Serving in Ministry Right Where You Are At → A More Beautiful Life Collective

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In today’s episode, we are tackling questions about ministry, influence, and productivity. How can we effectively be serving in ministry when life gets crazy and we feel drawn pretty thin? Is our effectiveness in ministry tied to our influence? Do we need to have a large following or create a large program to have an effective ministry? Season 2 Episode 1 will tackle these questions and more and leave you thinking about three ways to have an effective influence in your ministry right now.

S2E6 – What does the Bible say about man?: Christian Theological Anthropology – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

In this episode, we are diving into theological anthropology, or the doctrine of man. What does the Bible say about us? What should we know about our nature, our purpose, and how we were made? This episode will answer all of these questions and more by looking at the creation story and exploring what it says about us. The Bible is a book about God and his relationship with his chosen people. This means it has a lot to say about theological anthropology. So let's dive in. https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/what-does-the-bible-say-about-man-christian-theological-anthropology/ Get the Doctrine and Theology Cheat Sheet Here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/bd897d28d0 Get a list of the names of God here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/43d2d5cf6b Get a copy of our personal statement of faith creation guide here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/we-believe-your-personal-statement-of-faith-workbook-pdf-download/ Get “Building Our Foundations: 10 Week Study” here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/building-our-foundations-11-week-systematic-theology-book-bible-study/ Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

Hey everyone! Welcome to Season 2 Episode 1. I hope everyone has been having a great summer!

Living a million miles a minute

Summertime is the perfect time to rest and reset, but honestly, that has never been my experience. Growing up, my summers were full of weeklong visits with cousins, camps, VBSs, vacations, mission trips, and conferences. It was always a good time, but it was a time that didn’t provide much opportunity to sit and think. One year, we were on the road for 6 weeks as we bounced around from camp to camp. After weeks like this, I was always struck by how being so immersed in devotions, worship, and fellowship left you exhausted but so full.

I don’t get the chance to have many experiences like this now that I’m grown with a family of two young children (and one on the way – surprise!). This is the danger of the middle years, right? Between 25-55, we live on a treadmill. Time keeps moving past. We are busy putting out the fires in front of us. We wake up, blink – and are shocked. Somehow, your little baby boy is heading off to Kindergarten. Your newborn has started talking, walking, and proudly stating her opinions. We post pictures with captions like “Time is a thief”, but the truth is time is only able to steal from us because we have lived distracted lives.

Today, we are going to focus on the ideas of ministry, service, purpose, and influence as we head into a new school year. Even if you are past the days of grade school and college, there’s something about the winding down of summer that beckons us to look back to our goals and do a quick reset.

As you plan out the rest of your year, I hope that you take a moment to look at how ministry and service can fit into your schedule. I also hope that you take stock of what type of influence you are having in the world.

We are all called to be serving in ministry

As the world heads back into the Fall, you can’t help but feel like you have a restart button on the year, even if no one around you is heading back to school. As a former teacher with a little one about to embark on his first year of homeschooling, this time of year always fills me with a sense of purpose and a desire to start setting some goals.

Recently, there was a meme floating around social media about teaching being more than a job. For many teachers, teaching is a ministry. They pour their heart and soul into their students and craft in order to hopefully make a difference in the world.

As a teacher, we contributed to funds for kids’ families who couldn’t pay the bills to keep the water on, Christmas presents for kids who wouldn’t otherwise have them, food drives, and more. We kept snacks and supplies in closets in the back of our room to hand out to those who need them. And of course, being in the classroom put you face to face with needs that only prayer could really help. Teaching is a ministry.

Last year, I stepped out of the classroom and turned my focus toward my home and my family. There were so many happy moments throughout the year. Joyful moments. Read aloud, picnics, and park playground days. Holidays and the cultivation of traditions. But, I look at what I am doing now, and it seems so small.

My influence has shrunk from the hundred+ students and teachers I came in contact with each day to my two at home. In terms of productivity, I felt like the never-ending treadmill of dishes, laundry, and dirty bathrooms just amounted to nothing. I would need to do it all tomorrow.

Is my home a ministry when it seems so small? Is the mundane really worthwhile? Is what I’m doing a ministry? Can I be serving in ministry if it only impacts the two faces in front of me?

And the real kicker of a question: Am I worth something if the work is never finished and oftentimes the hours spent cleaning and cooking can’t even really be seen in the midst of toddler mayhem and hungry growing bellies?

