what I'm reading: guest post from Deb about doing ministry when your options are limited

Well, it's not so much what I'm reading, as what Deb's reading. Thanks again, Deb, for some helpful words on ministry! She's speaking particularly to mums, but what she says is relevant to anyone who struggles to find time for ministry.

I think once you have children, you often have to get creative about ministry. When you are childless, the ministry options are much more open. You can be flexible about hours and no one but you is demanding an account of your time. Add a spouse, and then some kids, and the ministry options start to shrink. Or at least the old options that you've spent some years building up your skills in tend to be rubbed out for a season.

I came across a quote in Grudem's Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood once and it has often sprung into my mind in the years since I've had children. It is this:

With half the world’s population outside the reach of indigenous evangelism; with countless other lost people in those societies that have heard the gospel; with the stresses and miseries of sickness, malnutrition, homelessness, illiteracy, ignorance, aging, addiction, crime, incarceration, neuroses, and loneliness, no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make His grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of Christ and the good of this fallen world.

I've found that particularly encouraging since I've had small children and felt locked out of ministries I might have been involved in had I still been young and free from responsibilities. There's a whole world out there starving for Christ! Find a bit of it to work on and get going! There's plenty of work to be done - find something that moves your heart and throw yourself into proclaiming Jesus in whatever way is required.

We don't all have to be doing the same thing. In fact, God has made each of us different for that reason and created us with good works already planned out. I ought to think about what I can do and the people I know who need to hear about Christ and move in that direction with as much energy as I can muster.

The quote is from the Danvers Statement from The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

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