earth “To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.” (1 Cor 4:11-13) If I want to go into ministry I have to ask myself, do I want to become the scum of the earth? In judgment too, If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” Like Mark Driscoll says, what we do in ministry matters.

3) The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few (Matt 9:37)
I don’t think I really appreciated the need for full time gospel workers. At our church we have two full-time pastors, 3 MTS guys and at least 5-6 guys at college. But I never stop to think how blessed we are. Ben Pfahlert is the MTS Director and he told us about when he used to live in Melbourne. 5 to 10 years ago he said if they needed an evangelistic speaker, they always had to call NSW, there just weren’t any in Victoria!! Another guy was talking about Bondi. With a population of 40,000 odd, there are roughly 100 Christians there. It really make you stop and go wow, there really is a need out there.

4) Christ started it, we need to finish it
Gavin gave an interesting talk on one of the more contentious verses in the bible, Colossians 1:24 “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” Whilst often it is seen as Paul implying that there was something lacking in Christ’s death and resurrection (which there obviously isn’t!!) Gavin pointed out it’s more Paul saying that Christ is not on earth anymore and he is carrying on what he is unable to do – that is, minister the gospel to people. And it applies to us too. Paul is long gone so now those charged with the good deposit (the gospel) – us – need to go and spread it to the nations to the glory of God.

5) Life is meaningless
…but in Christ we now have meaning for our lives. Life in itself is pointless – you are born, you live, you die. But as Christians we have a hope stored up for us in Heaven that can’t perish and therefore our lives do have a purpose – that is to live to the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel. This was the focus of Phillip’s talks over the weekend but he was very quick to point out that life is good. Enjoying family and friends is good, enjoying sport is good, working is good and so on – but we do not find the meaning of our lives in these things as Christians. Response? Get into it, dive straight in and have a go with ministry whatever it is. We know Jesus and that is the most important thing we need to know to spread the gospel to people!!

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I was reading an interesting bit of Philippians last night which helped me when thinking about ministry. Philippians 1:15-18 “It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defence of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.”

We need to check our motives for ministry and make them pure asking the Holy Spirit to help us but this passage really helped me. But we’re sinful people and our motives will never be truly pure. So what do we do? We preach Christ. I was talking to someone about Billy Graham and how he was able to start preaching so young (19 I think). So he didn’t have years of theological college behind him, he preached Christ and people responded. I think that’s pretty cool right!? :)