When your worth is tied to productivity

I’ve felt this exponentially in the past several weeks. With baby number 3 coming in December, I’ve been wrestling through all the first-trimester health issues. Weeks of nausea meant a lot of time with kids in front of a screen as I simply tried to struggle through the day. The house was neglected. The blog and podcast were neglected. My productive output went from 75% to maybe 25-50% on a good day. It’s hard not to feel like a complete and total failure in those moments.

Then, over the past month or so, as the nausea subsided, I started dealing with other types of pregnancy-related pain that I hadn’t had to deal with before. It’s crazy how you can feel like you are setting and reaching goals, and then, everything grinds to a halt when circumstances change.

Anyone who has gone through a life change knows how this feels. I wonder if you can relate.

In these moments, your productivity is questioned and that leads you to question your worth. Am I good enough if I can’t do all of these things exceptionally? Am I good enough if I can’t even do all of these things well?

When we live through this, we start to circle back to our priorities. What truly matters when you feel like you don’t have much to give?

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Our Purpose & Why We Matter

It’s at this moment that we can begin to understand our calling. We begin to recognize what it truly means to be serving in ministry.

One of the events I was involved in the last few weeks was a camp that specializes in service and leadership. Students travel to a new area each year, and in that area, they learn about different organizations and ministries while helping those places as volunteers.

In this day and age, it can be easy to think that your calling only matters when you are impacting hundreds or thousands of people. As the students who attended the trip will tell you, we live in an influencer age. The people who seem to ‘matter’ are those who have the furthest-reaching online presence. Where does that leave the rest of us?

As we visited ministry after ministry where the students volunteered, we realized how each group – each person – is affecting their community. Though someone even in the next town over may not recognize their name, their work and service truly mattered. It provided help and relief to those who needed it most.

When we are serving in ministry, we often want to do the biggest and ‘shiniest’ thing. But, that doesn’t necessarily lead to the biggest impact for the kingdom. Serving in ministry well means that we cultivate our influence in our church, context, and local community to build deep relationships that actually affect change.

Influence: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Influence is not something that you should seek after. Like power or wealth, it is a fleeting thing that will never truly be grasped, especially when you are seeking influence on a wider scale online or in your community. Searching for this is like seeking after an idol. The most important thing we can do is to cultivate our influence in the circle that we have in our ‘real lives.’ Those real relationships will be more meaningful and will have a more lasting impact than anything we could achieve on social media, the blogosphere, or in arenas outside of our everyday lives.

This is not to say that influence doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. It definitely does, and we can see the effects of this influence for both the good and bad today. It’s just that influence should never be something that a Christian seeks. When we seek influence for our own gain and glory, we find ourselves winding up in sin and wallowing in shame because of our pride and ultimate fall. This the opposite outcome that we want while serving in ministry.

Any influence we hold should ultimately point others to Christ. He will show them the way to the Father, changing their hearts and minds.

Social media – and the influencers it creates – can easily cause the trap of idolatry due to influence. First, that influence is often based on vanity and making money through commercial and material means. Second, if we are not careful, we may influence others to follow after these double sins of pride and idolatry of wealth and possessions. Third, we hold so tightly to our influence that we resolve to keep it no matter what. This leads to shifting values to appease culture and a tendency for control. Look no further than several of the recent tell-all documentaries about cult leaders to see how influence, money, and power are all tied together to create a concoction that leads to sin and pain.

So, recognizing the dangers of the potential idolatry of influence, is there anything good that can come from influence?

The answer is a resounding yes! We are called to be an influence in our families, our churches, and our communities. When we are told to be the salt and light of the world, we are commanded to be an influence, to point others to God through our actions and words. We don’t seek after influence for influence’s sake. We seek after influence only so that with our influence we may bring glory to God.

But. what does this look like? How can we have an ‘effective influence’ that does its job without destroying our souls? And, how does effective influence help you while serving in ministry?

3 Ways that Effective Influence Can Better Help You Serving in Ministry

How to have Effective Influence #1: Clarify Your Why

First, you have to understand why you are searching for influence in the first place. If your desire is to make God’s name great and make his kingdom larger, you have the green light. Move ahead! If your desire though is to make your own name great and grow your own personal empire, then you need to stop. That is a red flag that points to potential idolatry.

