Book Contents

Title

Dove

Copyright

Chapter 01 – Ministry vs. Calling

Chapter 02 - Ministry or Calling

Chapter 03 - Finding Your Calling

Chapter 04 – Levels of Ministry

Chapter 05 – Starting With Body Ministry

Chapter 06 - Necessities for Ministry

Chapter 07 - The Doorway to the Gifts

Chapter 08 - The Internal and External Anointing

Chapter 09 - Preparing For Ministry

Chapter 10 - The Ministry Offices

Chapter 11 - Theoretical vs. Experimental Knowledge

Chapter 12 – Ministry Training

Chapter 13 – Mentorship and Spiritual Parenting

Chapter 14 - How to Know Your Calling

There is More For You

Fulfilling Your Ministry Calling

By Les D. Crause

Fulfilling Your Ministry Calling

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Global Business Resources International

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All rights reserved under International Copyright Law.

Contents may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the publisher.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Global Business Ministries (GBM) version of the Bible.

Original teaching by Les D. Crause

Transcripts and editing by Daphne J. Crause

Cover Design by Nadine Crause

Available on Kindle and other devices

Print Version Available from Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com and other retail store

Chapter 01 – Ministry vs. Calling

Ministry Made Easy

I would like to look at a subject that is very important in the life of every believer. And so I have entitled this series ‘Ministry Made Easy’.

What exactly is ministry? I am sure this word produces a different picture in the mind of each person. Ministry can be understood by comparing the natural world and your natural life with your spiritual life.

Your Spiritual Career

In your natural life you would look for a career, or the main thing that you will do with your life. Ministry is the equivalent thing in your spiritual life. If you like, it is your ‘spiritual career’.

You need to know how to fulfill your spiritual career. But unfortunately many people make it too complicated. Most actually never find their ministry or carry it out. They just do not know how to go about it.

In your natural life it is very easy to understand. You know what is involved. You find out what you want to be when you grow up. You build up in your mind, desires of the kind of career you want to follow.

When you finish school, you go to college to learn and develop the knowledge that you need. You qualify to eventually take the position and fulfill the career that you desired to follow.

Because ministry is so similar, we tend to take the same approach in preparing ourselves for ministry as we do in pursuing our careers. And although they may look very similar, they are unfortunately not the same thing. So you cannot approach them both in the same way.

As we go through the first part of this teaching, I would like to show you how to identify and understand the difference between a career and a ministry, and how you should be carrying out your ministry.

The term ‘ministry’ is not quite what everybody thinks it is. If you think of ministry as a spiritual career, usually the last thing that you have in your mind is what the word ministry actually means in the original language of the Bible.

Becoming a Servant

A minister is not someone in an exalted position of authority, that is highly qualified and exercises domination over people. A minister in Bible terms is quite simply a servant. This is quite the opposite picture. Ministry effectively means ‘service’!

Perhaps in a career this is also true. You rise up in life but your purpose is to serve humanity and to make your mark in this world; to do something perhaps that will change the lives of others.

But we don’t usually have this idea in mind with a career, do we? When it comes to a career we often think,

“I want to rise up and make more money than anyone else. I want to become famous and well known, and I want to come to a position of authority where I can control other people.”

Those three temptations have been there from the beginning. They were there in the Garden when Satan came to tempt Eve. And Satan tried to bring the same temptations to Jesus.

The temptations are a desire for Fortune, Fame and Control. These are very dangerous when we mix them with ministry.

What needs to be added to this are another two important things that we need in life. These also color our approach to ministry and get mixed up with our motives for doing ministry.

Acceptance

The first one is acceptance, which is simply having other people take you just as you are. They do not reject you, but accept you just the way you are. They are ready to be associated with you and receive you into their group.

You are then no longer the odd one out and you are treated the same as everyone else. This is the essence of acceptance, but it also goes much deeper than that.

Most of us have grown up facing rejection in life. You may have been rejected for many different reasons. Some of these could include where you come from, your racial group, your looks, your height or weight, or even your gender. There are many things that could have caused others to reject you, and these leave you feeling unaccepted.

But acceptance begins even deeper than that. It starts way back in your relationship with the first parent you get to know - your mother.

A mother is actively involved in fulfilling the need in a child to be accepted. If there is anyone in the world who accepts a child, no matter how ugly or naughty it is, it is the mother.

The mother is always there to love and care for the child. So the mother gives the very first acceptance for a child.

Each of us goes through different experiences. Some of us were not fully accepted by our mothers. Some mothers were too busy working or doing other things. Perhaps there were also other children around.

No matter what the situation was, you may have felt that your mother did not give you the acceptance and you went out into the world alone. You may also have had other siblings and family members that did not accept you and you did not fit in with them.

There are so many things in life that can produce it. It’s a big void inside us, and so we continue to feel that people will not accept us.

As this becomes mixed up with your career, it creates a driving force inside you that will always be controlled by other people. That is because everything you do will be designed to get other people to accept you.

You are then caught in circumstances that stop you from being fully efficient, because you are always worried about what people will think. You have to keep adjusting your behavior for other people.

If you take this now into the realm of ministry, the same principles apply. Ministry is something that you are doing for the Lord. It means taking your place in the spiritual life according to what God sees in you.

The Scriptures teach that when we accept Jesus as our Savior and are born again, we become members of the Body of Christ.

If you consider yourself as a part in a body, you would be fitting in with a lot of other parts. So hands, feet, ears, eyes and nose all recognize one another and need one another.

They all fit in with each other. So if you are not feeling accepted and cannot fit in with the rest of the body, you cannot easily accept the place you were put in. You might think,

‘‘I am just a big ugly nose.”

You don’t want to be the nose because it is ugly, and people don’t like big ugly noses. So your ministry is now affected by your view of yourself and that deep need for acceptance.

Recognition

The second thing that stands in the way is similar to acceptance but not the same. It is recognition.

Acceptance means that people look at who we are. And they either accept or reject us because of who we are.

Recognition goes a step further, because it looks instead at what we have done and accomplished, and it holds us up high. Someone looks up to you with pride and says,

“I wish I could be like you. I think you are great.”

When they do that it meets a need inside. We all have a need for others to look to us and recognize what we have done.

Maybe you have gone to a lot of effort to do things in life and nobody notices you. Often the main person involved in either creating or meeting this need in a child is the father, rather than the mother.

A father should notice his children, make a fuss of them and recognize what the child is doing. A child may draw little pictures and bring them to dad, expecting him to say,

‘‘Wow this is an awesome picture.”

This is a little thing, but parents often fail in this. Fathers are too busy with other things. They have work to do and other things that are important. The child grows up feeling that he or she was not recognized. Perhaps the rest of the family also does not recognize what the child does.

Perhaps you were given all the dirty work to do and your brothers and sisters got away without having to do that. Nobody appreciated or recognized the hard work that you did.

We all grow up in life with some of these experiences. So there is now a driving force in you that will not allow you to fulfill a normal career. You have to be above average. It is not enough to be simply good at what you do. You have to be better than everyone else.

You have to draw attention to yourself and have people noticing you. You want them to rave about you and tell you that you are really great.

There is a continual need for affirmation and being recognized. Sadly though, both acceptance and recognition are like deep voids inside that are never satisfied.

Even if you do find people that will accept or recognize you, that deep inner need is never fully satisfied. It is a thirst that you cannot quench.

This affects people in their careers. But it affects you even more in your ‘spiritual career’ - your work for the Lord. That’s because ministry is serving others, not trying to meet your own needs.

If you have a need to be accepted and recognized then this will color your ministry and make you less effective. You will be wondering all the time what people think of you and your ministry.

Are they accepting the kind of ministry you are giving? Do they recognize how well you preach? Do they recognize how hard you work for the Lord?

When these things color your ministry, it will become less effective, and it will fail.

Achievement

So what is the correct desire you can have in place of those needs? It is called achievement.

A desire for achievement is not based on what someone else does. It does not involve you competing with someone else or trying to be better than them. It is not trying to impress someone so that they will accept or recognize you.

Achievement involves fighting against yourself and setting your own goals in life. You decide what you want to be or attain. You have a picture in your mind of what you can see yourself becoming.

There is instead a driving force in you, to reach the goal that you set for yourself. And there is nothing wrong with having that motivation while you are doing the work of the ministry.

You may set a goal in your heart of winning thousands of souls for the Lord. That is wonderful, and when you set this goal in your heart you can go out and do great things for the Lord.

Perhaps you have a burning desire to be used by God and to change people’s lives. You may want to move in the miraculous and reach out to touch and heal the sick.

There is nothing wrong with this kind of motivation, because you are not doing it to draw attention to yourself. You are doing it because you cry out to see people’s lives changed.

You see broken lives and you want to help them. You have a desire within to achieve great things for the Lord.

These are some of the motivations we have, and often we have the wrong ones. But here is what makes all of this foolish and deceptive. You do not realize that if you reach out to others, taking your eyes off yourself and pouring into them, they will accept you with open arms.

Chapter 02 - Ministry or Calling

I would like to now consider another word that we use when it comes to ministry. It is a word that is often misunderstood, so I want to explain it and make it clear to you.

Hopefully when I am done you will understand this subject better. Then you can come to a place of being effective in your ministry.

The word I want to discuss is calling. I want to show you that there is a difference between a ministry and a calling.

We tend to look at people who have accomplished great things in life and we consider what they did as their ‘calling’. They were destined to do that, and we often see a calling as a kind of destiny.

A calling is that unique thing you were destined to do in this world and in your life. And ministry is not necessarily a calling. Your ministry could be based on your personal desires. You have deep desires in you of things that you want to accomplish.

Many of these desires are based on your own past experiences. You may desire to help poor people or those who have suffered rejection, simply because you had similar experiences in life.

You have these deep desires in you to do things. But you want to do them in the name of the Lord, using His Word and the abilities that He has given you. You want to be a servant to others and help them by ministering to them.

But it does not take a specific calling for you to carry out such a ministry. Everyone can do things like this.

Everybody can do a ministry, but it does not mean that ministry is your calling. It is not your unique destiny in life; the one thing that you have been set apart to accomplish in this world.

A calling is always different. You can be born with influences that came from your parents. And as you go through life, your experiences begin to build desires into you.

You could have many orientations like this that you are now using in ministry. You may even have had them before you became a Christian.

But a calling is something that is specifically given to you by the Lord. It can never come before you are born again.

Only after you are placed into the Body of Christ and are officially a member of God’s family, does He have a specific plan and purpose for your life. It is only now that you have a calling.

Certainly the Lord knew what you were going to do long before you were born. He knew what your calling would be. But you do not actually receive that calling until you are born again.

Now that you are a believer, you know that you are called because the Bible tells us that all believers are called.

What are you called to? Firstly, you are called to salvation, then you are called to become like Jesus. We all share these callings, but you also have something unique.

