Launch Your Ministry Chapter 9 of 27
<-Chapter 8 Chapter 10-> Return to FulltextProgressive Understanding
Condensed Version (Completed)
I will be showing you soon how to actually prepare yourself and be trained to do the work of the ministry.
But first, I want to help you understand where you are headed and what your ultimate goal is.
Remember as I said earlier, that there is a difference between a ministry and a calling.
The Right Place to Start
Knowing your calling is a progressive thing which unfolds over time with understanding and revelation. You can start ministering - and most people do - without even knowing what your calling is.
It is not very often that a person gets a revelation up front of what their calling is. I know this from personal experience.
I remember the first time I was in a meeting where someone was operating in a prophetic ministry. He was calling people out and telling them various things about God's purpose for their life.
I waited in hope that he would call me up and prophesy over me to tell me what my calling was. But he did not seem to notice me. So I figured that I obviously was not very important to the Lord and did not have a very big calling.
In reality, the total opposite was true. My calling was far higher than that prophet had ever been himself, and he would never have understood what my calling was.
You have to start somewhere in ministry and work your way through the possibilities. Find that thing you chew on that tastes like the rubber and you know you have found your place.
The Lower Level Ministries
We started out looking at the various levels of ministry that begin when we are born again. Then we saw that it worked up, and we would add to it the influence of the Holy Spirit.
By adding the Gifts and the Fruit of the Spirit you experience two different kinds of empowerment or anointing. These then help you to add power to your ministry, making it better and more effective.
Many people find what they like to do in ministry based on the original ministries we looked at. They enter into the Gifts of the Spirit and experience the Fruit of the Spirit. And they are quite happy to minister at that level.
Five Leadership Ministries
But there are also those whom God is pushing to a higher calling; to rise up and become leaders in the Body of Christ. And the Lord Jesus especially is responsible for this.
The Bible says concerning Jesus, that when He ascended on high He gave gifts to men. He poured something down and gave a gift to the Church.
We are told that He gave five main gifts to the Church. These gifts were five kinds of ministry leadership functions, which have become known as the Fivefold Ministry.
What exactly is the Fivefold Ministry?
If we return to our illustration of the dove we see something new. It is fine to have the dove flapping its wings, but what gives the dove direction and helps it to steer?
Like an airplane or ship, there needs to be a rudder. And for a bird, this lies in its tail. The tail feathers of the dove are the part that does the steering.
The Tail of the Dove
Now just as we saw nine feathers in each of the wings, we now see five feathers in the tail of the dove. We call these five feathers the Fivefold Ministry.
You can read about these in Ephesians where we are told,
He gave some to be apostles, and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.
They are the five leadership ministries that Jesus gave to the Church. So as you rise up in ministry starting from the lower levels, you will gravitate to one or more of these ministries.
Until now we have still only seen Jesus and the Holy Spirit being involved. But as you move up in these ministries, there is something that the Father is directly involved in.
When the Father Himself becomes involved, we get to the very highest levels of leadership ministry in the Body of Christ. We call these the Ministry Offices.
<-Chapter 8 Chapter 10-> Return to Fulltext