What Is Ministry?

Dallas Willard on the Impossibility of Ministry

There are Monday mornings when I sit in my office and wonder if any of it is working.

I preach on Sunday. I study. I visit. I pray with people. I pour myself into the text, into the preparation, into the service. And then Monday comes. Is this doing anything? Is anyone changing? Am I having any impact at all?

If you are a pastor, you know this feeling. It is often the background track to everything else you do. You carry it into your sermon prep and your hospital visits and your budget meetings. You carry it around in the back of your mind until your driving or laying in bed and all of a sudden it is turned up to 11.

Dallas Willard had a word for us when we have this feeling.

He said ministry is impossible.

You can watch the full lecture or read the transcript here: What Is Ministry? https://conversatio.org/what-is-ministry-2/

The Impossibility of Ministry

Early in his lecture on the nature of ministry, Willard states, “We wait on the Lord for things that are impossible and that lands us squarely in ministry because guess what is impossible? Ministry.”

The impossibility of ministry is not meant to discourage ministers but to remind them that ministry depends not on their abilities but on what God can do through his presence and action. For Willard, ministry is not a job. It is “that part of God’s work that He has committed to you.” God is the minister’s employer and master. This frees pastors to discern between institutional expectations and their true role within the kingdom of God.

Ministry is joining Jesus in his work.

That Monday morning feeling comes from assuming the impact is yours to produce. Willard would say you have the wrong employer. The outcomes belong to God.

Drinking What You Sell

Willard articulates a threefold pattern of Jesus’s ministry, proclaiming, manifesting, and teaching the kingdom of God, as the paradigm for pastors who are teachers of the nations. Pastors are those who proclaim the availability of life in the kingdom of God now, manifest the power and presence of the kingdom in their words and actions, and teach others to live in the kingdom through confidence in Christ.

Willard reminds his students that when Jesus first sent out his disciples, he told them not to take provisions with them. No extra shoes. No extra clothing. No food. No money.

“He wanted these people as they went out to be living from what they were talking about. In other words, the provision was to come from the Kingdom of God through people, or not. When they are preaching the availability of the Kingdom of God, He wants people to be able to look at them and say, ‘Oh, I see how that works.’”

Willard continues: “He wanted them to be living from what they were advertising, to be drinking the soft drinks they were selling and that is a huge issue for ministers. Are you living from what you are talking?”

The issue for the minister is not technique or strategy or output. The issue is whether you are living in the Kingdom you proclaim. Ministry must be experiential and personal, shaped by the life the minister leads in the kingdom. Willard states, “You have to teach from your experiences; otherwise, it just becomes empty words.”

Relinquishing Outcomes

At the center of ministry is the call to proclaim and manifest the truth that, even amid frustration and disappointment, life in the kingdom is available now. This is the same message that Jesus preached and remains the content of the message for teachers of the nations today: to teach what Jesus taught in the manner he taught it.

Dallas told his students, “Just think of conveying to people in all of their troubles and disappointments and so on, announcing that they can live in the Kingdom of God now. That’s a part of His ministry. Do we do that? Life in the Kingdom of God now through confidence in Jesus. Preach what Jesus preached in the manner He preached it, and then watch.”

And then watch.

By doing this, pastors are able to relinquish the outcomes of their ministries to God, embracing the blessing of Jesus’ easy yoke while trusting in his ability to work. Willard warns that taking control of outcomes is deadly to ministry, reminding ministers that God alone is in charge of outcomes. “He is in charge of the outcome of our ministry... don’t take charge of outcomes.”

As Willard emphasizes, “We minister the reign of God. God in action.”

In the Willardian model, ministry is proclaiming, manifesting, and teaching the availability of the kingdom now, relying on God’s action, not managing outcomes, and embodying the life of the kingdom for the sake of others.

The outcomes are not yours. The ministry is not yours. It is God’s work committed to you. Your part is to live in the Kingdom you announce and trust God with the rest.

For Reflection

Dallas asks several pointed questions throughout this lecture. I will leave you with three of them.

“Are you living from what you are talking?” Is your life a demonstration of the Kingdom you preach, or have your words outpaced your experience?

Do we convey to people in all of their troubles and disappointments that they can live in the Kingdom of God now? Or are we exhausting ourselves trying to produce outcomes that belong to God?

Can you “preach what Jesus preached in the manner He preached it, and then watch”?