Church planting and fresh expressions resourced by Incarnate Network

I don’t believe in an ordained/ laity divide.  The ‘laity’ is a term that should be abolished, as followers of Jesus we are all ordained to be part of his mission.  However I do believe that God called me to be released from having to earn a living in the normal way so that I could focus more of my time and energy on the ministry to which I am called.

Others recognised this call and saw that my primary gift was as an evangelist.   Evangelist is a loaded term, but I am gifted in an ease of relationships in networks outside the church and skill in sharing the gospel through dialogue in those networks.

The problem is I find myself in ministry with a huge workload in one way or another; this prevents me from spending as much time in those networks outside the church as I would like.  In fact I look at friends doing normal jobs and they seem to have more time to spend on evangelism than I do!

I know that I must take some responsibility for prioritising my time.  However I find the pressure to deliver a project or quantify how my time is spent comes at me from several places.  I joined a sailing club a few years back, with the intention of doing something I enjoy whilst getting into a new network of people. A fellow minister’s wife said quite scathingly I don’t know how you have time for that?  I later gave up the sailing because I didn’t find time.  However the point is I need to make time and it isn’t just those of us who are religious professionals that need to lead by example, we also need to release our church communities from busy church programmes to go and make some friends.