by Franz Martens
- We end up worshiping the ministry of God rather than the God of Ministry!
- Missionaries and Pastors are especially susceptible to this problem. Dysfunction, and ultimately burnout, is the result.
- Missionaries and pastors especially need to find safe people and places where they can rest, learn and grow. When we don’t have the right people in our lives, the potential for failure rises dramatically.
- Personality conflicts are very real and magnified in a mission context.
- Ministry is really about God’s work and our co-laboring together with Him. How do you measure how God is doing when the results are truly up to Him? When we try to do so, pressure mounts as predictably we fail.
- A missionary is often surrounded by people all day long and sometimes late into the night, yet meaningful relationships are often in short supply.
- It has been my experience that missionaries who make deep connections with co-workers or fellow believers in their host countries stay in the work much longer than those who remain lonely.
- We are the hands and feet of the Great Commission.
- Often those in ministry focus on their work and forget that it should be on Jesus Christ. Ministry flows out of relationship.
- It is in our moments of darkness that we somehow forget to rest in Christ.