You may not know right away what your why is. Take some time away in the quiet and ask yourself some of the following questions. With some soul searching, you can figure out where you stand.

What kind of growth do you want to see in the people you influence? Is it love, appreciation, and commitment to God? Or is it love, appreciation, and commitment to you?
What excites you about your ministry?

How to have Effective Influence #2: Multum non Multa

In classical education, there are some principles or maxims that guide the practice of teaching. (In true classical fashion, these maxims are often in Latin.) One of these principles is Multum non-Multa which means “Much not Many.” When you study something, you want to understand it deeply. You want to learn much about it. If you spend your time studying many things, your understanding will only be an inch deep and a mile wide. Is an inch deep truly understanding anything?

In our current cultural climate, we think that influence is measured by the number of people we are affecting. Programs, churches, and social media platforms are always better if they are bigger, right? Jesus would beg to differ.

Jesus’ ministry was one of whittling down those who followed him to the truly committed. They may not have understood all of his parables and the scriptures that referenced him, but his disciples did understand one thing: The requirement of following Jesus was to sacrifice everything for him.

They had a deep understanding. Jesus recognized that. He didn’t spend his time trying to be all things to all people. He worked deeply in the ministry that he had. What better example for serving in ministry than looking at the Lord we serve.

We also need to honor this maxim. Our ministry should serve those right where we are at.

We don’t need crowds of people following after us. Instead, we need to focus on serving in ministry in our current church, context, and local community. All of the bigger platforms are overflows of our in-person ministry.

When I first started writing for this blog, I felt the struggle of not knowing who exactly I was writing to and what exactly I was writing for. Over time, I’ve grown in clarity of purpose. But, it’s hard when you write and just feel like you are shouting into the void. Who is listening? Do my words actually matter?

I reached out to a somewhat famous and influential blogger in the Christian Motherhood circle and asked her about my concerns. Specifically, I was wondering how you kept up the motivation to continue writing when you don’t feel like you have much influence. Her response was based on the wisdom that she has accumulated from years and years of work.

The popular blogger and podcaster I emailed responded in a similar way. She said that it is best to serve right where you are and cultivate your influence in your everyday circles. When you practice true service, you will most effectively be serving in ministry. In doing this, you will make the biggest impact on the kingdom because you are going deep in those relationships.

How to have Effective Influence #3: Practice Servant Leadership

The last step for cultivating effective influence in your life is to practice servant leadership. We see the faulty logic of modern-day leadership splayed all over the big screens and streamed into our homes each day. Swaggering politicians. Businessmen who cheat and lie. Leaders who scam and abuse their people.

Leadership in modern times seems like an excuse to exploit people for one’s own personal game. It is a vignette of injustice that is repeated throughout history all over the world.

Leadership, like influence, is not a negative thing. We need leaders. We shouldn’t believe the lie that we can all be followers with no one setting the direction for our lives. And, we shouldn’t believe the lie that we can all be leaders. In this way, equality in our roles is not a goal we should seek. It’s not something that can be grasped.

If you have influence over something, you will be a leader. How can you protect yourself from becoming a leader who abuses other people?

The first step is to lead with a servant’s heart which means leading through service. When you are serving in ministry, you have to humble yourselves and become a servant leader. What does a servant leader look like?

A servant leader is someone who:

Keeps watch over his flock and looks to see who might have a need that must be met
Encourages those who are flagging or falling behind to keep pace
Motivates the leaders of the group to take on more responsibility
Is the first to do the jobs they ask others to do
Takes on the hardest work instead of pushing it on to someone else

We all know leaders who function this way. And, we know how easy it is to follow leaders like this.

Being a servant leader helps you to be winsome and wise. It actually deepens and expands your influence because leaders like this are engaging and captivating.

Cultivate Your Influence While Serving in Ministry

We all are influencing someone. We have to be honest with ourselves: Is the way we are conducting our lives pointing others towards living a godly life?

Those who we influence are our ministry, and this ministry is right around us. We are constantly serving in ministry. We don’t have to create an artificial program or curate a facade on social media. The most important thing we can do is serve well in the ministry we have right where you are at.

Thanks for joining me today. As we head back into the school year, I’m hoping that our weekly episodes will be back. We’ll continue our systematic theology series in future episodes.

Until then, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.

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