However, your calling does not always stay in one place. It does not remain static, but it may be progressively increased over time.

You could start out with a specific calling from God based on the only things you are capable of right now. But as you grow by increasing in knowledge, wisdom and experience, God can trust you with bigger things. So your calling could grow much bigger and increase over time.

Paying the Price

How does this take place? Well the bad news is that there is always a price to pay.

Here is where it becomes very similar to your career. You cannot decide one day to be a doctor and set up your practice. You cannot become a professional of any kind without qualifying by proving yourself and passing the tests.

What does God require from someone that He calls? The Scripture is a bit confusing on this, because it says that God has chosen the weak and foolish things of this world to confound the wise.

You may think that you are too weak for God to have big plans for you and a big calling on your life. Yet it may surprise you to know that your weakness is probably what qualifies you for a calling more than anything else.

You may not be very intelligent. You may rather be foolish and naïve, and feel insecure next to more intelligent people who are doing great things. You might think that the Lord could use them more easily than you.

But the Lord says to you,

“You are the one I am looking for. I don’t need you to have any abilities at all, because I have the abilities that you need and I will give the ability to do your calling.”

You may think, “I would really love to do great things for God, but I can’t be a great preacher. I can’t stand up to preach and teach or write great things.

“I don’t have any musical talent or anything. How can God use me, because I have nothing to give Him?”

But you will be amazed what God can do with nothing, if you just give it to Him in submission and humility. God can take that and add His part to it to produce that calling in your life.

So learn to understand the difference between ministry and calling. This is important because you may have had a desire burning in you for some time. But is that a ministry or a calling?

You don’t really know do you? So how do you go about finding out what your calling is? It is easy to see a desire for ministry, but often that desire is not based on God’s call but rather on what you desire to do.

Chapter 03 - Finding Your Calling

Here then is how you go about finding your calling.

Firstly, your calling is not based on your natural desires. We each have different temperamental strengths, as I have taught in our teaching on temperaments. Some temperaments have greater strengths than others.

But your temperamental strengths do not decide your calling. So do not think that because your temperament is capable of communicating with others and persuading them, that God will use you to do that kind of thing.

People often get confused and they think,

“I am really good at that.”

So for example, a person who is good at listening should surely be a counselor. We assume that a person who has wisdom and is a good listener is obviously called to be a counselor. But these are natural abilities and strengths. Don’t ever confuse them with the call of God.

You may also have had some tough times in life. You could have lived a life filled with poverty or sickness and disease or even rejection. But do not assume that God will call you to minister to other people who have also been through that. If half of your family died, that does not mean God has called you to minister to bereaved people.

Do not assume that what you experienced in life was God’s way of preparing your for your calling. You could certainly do those as a ministry, but that is not your calling.

You do not need an anointing to carry out those ministries. You could use the anointing to help with them, but you do not need the anointing to do them.

Unbelievers often have the same desires burning in them. Many charitable organizations do wonderful things. But they are not called of God. They are in a World System that does not honor God at all.

It Is Unique

So your calling then is not a burning desire within you, based on your temperamental strengths, your experiences in life, or dreams and visions that you have had. Your calling is unique and you did not have it before you were born again.

Now here is the part that makes it stand out the clearest. Most other people do not have the same desire as you. If there is one quality that shows your calling, it is when you suddenly want to do something that others do not want to do. You don’t know where that came from, and it doesn’t even closely relate to your experiences in life.

You suddenly have a desire to get involved in something that you are unqualified to do and incapable of doing. And you have never had experience with this before.

If that doesn’t make sense then it is good. You are well on your way to identifying the call of God, because it is absolutely unique. Ministry on the other hand is not unique at all. It comes from a burning desire.

You may have thought that if you could find your burning core desire you could find what God has put in you. If that is what burns in you, then surely it was the Lord who put it there? I used to teach this myself, but a burning inner desire does not denote a calling.

Does that mean you cannot fulfill that desire? Would it be wrong to do this as a ministry?

Not at all! In fact if you were to do it with faith, hope and love, God would even anoint you with His power and give you Divine ability to make you a blessing. He will use you mightily in that ministry and you will prove the Scriptural principle that whatever you sow you will reap. As you give out you will get back and see results.

You may say, “I have found my ministry.”

But you have not yet found your calling. So what do you do; stand and wait for your calling before you do anything? That is a common mistake we make. It could take you a long time to find your calling, because the unfolding of that calling is a progressive thing.

You should start where you are, with all the desires that burn in you, and begin to fulfill those as a ministry. Then as you continue to do ministry you will find yourself progressively coming to a place where your calling becomes clearer.

Where to Start

Where do you start? There is a simple Scripture that says,

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

What is available to you right now that you can do for the Lord? Look around and see people with needs that you can help with and get involved in right now. Start doing whatever is there.

You may ask, “But what if that is not my calling?”

Does it matter? The Lord will still bless it, and you will have a tremendous sense of achievement and satisfaction by having poured out and helped and ministered to other people. And who knows whether God will use that to lead you progressively into finally uncovering your calling.

I often use the picture of a moving ship. Many people are like a ship sitting in harbor asking the Lord which way to go. They think that if God turns their rudder they will get moving. But even if He did turn the rudder you would not notice it. You would continue waiting.

The only way to steer a ship is to get it moving. Go in any direction; it doesn’t matter. Find something to do and get doing it, and the Lord will step in and start to change your rudder. Suddenly you will find yourself veering off into a whole new direction.

You may wonder what is happening. You started doing one thing and ended up doing something else. Then suddenly a new opportunity opened up for you to do something totally unrelated to what you were doing. You could try many things before you start coming to that place where you know that this is where you should be.

Chewing Rubber

I have often shared the story of the boy who chewed rubber, and I will share it again here for this lesson. I read a story once of a little boy who kept chewing on rubber. He chewed on pencil erasers and any kind or rubber he could find. His parents thought something was wrong and had him tested medically.

After doing some tests, they discovered that his body was lacking in sulphur. And it seems that rubber has a lot of sulphur in it. So each time he chewed on rubber, he was supplying what his body needed. Now he did not know anything about sulphur and nobody taught him to eat rubber, because rubber is not food.

But before he tasted rubber he chewed on everything he could get his hands on. If you have had a baby you will know that a baby puts everything into its mouth. He kept chewing on things until one day he chewed on rubber, and something inside of him said,

“That tastes good. Let’s try it again.”

He kept doing it again and again and chewed up all the rubber he could find.

Sometimes finding your calling also works this way. Get chewing on everything you can find. Do what burns in you and what does not burn in you. Do what other people are doing, and whatever you can find as an opportunity to do something as a ministry for the Lord.

Keep doing it. One day you will find that suddenly something drops into place and you will think to yourself,

“I seem to be moving in a very unique direction here that most other people are not moving in. But I feel really good about it. I feel comfortable doing it and I am getting results.”

That could be the first sign that you are finding your calling.

Putting It Together

Realize that your calling is a supernatural thing that God will give, and God will progressively unfold it to you. Then you can go beyond that and receive specific revelation. God may decide to use someone to give you a prophetic word. He may give you a dream or a vision, or a personal revelation to confirm to you exactly what that calling is.

Then when you find that calling, you can set sail, pull out all the stops, and head in that direction. You can do this until God chooses to increase it or change it. Remember that the calling is progressive and can be increased.

The important thing then is to firstly recognize the differences between ministry and calling. Look deep inside and discover all the desires that burn in you. Get moving with those until you find yourself becoming more focused and you get inner or outer revelation. Then you will eventually come to the place where you will find your Ministry Calling.

Only when these two come together are you ready to do real ministry. We will look in the next chapters at ways in which we can fulfill different kinds of ministry, and the tools that God gives us to do this. We will consider some of the higher level ministries and how God promotes people up to different levels of calling.

By the time we are done you should be able to find out exactly what your calling is and know what you should be doing. You will know what main ministry you should be doing. And you will be able to come to a place where God can increase you and use you more and more.

Then you can fulfill that ‘spiritual career’ that you desire.

Chapter 04 – Levels of Ministry

We continue now in this study on Ministry Made Easy, with a look at the levels of ministry. We considered some of the differences between ministry and calling. I want to expand this subject now and discuss the ministry in more detail. You will see that there are different levels of ministry.

The most important thing you need to realize about ministry, is that ministry is man working with God to make things happen in the earth. Ministry involves us as believers making ourselves available to the Lord, and letting Him work through us in this world.

The Godhead in Ministry

If you want to find out where to start in your ministry, where you are going, and what you should be doing, you cannot do it without the Lord. God is an integral part of what we do in ministry.

In our study on Bible Doctrine we saw that God is manifested in three different ways. He is a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. And when we become Christians we begin to relate to God in all of these aspects of His being.

Now each of these manifestations of God leads to a different kind of ministry. So looking at the three members of the Godhead, we see firstly that we have the Lord Jesus, and under Him there is a certain level of ministry.

Then we have the Holy Spirit, and He is involved in a different aspect of ministry. And finally we have God the Father, the director and originator of all things. He is also involved with us, taking us to a different level of ministry.

I will show you as we go through this subject, that it starts with Jesus, then we add the Holy Spirit, and finally we move up to the Father.

As believers this is exactly our experience. When you were first saved, the first one you got to know was the Lord Jesus. Does this mean that you never experienced the Holy Spirit? No, it was actually the Holy Spirit that caused the New Birth to take place in you.

Did you experience the Father? Yes the Father was there, because He is the one who manifested Himself in and through Jesus. We always have all three together. We don’t have one without the other, but usually we deal with only one at a time.

So when it comes to ministry, you will find that your early ministry experiences are directed more under the influence of the Lord Jesus. This is because He is the one you got to know when you were born again.

Later on you find out that there is a little more involved in getting to know the Lord. There is the power of the Holy Spirit that is available to you. Then you slowly move beyond just knowing Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You realize that there is a Holy Spirit who wants to work with you and give you power and strength to do awesome things.

Then eventually, once you get to know Jesus really well, and you get to know the Holy Spirit really well, you are finally ready to come to the place where you are prepared to face the Holy Father Himself. Now you can communicate with Him.

Many Christians never go much further than Jesus in their spiritual lives and do not get to know the Holy Spirit. And there are some people who get to know the Holy Spirit really well, but they never come into that real place in the Throne Room of intimacy with Father God Himself.

When you start out in ministry, what happens is your relationship with God and each member of the Godhead will decide what kind of ministry you become involved in. From the moment that you are born again, and you get to know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you start getting involved in a certain level of ministry. This ministry is available to every person who is born again, but at this stage you do not know much about the supernatural.

You have been born again and something magnificent has taken place inside your spirit; something miraculous and not natural at all. It is spiritual and supernatural. But as you now come to doing something as a Christian, you do not know much about the supernatural at all.

You only know that Jesus is your Savior. You have a peace within and you begin to experience His love. Your whole life changes, you find joy and happiness and many good things come into your life.

