Home Pastors Articles for Pastors Why It’s Time to Rethink What It Means to Be Called to...

Why It’s Time to Rethink What It Means to Be Called to Ministry

Chances are you’re likely struggling with the same issue almost every church leader is—a lack of truly great leaders for ministry.

Whether I talk to megachurch leaders or leaders of churches of 50 people, they say the same thing: They just can’t find enough capable, gifted leaders who want to serve in a church staff role.

In fact, many have told me they would have more campuses and be able to reach far more people if they just had qualified leaders to lead them.

The leadership crisis is true to some extent of volunteers, although many churches I know have figured out how to get capable leaders into key volunteer roles (if you want more on that, read this).

The deepest crisis is in staffing. The number of people who want to be pastors, ministry directors or serve in other church staff roles may be at an all-time low.

In past generations, the best and the brightest young Christians often went into ministry.

Today, they go into law, medicine, business and into startups. They never even think of ministry.

Three questions.

What if we changed that?

How would we change that?

What would happen if we changed that?

The Best and the Brightest?

I realize some of you are already chafing at the idea of ‘best and brightest’ and ‘ministry’ being used in the same sentence.

And for sure, I’ve read what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians about not many of us Christians being wise in the eyes of the world, or well-born or well-educated. But he was talking about being called to salvation in that passage, not about being called to ministry.

And a little later on in the scriptures, Paul gave us his resume. It’s pretty impressive.