My Ministry: First Sermon of a New Ministry
Colossians 1:28-29
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
My name is Roger Thomas and I am your new preacher. I am proud to be part of you, to live and work with you. I hope in time that you will able to say that you are proud to have us as a part of you.
As you know we have been moving all week. It has been a week of hurrying up and waiting. The moving van arrived five hours late on Tuesday to load our furniture. It then arrived a day and a half late to unload us finally getting here Friday afternoon. But we are here and only a little worse for the wear.
The piles of cardboard boxes are gradually disappearing. I must admit, however, that I did have to go to the garage this morning to find a tie to wear to church. But this too will pass, eventually.
I want to express our gratitude for all of the many kindnesses that so many of you have shown to Rose and me. We are especially appreciative for all the work that has been done on the parsonage. It is simply beautiful. We know that a lot of hard work has gone into getting it ready. Many of you have reached out to us, expressing interest and concern about how things have been going. Many of you have prayed for a speedy sale of our house in Aurora. We are happy to report that we signed a contract on the day before Thanksgiving and will close shortly before Christmas. We have been overwhelmed with the warmth and friendliness of the church and community. Thank you!
Today I begin my ministry with you. As I do, I want to layout my mission and goal and purpose in ministry. I want to expose for you my deepest convictions. I want to make some promises that I will do my best to keep in the years ahead. I want to tell a bit of who I am and what makes me tick.
To do this I want to examine a passage of scripture that I consider my life text. I don’t remember why or when, I just know that for over twenty five years I have regarded this passage as one of a handful of scriptures that explain for me what ministry is all about. My text is Col 1:28-29. I want to read a sampling of the entire first chapter of Colossians to set it in context. Please follow along.
“3We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints—5the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel 6that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. (Col. 1:3 through Col. 1:6)
9For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:9 through Col. 1:14)
25I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—26the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.28We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. 29To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. (Col. 1:25 through Col. 1:29).
This little letter by the Apostle/Missionary/Church Planter Paul of Tarsus was written to a band of Christian believers to encourage them in their faith and strengthen them for the task of shining bright for Christ in a difficult and challenging world. He begins with his appreciation and aspirations for these believers and then explains his ministry for them. He explains what makes him tick, what turns his crank, what keeps him going in ministry. I want to claim those same ministry passions for my own today. Note in these two verses Paul’s five ministry passions. Whatever your life’s work in some way these same passions can and should be yours as a follower of Jesus Christ. They are mine as a preacher.
My Message
I have nothing else to offer you. There is nothing more important that I can tell you than the message about Jesus, who he is and what he did for us. Throughout Colossians Paul is concerned to show the completeness and sufficiency of what Christ has done. There were those who wanted to say that Jesus was all right. He was a nice beginning point, but the truly spiritual didn’t stop there. The spiritually advanced knew things and taught lessons that went beyond Jesus. This was what some false teacher proclaimed. Not so! Nothing could be further from the truth, Paul contends.
Note some of his statements about Jesus in this very chapter. “15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Col. 1:15 through Col. 1:20).
I remember clearly when I first cam to understand the message of Jesus. Rose and I both grew up in a small town in central Illinois. Saybrook is much smaller than Vandalia. When my family moved to a small farm not far from town we began attending the Christian Church there. One spring a few years later, the church held its annual revival meeting just before Easter.
I can remember it like it was yesterday. One afternoon the preacher and the evangelist for the week paid a call on my family. In my memory I can still see the evangelist sitting in the corner of living room, opening a Bible on the foot stool and beginning to explain the Gospel. He told of how God loves us, each of us, but how every one of us have sinned against God. Sin separates us from God and his intended blessings for us both now and for eternity. He explained that there is nothing that we can do to make up for our sin and disobedience. On our own we are doomed to face God’s judgment for all eternity.
But he explained that there was more. Because God loves us he did for us what we could never do for ourselves. Jesus Christ came to live on earth, teach the truth of heaven, and finally pay the full price for sin on the cross. He arose from the dead and offered to every person the free gift of forgiveness and heaven. We can’t buy it. We can’t earn it. But if we believe it and follow Jesus as Lord we can have it for free. That is Good News to anyone who realizes the reality of his sins before a holy God.