But you have not touched much on the supernatural. So your first ministry and involvements in doing things for the Lord are not that supernatural. They tend to be almost natural and normal; the kind of thing that anyone can do.

Body Ministries

Paul gives us a list of the kind of ministry involvements we can have. You can read about them in Romans Chapter 12, verses 5 to 8.

I will not be including big passages of Scripture in these teachings, but you should go and look them up. We have an online Bible program that you can use called the GBM Online Bible which you can use for this purpose. There you can look up all Scriptures on the subjects taught in these lectures.

Let’s look first then at Jesus, and what I like to call the Body Ministries. When you think of ministry, most of us have the picture of someone who goes into a job as a career. He or she goes to Bible School and then into ‘full time ministry’.

That is one of the higher levels of ministry and we will look at that later. But according to the Bible, every one of us, from the moment we are born again, has become a member of the Body of Christ.

This is a picture, where just as the body consists of many members all joined together to make one person, so each of us also is like a different member of this invisible body, which is the Church of God all over the world. Together with Jesus, we make up the Body of Christ. Now that we have become a member of the Body, every one of us has something that we can do.

If you are by the hand, that does a certain kind of thing, while the foot does a different kind of thing. Nose, eyes and ears and each part of the body all have different functions and they all work together.

Sadly though, the idea of ministry up until now has been that ministry is only for ministers. These are people who have been trained and are specialists, and they are the only ones who can do the ministry.

For the rest of us ordinary believers, our ministry is to sit in church on Sunday and listen to the minister preach. Our ministry becomes doing whatever the minister tells us to do.

Most of the time all you will be told to do are things that do not need much of the Lord’s help at all. In many churches the best you can hope to do is become an usher or deacon; the one who hands out song sheets or puts the transparencies on the overhead.

But as a believer, God has a function for each of us to do. This is not only on Sunday when we are at church. It is something we do all the time, wherever we are, every day of the week, throughout our lives.

We are available to the Lord to do something. And whatever we do will involve working with other people. Ministry is always working with other people. It is being like a waiter or server; serving other people.

Chapter 05 – Starting With Body Ministry

Body Ministry 1 - Serving

Looking then at the body ministries that Paul listed for us, one of the first ones he mentions is ‘serving’. This is something that we can all do, and it means that we are available to help other people. Instead of having others run around to do things for us, we say,

“I want to do something for the Lord.”

In fact, we call this ‘serving the Lord’. One of the best ways of serving the Lord is to serve one of His children.

The Lord Jesus is up in Heaven right now. When He was on this earth He walked in an earthly body, and He could reach out and touch people to help them. But now that He is gone, He wants us to take His place on this earth and to do the kind of things that He did. You can go around helping people and serving them.

Perhaps you are trying to figure out,

“What is my ministry?”

Or, “What can I do for ministry?”

If so the first thing you should do is look around you and see if there is someone that you can serve. Who is there that you can help and do something for?

The moment you do that with the love of the Lord in your heart, so that you can show people the love of the Lord, you are doing ministry. It may be a very low level ministry. But it is a ministry and it is a Body ministry, under the direction of the Lord Jesus.

Body Ministry 2 – Teaching

The next kind of ministry Paul mentions is teaching. Now you might think that in order to be a teacher you will need to go to university and get a degree first. We always tend to think ‘professional’ don’t we? But really teaching simply means taking all the knowledge you have learned about the Lord and the Bible, and sharing it with other people.

What can you teach? The first thing you can do is to teach those out there who do not know Jesus, how to get saved. That is a simple evangelistic thrust, and we will look more at that later.

Teaching is simply taking the Word and sharing it with other people. So after finding someone to serve, look for those whom you can help with your knowledge.

You make an effort to try and impart some of your knowledge to them. That is a very simple ministry and you can do it anywhere and anytime. It is not your ‘function in the church meeting’. It is what you do every day as a Christian.

Body Ministry 3 – Encouragement

What about this one? How far do you need to look to find someone who needs encouragement? You probably won’t even need to leave your house. Get up in the morning and you will probably find at least one person in the family who is feeling down. How much more when you go to school, work or wherever your daily duties take you.

You continually bump into people all the time who are feeling down and discouraged. What is the best way to encourage somebody? Surely it is by sharing the Lord with them; going with a heart of love and saying,

“Let me pray for you. I believe the Lord wants to help you in your situation and lift you up.”

Just be there to give them a smile, a friendly word or say something positive. All of this you are doing as Jesus. In all of these things, try to imagine that Jesus is walking with you and living inside of you, because He is. As you go, you ask Him,

“Lord what do you want to do now for this person?”

He will tell you something like,

“Serve them, teach them and encourage them.”

These are all ministries under the direction of the Lord Jesus.

Body Ministry 4 – Giving

Unless you are a mean Scrooge, you might want to get involved in the ministry of giving. There are always people in need all around you. You don’t have to look far. But what is your usual approach if you walk down the street and a beggar asks you for money? Do you tell him,

“Go away you lazy bum and get a job! You only want my money so you can go get drunk.”

That might be true, but it is a good place to start practicing ministry. You may have been complaining and saying,

“I don’t know where I can get involved in ministry. I have no outlet for my ministry.”

Look around you; there are always people asking you for something. If you can just give out in the love of the Lord, you have started a ministry.

You may complain that you don’t want to spend your whole life doing that. But I did not suggest that this was your calling. It is a Body ministry and something that you can get involved in right away. I am sure you are able to do that.

Body Ministry 5 – Leading or Ruling

Some people are better at this one than others. That is why I said at the beginning that these are not necessarily supernatural, but they can be very natural.

If you have natural leadership capabilities then you can help other people by leading them in how they should serve the Lord. And the very first ‘leading’ you can do is to lead someone to the Lord.

Even if you think you cannot be a leader, you can at least lead someone to the Lord. How do you do that? You simply speak with them about the Lord and say to them,

“Let me take you and show you the Lord.”

Then you can lead them to the Lord. It means that you are taking initiative. In a way you are also motivating and influencing people in their spiritual lives. Hopefully in the future the Lord has a calling for you that will lift you up into higher leadership levels.

But what is the best place to start? Start right where you are and see how you can influence people in a leadership role in ministry. It is the best place to start.

Body Ministry 6 – Showing Compassion

This is very specific kind of activity that mixes some of the others together. Showing compassion means that when you look at people who are suffering, or sick or mentally retarded; people that have problems in life, your heart is stirred inside you.

You want to help people like that. There are a lot of people out there that do not know the Lord Jesus, who are doing work like this all the time. So once again, this is very naturalistic. But how much better it is when we are doing it to show people that Jesus loves them.

This is not only because your heart is stirred, or because you grew up in a home where you suffered lack. It is not because you had bad experiences and feel sorry for others who have had the same. Anybody can do that.

But it is when the heart of the Lord and His love burn strongly inside you. And you want to cry out for these people and help them and minister to them. These may all be very naturalistic things, but they are the start of a ministry. If you will only open your eyes and look around you, you will see that there are so many people all around you that you can minister to right away.

Body Ministry 7 – Prophecy

This is the first one that sounds like it is supernatural, and it is up to a point. I do not believe though that this speaks of the ministry of the prophet yet. It speaks about using your words to speak and tell other people what God thinks or says.

You will find that after you become a Christian, you are so excited to share the Lord with people. I am sure you have found yourself in a situation where you meet unbelievers and you start to share the Lord with them.

As you do, something comes up inside of you. And you find yourself talking and sharing as Scriptures come back to your memory. There comes an explosion from inside of you and a flow takes place. Afterwards you think to yourself,

“Wow, where did that all come from? That was awesome; I felt a surge and it was just pouring out of me.”

What happened is all that you had inside of you poured out as you ministered and spoke God’s words to that person. You can do the same thing with encouragement or teaching, using words to speak. Prophecy can mean simply ‘inspired preaching’ or ‘inspired speaking’.

We tend to think of prophecy as an utterance that we give spontaneously and say,

“Thus saith the Lord, behold I am with you tonight my child!”

It sounds spiritual doesn’t it? But why can you not simply say to the person,

“Do you know that Jesus really loves you, and He is with you right now. He is sitting right there next to you and He wants to put His arms around you and show you that He loves you.”

Is that any different to saying this?

“Thus saith the Lord, behold I am with you. And I put my arms around you my child, and I love you.”

The only difference is that you are sharing it from your heart. But it is the same as a prophetic word.

If you want to be used in prophecy, which we will teach on also later, then start by learning to just speak to people what you know Jesus would say to them if He were here. If you can start with that, then you can move on into an actual ministry of prophecy. But to do that you will need the next level of ministry.

Adding the Holy Spirit

You will need the Holy Spirit, because all of the natural ministries can only take you so far. You need an extra piece of power; something supernatural to add to it. You almost want Jesus Himself to appear in you and show His power.

You can reach out and try to bring healing. And under showing compassion you might even be offering medical treatment. But you need that supernatural power, where if you could just lay your hands on them and speak healing, God will do it and add more power.

The way we do that is by adding the Holy Spirit to the work of Jesus. We combine together the ministries and the Gifts of the Spirit. What are the Gifts of the Spirit? There are nine of them, and we will study them in detail under the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

There are the Vocal Gifts, the Revelation Gifts and the Power Gifts.

The Vocal Gifts include the ability to speak in tongues, the ability to interpret tongues, and the speaking of prophetic utterance.

The Revelation Gifts are the gift of the word of wisdom, which has a future orientation. There is the word of knowledge, which tells us about past and present. And the discerning of spirits which helps us to detect when there are demon powers present.

The Power Gifts are faith, which allows us to supernaturally believe for the impossible and do wonderful things for the Lord. Then there is also miracles and healings.

If we can add those to the body ministries, we start putting together something far more powerful. So you start with the body ministries and you begin where you are.

These are the starting point for your ministry. And as you try these, you are like the little boy who chewed on everything until he found the rubber. Once he found that one he found that he preferred it to the others.

You may find that as you do some of these things, several of them will seem to grab you more than others. There will seldom only be one thing that grabs you. You will feel more comfortable with those and will want to do them more. After that, as your heart begins to burn within, you will begin to cry out,

“Oh Lord, if only I had more power to do this. If only I had more supernatural ability to do this. Oh Lord, I need the power of your Holy Spirit.”

It is around this time that you suddenly realize that Jesus alone is not enough. He is wonderful and we love Him. We have an awesome relationship with Him and He makes us feel good when we are down. But suddenly we realize that we need something more. We need the power of the Holy Spirit. Only then are you open to move into the Gifts of the Spirit.

How do you do that? This will require a longer study, so we will cover it in the next chapter. We will look at the Holy Spirit and the gifts next.

You will learn how to enter into and receive the Gifts of the Spirit, and how you can start adding the Gifts of the Spirit to the body ministries. You will see that as you do that, some of those ministries will come to life in a powerful way.

