A letter to young ministers: Are we in ministry or an industry?

My greatest cry as a young man now is that God won’t permit me to pass through this world without making any impact on this generation through the Gospel of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ.

My greatest plight is not the death factor, but that after marriage, career, and school and after making babies, that I will be dead and gone and no man will say “if it had not been this young man- my life would have been in a mess.

And I am convinced this is the genuine heartbeat of every reasonable youth reading this. I woke up this dawn and my prayer was “God please recruit me and cause me to exhibit your glory, God please take me beyond the corporate errands of going to work from 8:00 am to 5:00 Pm”. Why am I here? Am I here to just marry and make babies and then work and go on retirement and die? God- I am a youth, Use me NOW or NEVER!!

Beloved, this missive is not to pontificates self and stupor God, but I interact with not less than 150 youth every day and I can say that the youth in this generation if care is not taken- God will have no other choice than to still keep the old men in position and pass us by, why? Because we are not READY, and those of us who seems to be ready- we are not willing and those of us willing are confused.

“ Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were BORN I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations."… Jer 1:4-5.”

“Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was BORN the LORD called me; from my mother's womb he has spoken my name. Isaiah 49:1”

Watch the scriptures above, you will notice one common denominator and that’s the word, ‘BORN’. Meaning all these mighty guys were not brought from the ground neither did they fell from a tree or the third heaven-they didn’t just appear on earth. All of them were born like all of us, yet some walked on water, raised the dead, healed the sick, caused the sun to come back ten degrees, brought a heavy axe back from the water by a mere placement of a wood on the surface, called fire from heaven and preached the gospel with such power and alacrity.

These guys responded to the CALL right from their mother’s womb. They knew that it’s for the sake of the ministry they were born and it’s because of the ministry they will die, so if they die doing it, they didn’t waste their life- they have rather fulfilled DESTINY. The company you are working for? Can you die for the company, if your answer is NO, you are in the wrong loop.

Why my tears and cry? Because I have met young men doing ministry as though it’s because there was nothing to do so “let’s do ministry”. Young man, we don’t do ministry as a supportive work, wrong. We don’t do ministry to impress, wrong. We don’t do ministry to feed, wrong. We don’t do ministry to show off, wrong. We don’t do ministry to increase the money in our savings, wrong and we don’t even do ministry to build edifices. We do ministry to improve lives beginning from our household then to the nations of the world.

If Paul had come into the ministry because of what to eat or wear, we will not have been hearing of him today. If Elijah came into ministry because of what to save, our pastors’ wouldn’t have been calling them mentors. If Jeremiah responded to the call of God because of building his apartments or payment of fees, Trust me he would have dropped the call long ago, because at a point in time he said “I want to quit but there is fire in my bones that won’t permit me to quit”. That doesn’t mean he can’t quit, he could quit anytime but what was the indicator for his continuity? He was FULLY PERSUADED. And that’s what we young men are lacking, if not, we wouldn’t have quit ministry when we got a new job at the bank or the oil company. Pause, let’s check and ask ourselves: these white color jobs we are doing and awaiting retirement, is this what we were originally born to do? HOLD IT

Conclusively, let me remind us: if we ever are found to love the pulpit more than Jesus, then let’s reverse our priorities. If we are ever found of mounting bill boards than building integrity, young man- we are in trouble, If we are ever found with the fear of losing the crowd than losing his Word in us- we are in dangerous times and if we are ever found of raising money at the end of every gathering than calling souls for repentance, young man- lets repent, the end is not pleasant.And just a quick one, God is still recruiting people for His kingdom work, mind you- No matter how special you are, you can always be replaced and forgotten.

PRAYER: GOD SET ME ON FIRE ONCE MORE. IN JESUS’ NAME.

R. Duafah ([email protected])