The evangelist explained how God’s free gift could be ours. The following Sunday my mother and father and I were all baptized into Christ because we had come to believe that message. I stand before you devoted to telling you the simple truth of Jesus and that alone. My message is Christ.
As a preacher I have three tasks that I must fulfill. First, I must be a man of God. I must personally know Christ, believe and obey his word, and seek to live a life of personal holiness and faith. That must be first. Secondly, I am a preacher of God’s Word. That is the one thing I must do as your minister even if I do nothing else. I must give myself fully to that task so that when I stand before you I deliver God’s Word as faithfully and capably as I can. Thirdly, I am a pastor of the flock, the congregation of people with whom I labor. I must work with the other spiritual leaders and ministers of this church to help each of you know, love and follow Christ. Together we must be there to stand with you, to encourage you, and minister to you and with you, to be pastors of the flock. Before I can do anything I must know the Christ and then make him know.
As most of you know, I have an earned doctorate in ministry. This simply means that I have read a lot of books and taken a lot of classes. My D.Min. and eighty-nine cents will get you a medium coffee at Dunkin Donuts. Seriously, I will seldom refer to my doctorate. It ultimately says little about me except that I have had opportunities to study some things that some haven’t had. I don’t expect to be referred to by my academic title and seldom will use it myself. My message to you and to anyone who will listen is not about lofty theology or complicated philosophies, but Christ Jesus and him crucified.
I identify with the story that reported happened to Dr. Karl Barth, one of the most important theological scholars of the first half of the twentieth century. Dr. Barth was on a lecture tour of the United States. At one of his stops, reports asked him what he considered the most important truth he had learned in his many years of study and teaching. Dr. Barth paused for a minute, looked the reporter in the eye and replied, “The most important thing I have learned is this—Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so!”
I promise to you that I will preach Christ and him crucified.
My Method
Paul reveals his next ministry passion in three actions words: 1) proclaim, 2) admonish or warn in the KJV, and 3) teach. Proclaim simply means to announce the truth. As a preacher, my main task is not to tell you what you want to hear, but to announce the message of God. Admonish is a more complicated word. It carries a tone of warning and urgency. A preacher’s job is not just to dispassionately pass on information. I must urge you to accept it. I must use every bit of energy I have to persuade you to take it seriously. I must expose the practical implications of the Gospel and urge you to obey it. Teach is more obvious. While the Gospel is more than just information and facts, it is at least that. There is something to be learned and understood. What you don’t understand to some degree, you can’t believe and you certainly can’t obey it.
Through the past thirty years or so I have worked in lots of different types of ministries. I have worked with college students, new churches, Bible colleges, and pastored more established congregations. But through it all my main passion has remained to be a preacher of the Bible.
As I stand before you week in and week out, my main burden will be to help you hear and understand God’s Written Word. My philosophy of preaching is really quite simple. I want my messages to be scriptural and I want you to know that what I am teaching you is the Bible. I want my messages to be Jesus centered. If you don’t hear about him and what it means to know and follow him, you will not have heard the most important thing, even if it is biblical. I want my messages to be Gospel focused. I don’t want to just tell you laws and rules and historical facts. I want you hear the Good News of what God has done for you in Christ. I personally find it too easy to slip into teaching moral and ethical principles as if that were my message. It isn’t. It is first about how God has done for us what we can’t do for ourselves.
But I also want my messages to be practical and interesting, and sometimes even entertaining. There can be a danger here. A preacher can resort to all sorts of things to “tickle the ears” of his congregation. Some of that is proper as long as it doesn’t over power the biblical message. Sometimes, however, the most important and practical things that you need to hear may not be what you want to hear. It may not even seem interesting or practical until later when you need it. I must be willing to preach it even if you don’t always think it is what you need.
I promise to teach the Scriptures as God’s Word.
My Mission Field
Note the emphasis in Paul’s ministry. Three times in the text he uses the word “everyone.” The NIV only uses it twice, but it is there three times—warning everyone, teaching everyone, and presenting everyone. Paul wants it clearly understood that he intends to touch and reach all kind of people. His was not a ministry just for the rich or just for the poor, just for the old or just for the young. He rejected totally the elitist notions of some of the false teachers that were pestering the Colossian church. They taught that unless you were in the “in group” you couldn’t understand the deep things of the Spirit. Not so, Paul counters! His ministry was for every one willing to listen and willing to learn.