They will now move from being largely natural to more supernatural, until they become even more supernatural. Then you will begin to see a clear ministry that is being controlled by both the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit working together through you. This will lead you up higher, just as I said the revelation of our calling is progressive.

You start with the lower levels and progress upwards. The higher levels will be up where the Father is involved, and we will learn this as we progress with this study.

Next you will see how the first two combine together to form specific ministries that the Bible talks about. Then I will show you the highest level of ministry that the Father is in control of.

After that I will cover what you have probably been waiting for; the answer to the question,

“How do I go about doing this? Please show me how.”

So we will look at the answer when I show you how you can be trained for the ministry.

Chapter 06 - Necessities for Ministry

I would like to look now at what you will need to do the work of the ministry. We looked previously at the fact that we do not only need the Lord Jesus. We also need the work of the Holy Spirit, and then ultimately the work of the Father.

All three together will take us to our ultimate goal and level in ministry. We will continue that theme for now before completing this teaching. What I want to look at now is everything that you will need to do ministry; to give you a clearer understanding of what ministry is.

To make it clearer I would like to illustrate it with the following example. Imagine someone who needs ministry, and remember that ministry means serving others.

What is our purpose for carrying out ministry? God wants to do things in the life of every human being. He has a plan and purpose because God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.

God wants to bless and make available to every single human being the wonderful blessings that He has created for man. So God wants to bless this person; He wants to pour out His blessing on them.

This person may be outside of Christ and does not know God. This person could also be a young believer who has not come to a great experience of God, so they cannot go directly to Him to receive everything that they need.

So God needs to use somebody else to pour His blessing into that person. Who is that someone else? That’s right, it’s you. You are the one that God will use to bless this person.

Definition of Ministry

What God will do is to pour into you, and you in turn will pour out towards that person. That in effect is all that is involved in ministry. Ministry is receiving from God, taking what you have received and pouring it out to other people.

There is nothing complicated about this, even though we tend to make it so difficult. But there is a lot involved. And there are many things that you will need before you can do this effectively.

So that is what I want to consider in more detail in this chapter. I want to look at exactly what you need in order to be used by God to bless other people; to release towards others what God wants to do in their lives.

The Spirit and the Word

There are two main things that you will need, and which God has given us to use. They are two main tools if you like that we must make use of, in order to be used by God to do the work of the ministry.

The first one is the Bible, which is also called the Scriptures or simply The Word. The Word of God is one of our main tools for doing the work of the ministry.

God has also given us something else; He has given us His Holy Spirit. We looked at that earlier on. And now I am going to look at this in more detail, as we consider exactly what God has given us through the Holy Spirit. We usually refer to the Holy Spirit simply as The Spirit.

So there are two basic tools that God has given every Christian, and especially we who want to be used by the Lord in ministry. He has given us The Spirit and The Word. You need nothing more than these two in order to do the work of the ministry and to do it well.

That might sound somewhat simplistic. But there is more to the Spirit and the Word than we realize. Before you can use the Word, you need to know it. How do you learn to know the Word of God?

Firstly you can learn the theory. You could get theoretical knowledge of the Word by reading it. But there are 66 books there with a lot of doctrines and teachings.

The Bible as a Jungle

I like to picture the Bible as being a wild jungle, like say the Amazon jungle, where there is tropical growth everywhere. As you walk through it you see every kind of plant and tree scattered everywhere.

It was not planted by man. It wasn’t laid out in rows, with all the peach trees in one row and the apple trees in another row, and the carrots and beans in their own little section. This is how we would do it in farming.

But here it is all growing wild and all the plants are scattered everywhere. If you were to walk through the jungle you would see a plant, and then as you walk further you might see the same plant again somewhere else. You might even see another species of the same kind of plant all scattered everywhere.

So you could go into that jungle and try to understand everything growing there by studying all the plants. But you could spend a lifetime doing that.

But what if someone who knows a bit about botany or biology has gone ahead of you and studied the plants? They come back and say to you,

“See this plant here with the red berries…”

Then they tell you what the plant is called and all the characteristics about the plant. They tell you that it is scattered all over the jungle and looks different at times.

Now you have learned from someone what has gone and done some studying. You can take a guidebook with you into the jungle, and when you see something, you can look it up in the book and identify it.

You can see what kind of plant it is, if it is poisonous and should not be touched. Without this you could learn the hard way by eating poisonous berries and dying.

The Bible is just like that; it is a garden of truth. Many people think that they can learn what is in the Bible simply by reading it. You could spend your life doing this and still not fully understand some of the deeper truths of the Bible.

But God has raised up those to whom He has given a teaching ability, and there are those who have studied the Bible. But some have even more than this and that is what you need. You need experience.

Theory and Experience

So you need to learn both theory and experience. You need to live what is taught in the Bible before you can understand it. Sometimes it is only when you have lived something that it comes back to your mind.

You remember reading something in the Bible, and you really did not fully understand what it meant. But now that you have come across a problem, done something you regret, or accidentally done the right thing, you suddenly understand what that Scripture meant.

So there are two kinds of knowledge of the Word you must gain; theoretical knowledge and experimental knowledge.

The Gifts and the Fruit of the Spirit

When it comes to the Holy Spirit, there are also two aspects that you need to learn. We touched on the first one earlier, which is known as the Gifts of the Spirit. We saw that there were 9 of these.

But there is another aspect of the Holy Spirit as well, which the Bible calls the Fruit of the Spirit. Interestingly, there are also 9 of those. So there are 9 gifts and 9 fruits. And both of these are aspects of the Holy Spirit that we need to learn and use.

We combine this with a theoretical and experimental knowledge of the Scriptures. Then as the Spirit and the Word combine together, God is empowered to work through us to minister to other people. Then we can carry out the work of the ministry effectively.

I would like to look now at how we go about developing each of these. We will start first with the Holy Spirit. How do we go about receiving this tool of the Holy Spirit? You did receive the Holy Spirit when you accepted Jesus as your Savior and were born again. He came to stay and live inside your spirit forever.

Chapter 07 - The Doorway to the Gifts

You have not experienced the power of the Holy Spirit until you walk through a doorway. This doorway is known as the Baptism or Anointing of the Holy Spirit.

That is a big subject on its own, and we will cover that under the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the Doctrine of the Anointing. But I will touch on this briefly here without going into too much detail.

You must go through that doorway. It is not automatically available when you are born again. You have to pass through that doorway and break through into a new relationship with the Holy Spirit. Until then you cannot fully function in these gifts and fruits.

This does not mean that God cannot fully use you. It does not mean that you cannot see any manifestation of these things. But until you have received that anointing and learned to flow in it, these things cannot come to life within you. This applies especially when you go out to do the work of the ministry.

How do you go about getting this Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the anointing that you need? Firstly you should really want it. I have heard people say,

“If God wanted me to have it He would give it to me; so I will wait until He gives it to me. And since He has not given it to me yet, He obviously does not want me to have it.”

Earnest Desire

But the Scripture says we must earnestly desire these things. God gives us things according to what we desire. He never imposes Himself on us in any way. So if you want to have the power of the Holy Spirit, you have to reach out and receive it. I will teach on that in detail when we deal with that subject alone.

You must desire to be used by God for these things to be in your life. Then you will find that all of these are empowered by one very important quality. This quality is love. There is a Scripture that brings these two together. Paul says,

Follow after (pursue, chase) love, and then earnestly desire spiritual gifts.

That word earnestly is a bit stronger than,

“I think it would be great if I had spiritual gifts. It would be cool. I would love God to use me in the spiritual gifts. That would be so nice.”

That is just ordinary desire, it is not earnest desire. Earnest desire is something much stronger than that. It is what we call a ‘core desire’; a passion that gets you to the point where you say,

“I just have to have it! I want it now and I will not give up until I get it.”

That is the kind of desire that moves God. If you do not earnestly desire the power of God or His anointing, then you will not get it. God will not force something on you that you do not want. He is a Gentleman, and He does not impose His will on us.

Experience

So the Baptism of the Holy Spirit opens the door to the Gifts of the Spirit. But what opens the door to the Fruit of the Spirit? This is a little thing called experience. The Fruit of the Spirit comes about when you learn to do what the Bible calls ‘walking in the Spirit’.

That word walking can be illustrated by what you see when you visit the military and you see soldiers marching together in rank. You see them going,

“Left, right, left, right, left, right.”

Usually there is a sergeant or someone walking next to them shouting out the commands. If you have ever been in the army you know that sound.

The key is that there is a walking ‘in step’. And to experience the Fruit of the Spirit we must come to a place where we learn to walk in step with the Holy Spirit. That means you must be able to hear His instructions, and you must obey those instructions.

That is all it means to walk in the Spirit. When you first accept Jesus as your Savior you are not even aware that the Holy Spirit is there because you have not heard His voice yet. It takes experience and spiritual growth for that to happen.

Over time you get to know the voice of the Holy Spirit within you. It certainly helps to put more Scripture in. The Scriptures help us to understand the impressions that come up out of our spirit.

It takes experience to walk in the Spirit and to use the Fruit of the Spirit. So you need to follow after love, which is a possible subject on its own. Then you need to earnestly desire or passionately want the power of God and the Gifts of the Spirit.

And finally we must learn to hear the voice of God and walk in the Spirit. We need to experience God and come to know Him better before we come to the place where the Fruit of the Spirit is manifested in our lives. Then we come to a place where the gifts and the fruit are both manifested.

The Picture of the Dove

One of the best ways of illustrating this is to realize that it all comes from the Holy Spirit. And one of the most common pictures of the Holy Spirit is the picture of a dove.

Imagine a picture of a dove with its wings outstretched. Each of the wings of the dove has feathers - nine on each wing. Consider one wing as being the nine gifts of the Spirit and the other the nine fruits of the Spirit.

For a dove to fly correctly it needs both the wings. A dove flying with one wing is like someone trying to swim with one hand. You could go around in circles and get nowhere.

Some people seem to think that we do not need both the Gifts and the Fruit of the Spirit. Some think that the most important thing is the Gifts; the power and the glory. They get hyped up on the power and the anointing; the glory, the miraculous, and the supernatural.

They think that this is all that counts in ministry because it is exciting stuff. They love to experience that exciting realm of God and the awesome things that take place in the Holy Spirit; when the power of God comes upon you and the Gifts of the Spirit start to manifest.

Then you have another group who are afraid of the Gifts of the Spirit. Some are so afraid of it that they have made a doctrine out of it. They say that the Gifts of the Spirit have been done away with and are not needed any more.

They say that what we really need is the Fruit of the Spirit, because that is far more important. They want to do away with the power, because it is only the fruit that counts. They are simply flapping on the other wing of the dove.

But God wants us to have both of these together in order to be effective in ministry. Both wings should be flapping together for you to have the full power of the Spirit manifesting in and through you. That is how God will be able to pour into you and out through you to other people, in order to carry out the work of the ministry.

