Christian Ministries

A feature of the modern church that is quite unique is that most Christian activity is dominated by big ministries. There are various types of ministry, and they are often associated with the name of a person.

• speaking/teaching ministries
• healing ministries
• evangelistic ministries
• podcast ministries
• television/radio ministries
• social media ministries
• Some mega-churches are closely associated with the ministry of a big leader.

The future of the church seems to depend on these ministries.

The most effective Christians who want to serve God seriously are expected to establish a ministry organisation. Unfortunately, if big ministries do everything that is important, there is not much left for ordinary followers of Jesus to do.

Christian ministries provide employment for many serious Christians, as they need staff to:

• write and edit products
• preparing training material and courses
• editing videos
• ghost writing books
• organising speaking itineraries
• developing and producing promotional material
• organising advertising.
• shipping products and collecting revenue.

Employing staff to do all these tasks can be quite expensive. The result is a big monthly budget.

Serving on the staff of a Christian ministry can be a demanding role.

• The staff see the leader of the ministry at their worst and bear the brunt of their ego when they are frustrated.

• The staff are often the last to be paid when funding is tight.

• The staff are expected to be personally loyal to their leader. They cannot criticise the leader of the ministry, even if they see things that are seriously wrong, as this would jeopardise their employment. An employee who is critical can be publicly ostracised by being labelled as disloyal. If they are blacklisted by their leader, it could be difficult for them to gain employment elsewhere.

• The setup of the ministry means that the only people who get close enough to the leader to know them well are the senior staff. However, none of these senior staff can criticise their leader as they could lose their employment and income. This means that the leader of the ministry has no real accountability and is effectively uncorrectable.

• People resigning from ministries are often expected to sign “non-disclosure agreements” (NDAs). This ensures that they cannot reveal bad things that happened in the church.

Funding a ministry is very expensive. Thousands of dollars will have to be raised each month to pay salaries. Most ministries will rent or buy a building, so rent or interest on the mortgage will have to be paid each month. Vehicle costs and air fares will need to be paid. The big budget means that the ministry will need a constant stream of revenue just to remain viable.

• Most of the revenue will be raised through donations and sales of merchandise. This brings huge temptation to ministry leaders. To keep donations flowing and merchandise selling, the leader has to keep their ministry before the public. If publicity dies off, revenue from donations and merchandise sales can fall off.

• Ministry leaders can be tempted to exaggerate their achievements by embellishing their description of healings that have occurred or embroidering accounts of important people they have prophesied to. They can be tempted to spice up their words of knowledge and prophecies with information obtained from the internet or other people. In the age of social media, people have short attention spans, so constant hype is needed to keep a ministry in the public eye so that the revenue keeps flowing in. The temptations are huge.

• To keep the revenue from donations and merchandise sales flowing, big ministries need endorsements from other big ministries. Big-name endorsements of their books and teaching materials boost sales. Invitations to speak at conferences organised by big-name ministries are opportunities to sell merchandise. Invitations to speak at their churches helps in to bring in donations.

• A network of ministries has emerged where they all provide endorsements and speaking opportunities for each other. These opportunities are critical for keeping the revenue flowing. A culture of mutual support between ministries has developed where support is received in return for support given.

• This dependence on endorsements and speaking opportunities is one reason why these ministries are unwilling to acknowledge sins and failures. If something negative gets associated with a ministry, the flow of revenue will slow. Christian ministries are often reluctant call out problems in other ministries because they need them to support their own ministry.

• Many ministries tithe on their income. This is an opportunity to do good, but it gives the ministry great power. It can build up other ministries by giving donations, but it can also weaken them by stopping them. Fear of losing financial support can create a reluctance to criticise serous faults.

• Ministries are run like businesses. Business practices often overwhelm gospel standards. These practices have flowed over from ministries into churches.

Most Christian ministries have limited accountability and oversight. They will often have a board of some kind, but the members of the board have limited authority.

• Some will be friends of the leader, who will be unwilling to challenge them.

• Others will be wealthy donors who have a big investment in the ministry. They will be reluctant to damage their investment by rocking the boat.

I realise that not all Christian ministries succumb to the temptations above, but the fact that so many big-name leaders are falling from grace due to sexual immorality and fraudulent behaviour suggests that few are strong enough to resist them. This suggests that there is something desperately wrong with this approach to ministry.

The dominance of “ministries” in the modern church does not fit with the teaching of the New Testament.

• Peter and James did not set up a ministry organisation in Jerusalem. In fact, they created problems when they stayed in Jerusalem (contrary to Jesus’ command) and became too big. I explain the problems in Governmental Apostles and Centralised Finances. They were pulling followers of Jesus into Jerusalem, rather than sending them out into the world.

• Paul did not establish an organisation called “Paul and Silas Ministries”. Paul kept moving out to new places so that he would not become too big in the places that he had planted churches. I presume that this is why he wanted to go to Spain. Unfortunately, he got waylaid, and it damaged his ministry. I explain this in Paul and James in Jerusalem.

The church that Jesus established operated in a totally different way from the modern Christian ministries. They should be led by a team of elders with different giftings that complement each other ie balanced leadership. I have explained how this works in my book called Being Church Where We Live.

Spiritual protection comes through elders who are working together and submitting to each other, not through endorsement by distant big names. Submission to other elders is the key to spiritual protection. If one elder makes a mistake, the others will bring correction. If an elder is under spiritual attack, the others will stand against the attack in spiritual warfare. Submission is the key to protection.