The universality of the Gospel was the same truth Paul heralded at other places: “28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28). “11Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Col. 3:11).
No one is to big or small to need the Word of God or the touch of the Spirit. There is not a person in this town who is too rich or too poor to be outside the reach of God’s grace. None of you is too young or too old to walk a life of faith. Most importantly, no one is too bad or too good to need the Gospel. No one is exempt from the call to follow and obey Jesus. It is never too soon to start or to late to begin.
There is a universal quality to the Gospel. It is for all because ultimately we are all in the same boat. Listen to these “all” or “everyone” themes from Scripture: “23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Rom. 3:23). Or “16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith” (Rom. 1:16 through Rom. 1:17). Or “ “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13). Or “27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).
I promise to minister to all without prejudice or regard for position.
My Motive
My message is Christ. My method is teaching God’s Word. My mission field is people, any person in need of God’s love. And my motive or aim is the same as Paul’s. Paul’s goal, the end for which he aimed was “to present everyone perfect in Christ.” Perfect is a problem term for most of us. We tend to hear it as something that is flawless or a person who is sinless. How often have you heard someone excuse a misbehavior with the retort, “Well, no one’s perfect.”
That expression is perhaps second only to the rationale, “I am only human.” Be warned—that’s a pet peeve of mine! Only human—as if that were something small or some excuse for having low expectations of yourself! You mean only the crown jewel of God’s creation. Only human! You mean made a little lower than the angels, made in God’s image. Human—so valuable that Christ died on the cross for humans. Humans—the ones in whom the Spirit of the Living indwells through Christ. ONLY HUMAN! Give me break!
Perfect doesn’t necessarily mean flawless or without sin. To the Hebrew trained mind, like Paul, “perfect” meant something that was complete, mature, or had fulfilled the purpose for which it was designed.
That’s my goal for you. I know that none of us will ever be without flaw or sin, but we can be what God made us to be. The compelling passion of my ministry is to help you realize that in your life. I want you to know God. You were made for that. I want you to learn to more and more walk in the holiness and love for which Christ redeemed you. I want to help you discover the gifts for service and witness that the Spirit is seeking to build into your life.
I promise to challenge you, encourage you, and inspire you to be everything God made you to be.
My Means
Finally, Paul reveals the means of his ministry. There are two sides to the equation. On one side is the human side; on the other the divine. Both are vital. Paul speaks of working hard, laboring, even struggling. The term he uses was the one from which we get the word “agony.” The Greeks used it to describe the struggles of a wrestler grappling with his opponent. Ministry is work. It requires toil. It involves struggles and sometimes disappointments. It is not always easy. Smart work calls for planning, strategy, and constant learning and improvement.
But all the human effort in the world is not enough. Paul refers to the divine side of the equation. He speaks of working in God’s power. That is what makes the difference. We can expend lots of effort, but we cannot create new life. Only God’s Spirit can do that. That is why ministry must involve prayer, the Spirit’s direction, and power from on high if it is to amount to anything.
We may accomplish much through smart, hard work. But all of it is nothing compared to what God can do through us when we humbly submit to his work.
I love the story of the little lad who was working with his dad in the garden. Dad was weeding the vegetables and encouraging his son to help out. Finally, the lad grabbed a weed and began to pull. He tugged and yanked and groaned. Finally, the weed gave way. The boy, the weed and about five pounds of dirt landed in a heap.
Wanting to encourage his son, Dad looked over and said, “Good job, son. You sure are strong!”
“I sure am,” replied the boy, “I had a hold of one end of that weed and the whole world had hold of the other and I won!”
Child of God, you—we—are stronger than we realize, not because of who we are or what we can do, but because of the one who works through us and in us! That’s what keeps us going in ministry whether in the pulpit, the pew, or on the job.
I promise to work hard and to pray hard among you.
Conclusion
What’s ahead? None of us knows. Good times and bad. Laughter and tears. Successes and failures. Dreams and disappointments. They will all be there. But most of all, God will be there. We will be there together as brothers and sisters, fellow laborers in Christ’s work.
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