Seven Feathers for Ministry

If you look at the nine feathers in each side, you will find that in both cases there are two feathers that are used mostly for you. The other seven you use more for other people. You will see that in the Gifts of the Spirit and in the Fruit of the Spirit. The number seven is God’s perfect number.

So why did God choose nine and only reserve seven of those for ministry. Perhaps it was because He was kind enough to let us use two of them for ourselves.

Some make the mistake of thinking that if they get the power of the Holy Spirit, it becomes a wonderful experience. They go to revival meetings where the power of God is manifested, so that they can shake under the power and fall under the power.

They like to experience the awesome ‘highs’ that we get when the Holy Spirit comes on us, because this is what the Holy Spirit does. But I want you to see that each of these two things takes place through a different kind of operation and relationship that we have with the Holy Spirit.

I want to look briefly at the nine and show you what these two relationships with the Holy Spirit are. They are taught in detail under the Doctrine of the Anointing, but I will mention them in the next chapter so that you to understand them.

Chapter 08 - The Internal and External Anointing

The first operation is known as the Internal Anointing, because it comes from deep down inside of you. It comes from deep within your spirit where the Holy Spirit dwells. The internal anointing is like a deep underground stream that you can drill down to and tap into. Then you can pump the water until it gushes out.

The second is known as the External Anointing. This is what we usually see as the power of God and the anointing. This is the one that brings the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the supernatural and the signs and wonders.

It produces the goose bump feelings that we get and is like a downpour of gushing rain. The Scriptures often speak of God pouring down His blessing, and we sometimes think of the anointing of God as coming down.

On the Day of Pentecost they heard the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and it came down upon them. Even in the Old Testament you will see that Scriptures often use the term, ‘the Spirit came upon them’. So the Holy Spirit can rise up from deep inside you, and the Holy Spirit can also come down upon you.

Each of these different relationships of the Holy Spirit in us gives rise to a different wing. We must have both of them together before we can be fully effective for the Lord. What then are the nine things that come through? Under the external anointing we have the nine gifts of the Spirit, which are:

1. Tongues

2. Interpretation of Tongues

3. Prophecy

4. Word of Wisdom

5. Word of Knowledge

6. Discerning of Spirits

7. Faith

8. Miracles

9. Healings

There are also nine fruits of the Spirit under the internal anointing, which are:

1. Love

2. Joy

3. Peace

4. Patience

5. Kindness

6. Goodness

7. Faith

8. Gentleness

9. Self-Control

Ours to Use

As you look at these, you will see that on both sides there are two that God has given mostly for us, that we use within ourselves. The others are used mostly to pour out to others, but those two we can use for ourselves.

Amongst the Gifts of the Spirit, the gift of tongues is mostly for us to use for ourselves. It is used for prayer and to build ourselves up spiritually.

The gift of faith also enables us to come to a place of believing God for the impossible. It empowers us to do amazing things for God; to believe God and have things happen, both in our lives and in the lives of others. That then leaves seven which are used mainly for others.

When we come to the Fruit of the Spirit we see that love should always be poured out to others. Joy should be contagious and should be spread around. But peace is something that affects your own heart. It takes place within you; what the Bible calls the peace of God that passes understanding.

Patience certainly has to do with how we handle people. And kindness is always something shown to others. Goodness means giving out; being generous, and also involves people.

What is faith? It is the ability to believe, not only in you, but also to believe in others. Some call it faithfulness. But essentially it is not exactly the same as the gift of faith which gives a supernatural ability. This is an active faith, where you are able to have faith in others.

Then there is gentleness, which again concerns how we handle people. But self-control on the other hand is something that helps you to get a hold of yourself. So here again we see two that are used mainly for ourselves, but the other seven are used for others.

Here are our two wings - our nine feathers with seven main ways or different manifestations of the anointing. These come under two main headings; the internal anointing and the external anointing. We need both of them in order to minister effectively. And we need at least all seven on both sides for us to affect other people.

Getting Others to Receive From You

You may think that you only need the supernatural power of God to do the work of the ministry. Pentecostals and Charismatics always like to sit on that side. They say,

“As long as we can be ‘used by God’ in the Gifts of the Spirit, have the power and anointing, we can minister effectively and God will touch peoples’ lives.”

Yes this is true, but how do you get people to come to the place where they are ready to receive from you? There is one person who walked this earth that carried more anointing than anybody else in this world. He was God in human flesh, and according to the Bible He had the anointing without any limitation or restriction.

But when Jesus came to His hometown as a man or a human being, the Bible says that He couldn’t do many miracles there. He couldn’t perform any signs and wonders and He could not even really minister to the people. They looked at Him and said,

“Who does he think he is? We know him; he’s just the carpenter’s son. He grew up amongst us here and we have no confidence in him.”

If people do not have confidence in you and are not prepared to receive from you, then it does not matter how much power you have to give them; it will not affect them. It is not enough to have all the power of God to do the work of the ministry.

It is not even enough to have all the knowledge of the Scriptures and all the experience of life. You need to have some kind of power that will open the hearts of the people and make them ready to receive from you and then from God in you.

That is what the internal anointing is about. It is what the Fruit of the Spirit is about.

Using Love

We must approach people using the Holy Spirit’s ability and power of love. Love is like a light that shines in the darkness. It opens peoples’ hearts wide, and they will not look at you and say,

“I don’t think you are educated enough. I don’t think you are talented enough, and I don’t trust you.”

This world is so lacking in love and you come with a love that people have never seen. We cannot love that way without the Lord. We need that supernatural love which comes from the internal anointing. And when we love people that way, they open their hearts wide.

We need to come with joy. It is a miserable negative world in which we live, so we need to lift people up and spread joy. We need a sense of humor and we should help people to laugh. It will open their hearts wide.

We need to also be patient with them and we need to be kind. We need to be generous, because if you give to someone they feel obligated to give back to you. If you give someone a gift they will be more ready to open their hearts to receive. You need to believe in people and you should be very gentle in how you handle them.

None of these things come naturally no matter how hard you try. There are many in the world in charitable organizations that seem to be doing these things. But they are not really doing it, because they have selfish motives.

Only with God’s anointing and His Spirit flowing out from deep inside you can you do these things unselfishly as a blessing to others. You can show them that God is in you. Then when they see this pouring out from you they will say,

“That is not natural. Nobody has treated me that way before. This person has something special and I should pay attention to it and open my heart to receive.”

Releasing the Anointing

So we get the two sides together, by following after love and earnestly desiring spiritual gifts. Then all we need to do is go out and release it.

How do we let it out? We do it in two simple ways; through the words that we speak and the actions that we carry out.

Is that not what ministry is? Ministry is speaking to people and putting it into action. You do this by not only telling them about God, but showing them what God’s love is like.

We show them through our lives, using our experience and all that God has given us. We show them what God looks like, and so we draw them to Him and meet all their needs.

These are the things that you will need before you can even begin to do ministry. But how do you go about getting these things? How do you obtain knowledge of the Scriptures and the power of the Holy Spirit?

As I already said, you could study the Bible alone, but you need someone else to teach you beyond that. God has given the Teaching Ministry to the Church for this. You could pray alone and wait on God for the power of the Holy Spirit. But God also uses others to impart the power to you that they have received.

You need far more than getting alone in your closet, waiting on God and reading your Bible, if you wish to rise up to the kind of levels of authority that are possible with the call of God.

You will see by the end of this teaching how high you can really go. For now understand the basic things that you need before you can do the work of the ministry. We will look shortly at how you can be trained to get ready and start doing the work of the ministry.

Chapter 09 - Preparing For Ministry

We come now to the most important part of this whole teaching series. I will show you as we end it off, how to actually prepare yourself and be trained to do the work of the ministry.

But before we get into that, I want to put some final touches on the subject. This will help you to understand where you are headed and what your ultimate goal is.

Remember at the beginning of this study I said that there is a difference between a ministry and a calling. You need to understand every possibility that is available to you.

The Right Place to Start

Calling is a progressive, unfolding understanding and revelation of how high you will go in your ministry level. In other words, you can start ministering without even knowing what your calling is. Most people start off like this.

It is not very often that a person gets a revelation up front of what their calling is. I know from my own personal experience, for years before I went into ministry, I wanted God to show me what my calling was.

I remember the first time I was in a meeting where someone was operating in a prophetic ministry. He was calling people out and prophesying over them. He was telling them various things about God’s purpose for their life, and I waited anxiously thinking,

“Come on Lord, let him call me and prophesy over me and tell me what my calling is.”

But he did not notice me, or at least that is what it looked like. I figured that I obviously was not very important to the Lord and did not have a very big calling; otherwise he would have called me out. If was important to the Lord, surely He could have told this prophet what my ministry was.

It took me a long time to find out that the 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. So do not get hung up on the calling issue. I will show you before we end how to go about this.

You have to start somewhere in ministry and work your way through the possibilities. You do this until you find that thing you chew on that tastes like the rubber, and you know you have found your place. Then you will have found your calling.

The Lower Level Ministries

We have been looking at the various levels of ministry. We started with those that begin when we are born again and we have a relationship with the Lord Jesus. Then we saw that it worked up, and we would add to it the influence of the Holy Spirit.

We saw that by adding the Holy Spirit to those basic foundational ministry types, we would add the Gifts and the Fruit of the Spirit. These are two different kinds of empowerment or anointing.

These influences from the Holy Spirit would then help us to add power to our ministry. We can do it better and more effectively.

Many people do not go any further than that. They have found what they like to do in ministry based on the original ministries we looked at.

They have entered into the Gifts of the Spirit. They have begun to grow in the Lord and experience the Fruit of the Spirit. And they are quite happy to minister at that level. They never expect to go any further.

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. Jesus especially is responsible for this and we have not even reached the Father yet in these things.

We started with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But 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, and they 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 which direction does the dove fly? What gives the dove direction and helps it to steer?

It is the same thing that steers an airplane, or even a ship; it is a form of rudder. This is built into every bird and it lies in the tail of the bird. The tail feathers of the dove are the part that does the steering.

So we have another very good picture here. 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 4 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 you begin to rise up in ministry, starting from the lower levels, and you receive an empowerment from the Holy Spirit in the gifts and the fruit. And now you are ready to get moving in ministry.

Now there are five possible directions that you are likely to move in as you rise up higher in the Church as a leader in the area of ministry. You will move into the realm of these five ministries.

Enter the Father

Until now we have still only seen Jesus and the Holy Spirit being involved. Where does the Father come in? He is the ultimate leader and director who controls everything from the top.

So there is something that the Father would be directly involved in addition to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Remember that the members of the Godhead never work independently. They always work together as one.

The Father does not work apart from the Son or the Holy Spirit. So when we move to where the Father Himself becomes involved, we get to the very highest levels of leadership ministry in the Body of Christ.

