What Is the Place of God’s Word in My Ministry?

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Colleen McFadden: When answering the question about how valuable our ministry is, if we’re not teaching the Bible, I think it would be helpful to really understand what the Bible is about and what it’s for. Mainly it’s about God, in God’s redemption of us. And I think we need to know him because we were created to serve him. And so I think a ministry is not a ministry without the word of God being at the root of it and being all up and through it.

I think women would be missing a pivotal part of what makes them an image bearer to leave out the one whose image we were made in. I think we create more room for false teaching to infiltrate the women that we’re walking with our teaching if we are not teaching them truth, if we are not teaching them scripture. And so I think your ministry is not valuable without the word being present.

Jackie Hill Perry: Absolutely. And I think going along with that, thinking about what’s valuable in teaching ministry. Sometimes we think teaching ministry, that’s when I stand up and give a 30-minute Bible talk or when I watch those women do that. But word ministry, what you’re talking about, is so much broader than that. Well, your own spoken word ministry would be teaching the word, right?

Colleen McFadden: For sure. Yeah.

Jackie Hill Perry: You need to know the word well to teach the truths of the word, the doctrines of the word well. Choosing children’s curriculum, you have to know the word well, because that’s word ministry. You’re teaching your kids the word. Even in the curriculum that you choose, reading the Bible one to one, that’s a teaching ministry that is not this upfront teaching ministry. So the value with teaching ministry, it’s a broad definition that we need to think about when you think of teaching the word.

Colleen McFadden: Yeah. And I think that sets people free to know that teaching can be one-on-one. Teaching can be discipleship. Teaching can be talking to your friend about suffering and how that relates to the Bible. Teaching can be teaching my daughter how to discern. So I think that sets you free to know, “Oh man, I can bring the word into all kinds of venues and all kinds of relationships and all kinds of conversations, which makes my life, as a Christian, one that has value to anybody that I meet because I haven’t pigeonholed my ministry to just being on the stage.”

Jackie Hill Perry: If you really think about how did we all become Christians, a lot of us didn’t become Christians because we listened to some talk that happened.

Colleen McFadden: Absolutely.

Jackie Hill Perry: A lot of us became Christians just by one-on-one relationship, somebody else teaching us the Bible. And they’re not some big Bible teacher that’s out there.

Colleen McFadden: Yeah. And I would also warn or caution if my ministry is not anchored in full of the Scriptures, then my life probably isn’t either. Which I would be afraid of because what does that say about my own holiness and my own connection to godliness, if I’m not looking at the Word and allowing it to pierce through bone marrow, to show me myself and to show me what I need to change and what I need to ripen up. And so, yeah, I think it starts first is, is it valuable in my own life? If it’s valuable in my own life, it will naturally become valuable in my ministry.

Jackie Hill Perry: To others. That’s right.

Colleen McFadden: Yeah.

Jackie Hill Perry: Yeah. I also think of the verse or the verses, the section in 1 Peter 4, where it talks about serving gifts and speaking gifts and how Peter doesn’t broaden it to more than that. He just says there are serving gifts and there are speaking gifts, and both work together to bring glory to God through Jesus Christ.

So even thinking about word ministry and teaching ministry, the serving ministry is so crucial and so important and so valuable in the life of a church. I mean, you have, in Acts 6, the deacons that were called to help serve tables and serve the widows so that the 12 could go out and be committed to the word and prayer.

And it says, “Then the word went out and then you received.” And so I just think there’s so much value to teaching the word and all those different ways that we’ve said. But then in all the serving ways of the churches Peter talks about, brings infinite value as well.

Colleen McFadden: Amen.