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Bible Study - Right at the Heart of True Ministry

Full time ministry is many things; and it is much different than what most of us expected. One might describe his ministry with words like ‘administrative’, ‘technical’, ‘professional’, ‘managerial’ or even ‘official’. Most of the ministers that I know were thinking in different terms when they began. When I first applied to work as a missionary, for example, I was not thinking of culture and language acquisition, language proficiency exams, cross-cultural communication techniques, church planting models and workshops, partnership development, and the like.

Thankfully, ministry is also preaching, witnessing, counseling, teaching and those sorts of things; the tasks that most of us really enjoy. At the heart of all true ministry there is one standard unchanging hat that all of us must wear, and wear often: Bible study.

Without Bible study, ministry is just a job; something we do to keep food on the table; a profession, if you like. Without the constant feeding from the Word of God, we morph into something other than the caring and God-seeking ministers that we set out to become. Church becomes “the office”; ethnic regions of the world become “the field”. Ministry becomes a career.

Bible study is the lifeline that keeps it all fresh and vibrant. It tunes my ears to the words of God. My speeches become passionate sermons, church becomes the family, ethnic regions become the harvest, and ministry becomes a yearning to know Christ and to make him known everywhere. Bible study changes everything in ministry.

Bible study is a science, but may it never be only that to the one whose heart longs after Christ. We perform exegesis to stay accurate, not academic. We analyze words, sentences and paragraphs to grasp the full meaning of those God-breathed texts. We read and search and memorize it because therein lies the nourishment that our Lord spoke of when he said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” And we teach it not because it is our job to do so, but because we know where others can find true and eternal answers to life’s most pressing questions.

I spend my days doing many things; learning ethnic languages, preparing Bible lessons and sermons, teaching and performing a wide verity of dull administrative tasks. But may I never neglect the most important thing; the activity that keeps ministry alive: Bible study. Bible study is right at the heart of true ministry.

Submitted by Gordon Johnson