These are ministry positions of ultimate leadership through which God will direct the Church. The full control of where the dove goes and what it does is of course in its head. That is where the brain lies.

Chapter 10 - The Ministry Offices

Our head is the part that controls the rest of our body. So the head of the dove is a picture of the highest level or ultimate leadership where ministry is concerned. And we can consider the two eyes of the dove as being the two highest leadership levels in the realm of ministry.

Now we have a change of terms and the word Ministry is changed to Office. What is the difference between a ministry and an office? Here is the definition.

An office is something that God has chosen as a permanent appointment to a position. You can progress through various different levels of ministry until you come to a place where you know you have reached your calling.

But when God places a ministry office, it means that the Father Himself has set in place in the church, a specific leadership authority. He then works through that authority to create the ultimate leadership in the Body of Christ.

You must bear in mind that the Fivefold Ministry was given by Jesus. These are not ministry offices, but leadership positions in ministry. We could argue that they have been appointed and they certainly will be appointed as they rise up.

However they will not be appointed in quite the same way as the ultimate ministry offices. There are only two of these, and they are represented by the two eyes of the dove. These two give the church, the ministry and the entire Body of Christ, the direction that God wants it to go in.

Two Special Fivefold Members

Only two members of the Fivefold Ministry are ultimately seen in Scripture to be treated as a higher level office. The first one is the Prophetic Office, and the second is the Apostolic Office.

So we have the Fivefold Ministry, but we have the Prophetic Office and we have the Apostolic Office. What is the difference between the Prophetic Ministry and the Prophetic Office?

Some have tried to teach that you get different kinds of prophets. They use different terms to show these distinctions. But the Prophetic Office is a uniquely appointed position where God places someone in a permanent situation. They stand in the office of one who speaks for God into the Body of Christ Universal.

The role of the prophet is to set the church in order. The prophet puts everyone in their place to make sure that everything is functioning correctly. And the prophet prepares the way ahead by using prophetic decree, to speak God’s Word into the earth and create things that did not exist before.

If you use the allegory of the building of a new road, the prophet would be the one who took the bulldozers, cut down all the growth in the way and took out all the stones to lay the groundwork.

They are the ones who go ahead and prepare the way for the Body of Christ. That is a higher level office and requires a special training. I will show you this more when we consider training.

The Apostolic Office is the highest office of all. It is the leadership office in the Body of Christ. You will see the two offices mentioned frequently in the New Testament; the Prophets and Apostles.

We read that God is in these last days speaking through His Prophets and Apostles. The Church is said to be built upon the foundation of the Prophets and the Apostles, because they are the leadership offices.

Higher Level Leadership

We will see later on that the Apostolic Office also branches into many different divisions and is the ultimate leadership in the church. However that is not what we will be considering in this series on Ministry Made Easy.

That is a higher level training that is outside of the realm of what we are aiming for here. However we will be looking at each of the Fivefold Ministry, which includes the prophet and the apostle but not at an office level. We will look at them at a ministry level.

On completion of this introductory teaching on Ministry Made Easy you can move on to consider Evangelistic Ministry Made Easy, Pastoral Ministry Made Easy, Prophetic Ministry Made Easy, Teaching Ministry Made Easy and even Apostolic Ministry Made Easy.

You will be able to find the place that God is leading you to and identify your calling.

Functions of Apostles in Office

The Apostles in Office will lay out the pattern for the churches and appoint leadership in the Body of Christ. They will also train the Fivefold Ministry. So when you move up into office level you are not only doing the work. You are leading the way by laying out the pattern and training others to come up to that level.

Not everyone will get up to office level. This is because they are unique positions that God has predetermined.

Here are all the possibilities then that are available to you in ministry. You may start from simple basic ministry, operating in the Gifts of the Spirit, and learning to use the internal anointing of the Fruit of the Spirit.

Then you can move up into the Fivefold Ministry which are the ultimate leadership positions. The exception is the very highest level which God has reserved for Himself. There alone is where the Father Himself gets involved.

A Relationship with the Father

Nobody can move into those offices without coming into a personal relationship with God the Father Himself. You can move up as high as the Fivefold Leadership Ministries, working mainly with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Many who have been in the Fivefold Ministry all their lives have never yet come into the Throne Room. They had never had a personal face to face confrontation with the Father Himself. That is something that God has uniquely reserved for those that He has called to that higher office.

So where has God called you to be? At what level has He called you to function in your ministry? You probably won’t know until you get there. But how do you start? You start by being trained for the work of the ministry.

It does not come naturally or full blown. You cannot say that the day you were born again and accepted Jesus as your Savior the Holy Spirit came in and you got all the gifts and the fruit. You did not get all the knowledge and power you need to go off and do the work of the ministry.

Many seem to think that it is that way. They think that all they need to do is pray for hours a day and read the Bible. They think that they can then go off and God will raise them up to become one of the leaders in the Body of Christ.

No, you may be able to develop your own spiritual life that way. But when it comes to working with other people, you will have to learn a lot more than your own personal experience. Otherwise you cannot be effective in doing the work of the Lord.

Teachers and Trainers

That is why one of the ministries God has raised up is the Teaching Ministry to teach people. That is why at the highest office level, God raises up trainers who can train the lower level ministries. They are absolutely necessary.

After Jesus called His disciples, He spent three years teaching and training them. Only after that did He breathe into them and say,

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Then it was only on the Day of Pentecost that they received the external anointing and the Gifts of the Spirit before going out. But they had a three year ministry training before they went off.

Today we love to have everything instant. We would love to just go and be trained and come out with a PhD degree. Now we think that because we have the highest level of education, we can go and take our place as the big leader.

The Fallacies of Education

That is the way we love to do it, and in the Professional realm people still do that. They go to university and get their professional degrees. Then they come back highly qualified, only to find out that while they were studying, other people were doing the work.

That qualified person now steps into his or her superior position in the workplace to lead others who really know how to do the job. Sometimes such a person has to go through a practical training and learn from the lower level employees how to actually do the work.

Once all of that practical knowledge is added to head knowledge, only then can this person be qualified to stand in the authority of a leader.

Which is the easiest way to do this? Is it to go to university and get a degree, then return and humble yourself to learn the job starting from the lower levels and working up?

Who do you suppose becomes a more effective leader? Is it the one who followed this route? Or is it the person who starts out at the lowest level, perhaps just sweeping the floors?

This person works their way up through the ranks and learns how to do the job before adding knowledge to practical experience. Then they build up to a position of leadership. And from there they can look down and identify with each employee in the company at all levels.

Is this not the best way to be trained? But we have made the same mistake in the church, because we have followed the patterns of this world.

Even while we are still at school, we think that we must rise up and get qualified. We must go to College and study, until we get a piece of paper that says we are now qualified to rise up into a higher position of authority. We have a world full of highly educated people who don’t know what to do with their knowledge.

The Opposite Extreme

But we also get those on the other side of the road. They think that they simply need to get saved, filled with the Spirit and get out there and do the work.

They say that the Lord will lead them and teach them. As they go out, He will show them how to do the work of the ministry. If anyone gets hurt along the way, it cannot be avoided. It is part of the learning process.

The church is a mess because of people like that, who have not taken the time to get properly grounded in what they need. So there are both of these extremes.

I would like to suggest that the best way of training is to cover all areas that are needed according to God’s pattern. I would like to introduce what I believe should be the pattern of training for the End Times Church.

Chapter 11 - Theoretical vs. Experimental Knowledge

What is the pattern of training? You need to first gain two different kinds of knowledge. The first is theoretical knowledge and the second is experimental knowledge. Many are confused on the second word because it is similar to the word experiential. These two are not exactly the same.

The first is based on the word ‘experiment’ and the second is based on the word ‘experience’. The knowledge that we gain in life may be based on the things that we learn and put into our heads; also the things that we experience in life.

Experiential knowledge is the ultimate knowledge and it embraces both theoretical knowledge and experimental knowledge. Experimental knowledge however simply means the opposite of theory; it means practical knowledge.

So we should learn the theory and then put that into practice. And when we combine those two together, we get experience. Then we have experiential knowledge which is our ultimate goal.

This may be a minor issue, but it is good to understand what these terms mean. We need to learn both the theory and the practice. And as we combine those two together and live them, then we gain the ultimate knowledge which is based on our experience in life.

The Importance of Grounding

So where do you start with these two kinds of knowledge? Firstly you need a foundation or groundwork for our ministry. Getting back to the dove, it is clear that things are fine while the dove is flying. It has the power of its wings, the tail feathers are working and the dove is soaring high.

But a bird cannot stay in the air forever. It has to eventually come back down to the ground. That is when the two insignificant body parts called the feet come into play. These are very limited and a bird can only run along the ground with its feet.

There is not much power in those little feet, but they give the bird stability. Without those feet it cannot survive on the ground. It cannot land on a tree or on the ground, which prevents the bird from doing much at all.

What do these two feet represent? What is the most important thing that we need as a grounding to carry us when the anointing is not present? Surely it is the Scriptures; the Word of God.

We know that the Bible consists of two parts, known as the Old Testament and the New Testament. This is our grounding and foundation; the part that takes us through when the anointing is not in operation.

You should know from experience that the anointing is not in operation 24 hours a day. It comes on you when it is time to ‘take to the air’ and do the work that God has called you to do. But what about the rest of the time, when you are not flying?

You need a grounding in the Word. How do you get grounded in the Word? It is not as fun as taking to the air and flapping your wings as you fly. We humans understand this because we do not have wings.

Understanding Bible Doctrine

That is why the first and most important part of your training, which starts under the heading of theory, is getting grounded in the Scriptures. So the first part of your training should be in Bible Doctrine.

What is Bible Doctrine? Is it not that theological religious stuff? No, doctrine simply means ‘teaching’. So Bible Doctrine is the teachings of the Bible, or what the Bible teaches.

Why do you need Bible Doctrine? Because when you read the Scriptures you are reading a whole lot of things that you have never seen before and that you don’t understand. I described this earlier as like walking in a forest with plants everywhere.

What Bible Doctrine does is to give you a kind of skeleton on which to hang all the meat. Or you could think of it as being a pile of boxes or compartments that you can put things in.

If you could set up a place with lots of compartments or boxes, then the easiest way to study the Scriptures is like this. As you read and come across an interesting passage, you can say,

“I recognize this; it fits into that box over there”.

So you put it into that box and read on. You continue to do that. And as you read the Bible, you can take everything that you read and put it into all the right boxes. Then when you put all the boxes together, they become like a jigsaw puzzle.

You have many little pieces that made no sense before. But now they start fitting together and the Bible starts to make sense.

You could spend your whole life reading the Bible and trying to discover those boxes. Or you could let someone else, who already knows the boxes, show you what they are.

Such a person could give you a grounding in the main teachings of the Scriptures. Then as you read the Bible, everything starts to come to life.

