Back from a two-week hiatus, we resumed our Stewardship Series with another teaching on relationships. This time, specifically about ministry, coming from 1 Peter 4:7-11:
“The end of all things is at hand. Therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace. Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God. Whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies. In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory, dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
Most of us treat ministry as something somebody else does. The pastor preaches. The apostle leads. The worship leader plays. We show up, take our seats, and absorb. Peter wasn’t writing to that arrangement, and the church we have inherited is paying for our quiet rebrand of what he actually said.
Deployed, Not Warehoused
What we want, what Peter wants, is a church where saints are deployed. Not stockpiled. Not warehoused in a building once a week so we can collect a sermon and head home. Deployed means equipped on Sunday and sent out everywhere else—into school, workplace, community, home. The gift in our hands isn’t for us.
In a deployed church, every believer can name three people in their orbit they are praying for and pursuing. New believers get absorbed into the body personally, not handed off to a department. Mature saints are commissioned into real assignments, not stuck warming pews. Hospitality is normal. Inviting is normal. Following up is normal—not the showy performative kind, the kind where we actually notice that someone hasn’t been around in three weeks and we pick up the phone.
That is the vision. None of it is novel. Most of us would say we believe it. We just don’t live it.
The Collapse of Horizontal Ministry
There is vertical ministry—the pastor preaching down to the pews—and there is horizontal ministry, where we minister to one another, side by side. The horizontal part has collapsed. Not slipped. Not declined. Collapsed.
Hard Truth: In 1993, 89% of Christians said it was their personal responsibility to share their faith. By 2018 it was 64%. Last year it was 33%. A 56% decline in a single generation.
Only 23% of churchgoers are both born again and have shared their faith with a non-Christian in the past year. Seventy percent of unchurched Americans have never been personally invited to church by anyone. Only about 2% of church members invite anyone to church in a given year.
Two percent. That is not a slow leak. That is a closed valve.
“We are the only version of Christ that some people will ever see.”
The two-tier model where ministry is for professionals has produced a generation of consumers in the pews and a generation of unreached neighbors outside of them. The gospel has not gotten weaker—we have more tools to teach it than at any moment in history. The shortage is not information. The shortage is willingness.
The Two-Tier Lie
Underneath every symptom is one upstream problem. Somewhere along the way we adopted a theology that quietly divided the room. There is the paid, celebrated, anointed leader at the top. Then there is everyone else. Peter wrote that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Most of us would say we believe that. Few of us live like it. The royal priesthood becomes them—Pastor So-and-So. Apostle So-and-So. That person with the microphone.
Once we believe ministry is for them, the rest follows. Faith becomes a solo endeavor—we read the Bible alone, we watch sermons alone, we form private opinions in private silence. The equipping pipeline breaks down because nobody is building a Joshua or an Elisha or a Timothy. Fear of inadequacy creeps in—44% of practicing Christians avoid faith conversations specifically because they fear rejection—because we have made ministry feel like a credential we do not have. Performance creep follows; evangelism gets rebranded as a sales pitch, discipleship gets rebranded as a curriculum. Eventually we lose vision into our own assignments. Most believers cannot even name their five.
Strip every downstream symptom away and the question is the same. Do we actually believe we are the priesthood, or do we believe ministry is somebody else’s job?
Stop Waiting to Feel Ready
The fix is not a program. It is a posture. We name our five—the specific people God has placed in our orbit, by name, today. We identify our gifts, ideally inside a fellowship that can speak life into them rather than an app. We lower the bar to invitation; 82% of unchurched people say they would come if a friend asked. So we ask. We invest in basic apologetics—not seminary, just the ability to give our own testimony when somebody asks why we believe. We practice hospitality, whatever that looks like in our season.
Finally, we stop waiting to feel ready. The stewardship of our ministry assignment is not something we are always going to feel qualified for. The question is whether we trust God to supply what we need, and whether we start by giving him our yes.
Philip is the cleanest picture of this. Fresh out of a food-distribution assignment (Acts 6), he completes a successful missionary trip in Samaria, and then the Holy Spirit teleports him—the only person in the Bible teleported for ministry—not to a crowd of hundreds, but to one Ethiopian eunuch. One person on a road. One conversation. That is how the gospel moves. Not through one anointed mouth on a stage, but through ordinary believers carrying the ministry into ordinary places.
We are the only version of the Bible some people will ever read. If we will not take that seriously, the impact we can have will only be potential.
Want to learn more? Watch the full teaching on YouTube.
Also, join us live every Tuesday at 7pm est on Clubhouse: All Things Well on Clubhouse