Big Ministry (March 19, 2009)

I was reading "In the Name of Jesus" by Henri Nouwen today, and came across this passage. I find the sentiment he expresses (and the general observation) all too true in how I have approached my own interactions with others. I recently worked in a locked residential home for adolescents, and it was easy to seek to offer the residents empathy, and security, and encouragement, while forgetting that I am called to be an ambassador of grace and reconciliation to them. This may well involve showing them love in these aforementioned ways as well, but above all it means showing them the life that is found in God through Christ--not just how to cope with their problems in this world. Our mission is so much more important, and Nouwen highlights this in the passage below:

Most Christian leaders today raise psychological or sociological questions even though they frame them in scriptural terms. Real theological thinking, which is thinking with the mind of Christ, is hard to find in the practice of the ministry. Without solid theological reflection, future leaders will be little more than pseudo-psychologists, pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-social workers. They will think of themselves as enablers, facilitators, role models, father or mother figures, big brothers or big sisters, and so on, and thus join the countless men and women who make a living be trying to help their fellow human beings cope with the stresses and strains of everyday living.

But that has little to do with Christian leadership because the Christian leader thinks, speaks, and acts in the name of Jesus, who came to free humanity from the power of death and open the way to eternal life…


The task of future Christian leaders is not to make a little contribution to the solution of the pains and tribulations of their time, but to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God’s people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom. (Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, 86-87)