There is a process known as the teaching process, which works like this. If you wish to learn something, then this is how you teach or learn. You start with something that you know and then move to something that you did not know. In other words you must move from the known to the unknown.

It is much easier to take something that you already know and add some extra information to it. Then, because you already know a bit about it, it makes sense. The pieces drop into place.

If you read the Bible alone, you are reading a lot of unknowns. All you have is a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces. You may think you have a huge, awesome puzzle with thousands of pieces. You can even boast about your puzzle.

You have this head full of Bible knowledge, like a puzzle, but then someone asks you to show them the picture. What will you say? You have not had time to put the pieces together yet. But you have an awesome box of puzzle pieces, bigger than anyone else.

You may know the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. But can you put it together into a picture to show people that they can understand. Do you even understand yourself where all the pieces fit? You probably don’t. You must start with a known, and Bible Doctrine becomes your known.

Learning Some History

Now you start adding other things to that. You could learn about history.

I hated history when I was at school. You learned about what other people did in the past; the lives they lived and the cultures they had. I found it very boring. But as I grew up I realized that the world in which we live today came about because of what happened back there.

Sometimes you are not fully able to understand where you are now until you learn about some of the things that happened back there. When you read the Bible now, how much do you understand; what do you picture and see in your mind?

It helps to have an idea of what happened back there in Bible history. It is good to know what kind of traditions they had. Also what clothes they wore, what kind of food they ate and what kind of lives they lived.

You need some kind of external knowledge, so that when you read the Scriptures you understand a bit more clearly what the writer is talking about. You can then see it through the eyes of that person and the kind of life they lived back there.

You cannot get this knowledge from the Bible. You will have to get it from the world. You may have to get it from history books and other secular writings that tell you about people and cultures from the past.

That is a lot of extra knowledge. But if you want to be effective in ministry then you need to know these things. This applies especially if the Lord leads you to travel the world and go to other nations. You need to learn about those nations and their background, so that you know how to present the Word to them in a way that they will understand.

Learning about Human Nature

You also need to learn a bit about human nature. And if you think I mean learning psychology you are wrong. Please do not go and study psychology.

Psychology and psychiatry were created by godless men who tried to explain God away and get rid of sin. Their purpose was to let people live the way they wanted to live, instead of the way God wants us to live.

You simply need knowledge about people. Some of this you can learn by your own experience. Or you could learn from the experience of others who have lived a bit longer and have been involved with many different kinds of people.

You can be taught and trained about how human nature works; how people think and operate. Then when you come to ministering to people, you understand a bit better what kind of person you are dealing with. Now you are in a better position to start ministering to them.

All of these things are only theory. They are knowledge that must get into our heads. It is very important knowledge, and without it you cannot be very effective in ministry. But you must move beyond that also into experimental knowledge.

We will cover this next in the final section of this study. We will look at experimental knowledge and how to come finally to the place where you know your calling. Then you can spend the rest of your life doing what God has called you to.

Chapter 12 – Ministry Training

We come now to the final principles involved in training for ministry. We said at first that you need to learn theory. This includes Bible Doctrine, the nature of man, traditions, history and human nature.

Basically what you need to learn is best expressed in the words, ‘How To’. Theory however usually tends to teach you ‘What To’. So there needs to be a move to ‘How To’, even though both are still part of theoretical training.

You are learning principles, so as you come to be trained for ministry your first foundation should be a grounding in Bible Doctrine. That is what we offer in our Training School. And we hope that this introductory series on ministry training will help you to realize that a foundation in the Word is very important.

Presenting the Word

As you become grounded in the doctrines of the Word, you will also need extra training on how to actually do the work of the ministry. So what is the first important thing you should learn? You need to learn how to present the Word.

It is not enough to only know a lot about the Word. You should know how to present that knowledge to other people. This never comes automatically.

The world is full of people who have great knowledge. But they cannot take that knowledge and impart it to others. They may be able to do this in a classroom, where students are forced to listen to a boring teacher; someone who just spouts what he or she has learned.

You need to know how to present the Word. But before you can do that, you need to learn the Word. That is why you must start with Bible Doctrine.

You cannot move into the phase of presenting the Word practically, until you are trained on how to do this. This includes some knowledge of human nature, because you should learn how different people react.

There are different temperaments and natures, and you should understand them before you try to present the Word. They will all respond in different ways.

Part of the training then is on how to speak, teach and preach. The practical side will deal with this in detail, but you must start with the theory first.

Influencing Others

You also need to know how to influence others. You might be able to talk and tell people what you know. You might think you can teach the Word, and you have memorized all the Scriptures. You could quote them one after the other.

You might be able to take anyone who will listen and speak to them for hours. But when they walk away, what effect did you have on them? Did they say?

“Wow, she has such Bible knowledge. I am impressed. I wish I knew that much about the Word.”

Perhaps you influenced them to like you, but is this really what you wanted to do? Certainly not! You want to influence people for the Lord, because that is what ministry is.

How can you learn to do that? You can learn from people who have practiced it. You can also learn some of the theory of how to go about it. You must not only impart knowledge, but do it in such a way that they are affected by it and their lives are changed.

In the end it will take more than your words and actions to bring change to someone. It will take the anointing of God; both the external and internal anointing.

Internal Anointing Influences People

When you go through more studies on that subject, you will find that the internal anointing is used more to influence people than the external anointing. It opens their hearts to receive from you and from the Lord.

What is the main effect that you want to create in others? You want to reproduce yourself in them. You want to take everything that God has done in you and duplicate it in them.

All of these are things you should be learning in your ministry training. So if your training takes you no further than just learning the doctrines of the Bible, you will fail in ministry.

You must learn how to present the Word in a way that is interesting and people want to receive it. You must learn to present it in a way that will change lives. You must learn how to take everything that God has done in you and pour it into somebody else.

Until you can reproduce in them what God did in you, you will not be effective in ministry.

All of this you should learn in your theoretical ministry training. These subjects should all be covered in the studies that you do in a ministry training course. And they will be covered in the training series that we are offering, to prepare you for the work of the ministry. But that is still not enough.

Once you have learned all of these things, how do you go about putting them into practice? Will you be like a professional fresh out of university with all the degrees?

Such a person steps into the workplace, and probably has an office with his name on the door. But he does not know how to do the job yet. He can sit there with his name up and all the qualifications listed behind his name. People may respect and look up to him or her. But what effect is this person having on the lives of others? This does not come automatically.

Learning to Evangelize

I remember the first time I learned all about evangelism and how to lead souls to the Lord. I got really excited about it and studied all the theory and the Scriptures. I learned how to handle arguments and everything I would need. I had a head full of knowledge.

I was fortunate that the Pastor of the church I was in at that time had a real emphasis on evangelistic ministry. He insisted that everyone should have a turn to go out onto the streets on a Saturday morning to evangelize the lost. That meant going out in public, speaking to complete strangers and trying to lead them to the Lord.

Have you ever tried to do that? I had seen people doing this and watched videos of them doing it. I had learned it in theory from books. But now I was being forced to put that theory into practice.

You Need a Kick From Behind

It is a bit like learning to swim. You may have figured out what to do in the water, but sometimes you need someone to kick you from behind to make you fall into the water.

You probably start off floundering and almost drowning. But you suddenly remember all the principles you learned, and you give them a try. You may have hated the person who pushed you in. But afterwards you were glad that they did, because now you learned some practical ways of doing things.

Ministry is very much like this. Having the theory is not enough. You may have the theory, with titles and letters behind your name and you have advertised yourself as an expert. But do not think that people will be knocking down your doors and asking you to minister to them. They will not do it.

Perhaps you have the idea that you should just get qualified enough and increase your knowledge, until you are an expert at ministry. You want to come to the place where people will recognize your position and knowledge.

Do you think that people will then flock to you so that you can do the work of the ministry? It will not happen. You need somebody to teach you how to do this ministry. You need experimental knowledge which we will get to that shortly.

Working With People

The first thing you must learn is how to work person to person. I remember when I first felt the call to the ministry. I had visions based on what I had seen on TV and in videos.

The evangelist would stand and roll up his sleeves, and declare that he was going to pray for the sick. He would call for a healing line to form so that he could pray for each one.

The great man of God would then lay his hands on the people and pray the prayer of faith. And miracles would begin to take place.

I could see myself doing that. I could see myself standing in front of crowds of people. I could see them coming forward to receive the healing power of God which I was going to minister to them. It was an exciting idea, and I had big visions of rising up in the public eye and becoming a great man of God.

Many people go to university and they think something similar. They think that their degrees and qualifications will automatically put them into a position of being an influence on others.

In actual fact it always starts by you influencing only one person. Probably the first ‘bubble’ that was burst in you when you tried to do the work of the ministry, was that you could not find anyone to minister to.

Perhaps you only had your family members. How boring is that! But you must learn to minister to every single person one at a time. You must practice all the things that you learned by working person to person.

You do not start full blown with a public ministry, moving in signs and wonders, and having your name splashed everywhere. It starts behind the scenes where nobody even notices it. You begin with lower level ministries.

You could begin with evangelism by simply sharing the Lord will people. It could start with simple counseling, where people come and share their problems with you, and you just pray with them.

You may not know what to advise them because you know nothing yet. But as you learn more, you can do this better. We will give you ‘Counseling Made Easy’ to learn how to counsel. But you must start by ministering to one person at a time.

Group Ministry

When you are ready for it, you will then come to a group ministry. Sometimes you will already begin to see that when you step out in faith to minister to one person.

I remember once when we went out to share the Gospel. There were many people there, and as I began to share the Word with one person, someone else came and joined us. Before I knew it there were more and I ended up with a whole group of people standing there as I shared the Gospel.

It was a wonderful experience. There I was standing in public and preaching. I had never done that before. I had an idea in my mind of how it would be, but I had to start with one person. Then it led to a larger group.

I remember the first time I stood up to preach to a group of people in church. I had lived this in my mind for years and dreamed of the day that this would happen. And then it came to pass.

We had a combined youth meeting with another church, and because I was one of the leaders they asked me to preach. The Pastor was there also, along with senior church members.

I had never done that before. I had learned all the theory. In my mind I could see myself preaching, but I had never actually done it. But I stepped into the water and learned to swim.

I was amazed that I did extremely well and was blessed. Many people make a mess the first time they stand up. They stammer and stutter, mumble and bumble and open up the Bible in the wrong place.

We all have to go through these experiences before learning to qualify to minister effectively. You cannot avoid that part of your ministry training. So you need to have someone working with you to give you practical exposure.

Preaching to a group of people publicly is one of the most difficult things to do. It is a known fact that standing up and speaking to a crowd of people is something that many people fear more than death. It is not an easy thing to do.

Learning to Write

So where else can you start? You could start by learning to write. What you write can be read by many people. It is a practical way of taking your knowledge and using it experimentally.

Writing is a very important part of ministry, and in today’s world knowledge is a big thing. The Internet is dispensing knowledge all the time. You have so much available to you if you can learn to develop and use your writing ability.

We will provide a full writing course, showing how to develop that skill and use it to present your ministry.

Becoming a Leader

You need to also learn how to become a leader of others. What kind of leader are you? No matter where you come from, there is always someone below you. In a home you might have brothers or sisters that are below you. That makes you their leader.

If you are a parent, then you have children under you, and you are a leader. So no matter where you are in life, you will always learn to lead. There will always be someone below you.

You need to practice becoming a leader, especially if you want to rise up into the higher leadership ministries.

Chapter 13 – Mentorship and Spiritual Parenting

You can still do all of these things that we have been sharing about very much on your own. But usually you will need someone to give you that ‘kick into the pool’. This is where the most important person in your ministry training comes into play.

That person will be your mentor. The word mentor is used loosely these days, but what exactly is a mentor? Often someone will refer to a book they have read, and they will call the author their mentor.

Did they ever meet that person? No, he may have died before you were born. So he really was not your mentor then was he? He may have been your educator and taught you and given you knowledge.

A mentor is someone who is involved with you personally. Such a person takes you and puts pressure on you and forces you. Your first mentor was the one who kicked you into the pool; the person that you probably hated. They pushed you into doing something you did not want to do.

Time Limited

Training under a mentor is concentrated training. It takes place for only a short period of time and it is very intense. So the first thing you need to know about mentorship is that it is time-limited.

Mentorship is never long term and it is never permanent. The work of a mentor in your life only has a short time span, and then it is over.

Goal Limited

The work of a mentor is also goal-limited. In other words, the mentor will only take you up to a certain point until you reach a specific goal. Then their work is over.

A mentor can only teach you what they are good at. This means that it is not enough to have only one mentor in your life. You will need many mentors, and each one will take you to what they are experts in.

For a limited time they will train you until you are able to do the same skill that they are good at. Then their time with you is over and done.

How many mentors have you had in your training for ministry? This will depend on how far up the ladder you plan to go. Each new level that you move up to in your ministry could require a different mentor.

So if you thought your first mentor was bad, just wait until you reach the higher levels. You will find that the pressure increases and the deaths come more frequently.

You have to learn to change and qualify to put into practice what is needed for your ministry. So you can have many different mentors, each taking you to different levels.

Spiritual Parenting

Then we come to the next highest level of training, which is spiritual parenting. You need a spiritual parent, but would you like to become a child again? Usually childhood is something we hated.

Perhaps you could not wait to leave home and get away from your parents. Every teenagers dream is that they could not wait to grow up. You are no longer a child, but you are an adult and now you can do your own thing.

Then you go into ministry training, and unfortunately it starts all over again. Spiritual parenting always begins with a new spiritual relationship. This could start when you are born again. The person who led you to the Lord was a spiritual parent, because they birthed you into the Kingdom of God.

It can also take place at higher levels. It could begin with your ministry training. Or it might begin when you reach training for higher level ministry.

The difference between spiritual parenting and mentorship however, is that spiritual parenting tends to be a longer term thing. Spiritual parenting then becomes an ultimate goal.

Here is how it works. You start out as a child; you have a parent that you look up to. And as a child you might say,

“When I grow up I want to be just like my mother or father.”

The growing up part takes a long time, but eventually you reach that goal of becoming like your parent. The parent has then reproduced themselves in you. This is what a spiritual parent has to do.

Problems with Spiritual Parenting

But there are a few problems that can take place here. Firstly, spiritual parenting like mentorship, must reach a place where children break free and go through a process we call ‘individuation’. The child then becomes an adult in their own right.

When do you break free of your parent? When you have finally received all that the parent has, and have taken the image of that person. You have then finally ‘become’ that person.

Mentorship only takes one particular quality in the mentor which is being passed to the one being trained. But in spiritual parenting you want to become all that you saw in your spiritual parent. So it embraces a lot more.

But here is a problem. What if your parent has not remained static and in one place? As a child I could look up to my Dad and think,

“I would like to be just like my Dad one day. I would like to do what he does, and become like he is.”

I then set my goal in life to become like my Dad, but I find out that my Dad is also still thinking like a child and is still reaching forward to his parent. He is still progressing and aiming to go higher and higher, so he keeps changing.

How can I keep up with him? It is not enough to say you will be like your parent, but you need to set a point in time. You must want to be like your parent is at one particular point.

In most cases this is not a problem. This is because usually when we reach a place of maturity in our life, we stop progressing and we say,

“I have found my place.”

In fact, I will show you that when you reach that place is when you have found your calling. So now when you as a spiritual child reach out to become like your spiritual parent, we assume that your spiritual parent has finally found their calling.

They are now settled and continue to fulfill that calling. Then they can bring a spiritual child up to that same level.

A Parent in Process

But what happens if the spiritual parent is still progressing? I know this from experience, because I tried to bring my spiritual children up to my level. Many did extremely well, but there was a problem because I did not remain in one place.

I continued to grow up to higher levels, and did not let them go when they reached the level they were meant to. It is what they were supposed to do, so many fell by the wayside and did not continue.

Those who continued to hang on were holding on tight and being dragged on the ground, because they were not meant to hang on. They were meant to let go at the level God had called them to be.

Find Your Life Calling

So I would like to end this subject by considering how you go about finding your life’s calling. What exactly is your Life Calling? It is the most important thing of all.

What has God called you to be and to do in this world and in this life? As I said earlier, the revelation of this is progressive. Your life calling depends on how big your vision is. It also depends on God’s purpose for your life, because He has predetermined the level that you will go to.

Do not think that you can keep going higher and higher when you feel like it. God has from the beginning set a ceiling on how high you will go in your ministry calling. When you reach that calling you will know it. But when you first start out, you will not know it.

The only thing you know at the start is that you want to do ministry. You simply ‘bite’ on different things and test to see how they taste. Some of them taste good; others do not.

Often it takes years before you finally chew on something and think,

“I like this! I am going to eat it from now on.”

Chapter 14 - How to Know Your Calling

So how do you know when you have found your life’s calling? Here is a simple little rule that you can apply. You have come to a place where you can say to yourself,

“I am happy with what I am doing, and I can see myself doing this indefinitely on into the future; for the rest of my life if necessary, unless the Lord changes it.”

Unless the Lord gives you something extra, you are happy with where you are right now and you can continue to do that.

Many people never find that place, because they are always striving to find an elusive goal and what their calling and ministry is.

So you sit and wait, as I did, for a prophet to come and prophesy over you and tell you what you are called to do.

“Thus says the Lord, I have called you to be a pastor.”

So I go and do my full pastoral training and become qualified as a pastor. Then I must come and learn to do the work of the ministry.

No, that is the wrong way. That is why most of the time God will not tell you what you final calling is. He will lead you a step at a time and he will say,

“Let’s try you out on something. Here is a broom and there is a bucket. Go and wash the floor”.

But you thought that you were called to be the Managing Director. Perhaps you are, but you are not ready to step into his office yet.

So start where you are; take the opportunities that are available and begin with the lower ministries. Earnestly desire spiritual gifts and follow after love. Put into practice everything you have learned and continue to learn as much as you can.

Get into the Word and take study courses, then get out there and put into practice what you have learned. Do this until your ministry becomes wide and varied. You will find after a while that it starts to change.

My Personal Experience

I remember that when I first started out I didn’t know what God had called me to be. I was looking at my own life experience, and I always had a compassion for people who had gone through the same problems I had in life. I came to a brilliant conclusion. I thought,

“God had called me to help people with problems.”

What a great revelation! Since my life had been filled with problems, obviously God had called me to help people with problems.

The very first full time ministry I ever had, I told the Lord,

“Give me a church that has people with problems in it.”

What a silly thing to ask for. I got the worst church in the country, and it nearly killed me. I was not ready for it.

Previously, I had discovered all about demons and how to do deliverance. I knew then that God had called me to a deliverance ministry.

But every time I tried to cast demons out of people they got upset. The pastor got upset because the church was becoming too demon conscious, and I caused a big problem. All I was trying to do was fulfill my ‘calling’.

Then I began to study the Word and it came to life. I found myself wanting to just teach the Word. Now I was confused and I argued with the Lord. It did not make sense, because if I was called to a deliverance ministry, then why was I doing teaching now?

That was many years ago, and I found out eventually that I was called to something far higher than just a teacher. It took me many years to find the place where I am right now. In fact it is only recently that I came to the place where I am settling down and finally know what my calling is.

So do not feel bad if you don’t know what your calling is. Get involved in whatever ministry God gives you. Let the passion that burns in you just flow out into practical ministry, by helping and ministering to others.

Do It This Way

Prepare yourself; learn as much as you can. Submit yourself to those who mentor you and train you. Find yourself a spiritual parent and say,

“I would like to become like that person.”

Start with that as your first goal. You might find that when you reach that goal, you have found your calling. Or the Lord may take you higher and bring in a different spiritual parent. That can also happen.

Whatever the case, ministry is really simple. There is nothing difficult about it. It is simply learning to flow out to others with all that God has given you.

Continue doing this until you find that ‘spiritual career’, where you have finally found your place in life. Then you can say comfortably,

“I’ve got it. I know what my ministry calling is now, and I’m going to do this the best that I can, for as long as I live or until Jesus comes.”

You will then be in a position to be very effective for the Kingdom of God.

While you are in that position, we are offering you all of the resources that you need, and many trainings that you will need. We will be there to mentor you, and in time to offer spiritual parenting when God brings people together.

You will come finally that place of identifying Your Ministry Calling.

To find out more about all of the training courses we offer in both ministry and business, why not visit us at

http://www.gbm-academy.com

There you will also be able to receive additional lessons and practical projects based on this book.

You Have Reached The End of This Book

There is More For You:

If you have not yet seen it then check out "Using Your Ministry Gifts" which is the perfect companion book to this teaching. These two books are meant to be together and are often refered to as The Twins.

This teaching and much more are available on LesCrause.com, where you can find access online to everything that we have published, in video and text format. You may also purchase more products on our GBMI Bookshop.

If you are interested in the full bible study course you can find it on the GBM Schools Website below.

LesCrause.com: http://www.lescrause.com/

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Table of Contents

Title

Dove

Copyright

Chapter 01 – Ministry vs. Calling

Chapter 02 - Ministry or Calling

Chapter 03 - Finding Your Calling

Chapter 04 – Levels of Ministry

Chapter 05 – Starting With Body Ministry

Chapter 06 - Necessities for Ministry

Chapter 07 - The Doorway to the Gifts

Chapter 08 - The Internal and External Anointing

Chapter 09 - Preparing For Ministry

Chapter 10 - The Ministry Offices

Chapter 11 - Theoretical vs. Experimental Knowledge

Chapter 12 – Ministry Training

Chapter 13 – Mentorship and Spiritual Parenting

Chapter 14 - How to Know Your Calling

There is More For You