Checking Our Motives for Ministry and Outreach

All of us most likely love serving teenagers in the church for many reasons, one of them being that we love serving in a vocation that allows us to pursue things of God and get paid for it. Where else can you get paid for being a growing Christian and leading others to become the same?

But sometimes those Godly pursuits easily become less about God and more about us. Instead of leading people in prayer out of a desire to talk with the Lord, we lead people in prayer because we feel like it’s our job and what’s expected of us. Or studying God’s Word is less about our own lives and more about preparing something from it for other people’s lives. Other times, we live Godly lives not necessarily for Him, but for the people around us who are watching and expecting to see certain qualities in our lives. Insecurity, pride, apathy, and more, all begin to steer our motives in directions that support Godly external qualities while, at the same time, being fueled by less than God-honoring motives.

But this doesn’t apply only to us personally. The church does the same thing. It’s so easy to overlook because it becomes so normal, even natural!

Years ago I served in a smaller church that was surrounded by larger churches. Although no one explicitly ever mentioned it, there was an attitude toward the larger churches that felt like competition, especially when someone from our small church left to attend a large church.

As the youth pastor, I felt that pressure from our church leaders. There was a continual pressure to do outreach events and grow the ministry and reach new people. But looking back on it now, I wonder what that pressure was truly rooted in.

• A genuine burden for lost souls?
• A need for survival as a small church?
• To make us feel affirmed and valued as leaders?
• Maybe to make our ministry appear to be more credible to others, or even to ourselves?
• Was it to establish ourselves as a presence among other churches in the area, maybe even for them just know to who we were?

Whatever it was, it sometimes felt like we were more interested in recruiting than we were in evangelism. Although we’d never admit it, evangelism was the means to growing our kingdom and secondarily the means to growing God’s Kingdom.

There’s a subtle, yet distinct, difference that’s easy to overlook. Using evangelism to recruit students for our ministry is ultimately about us. Using evangelism to recruit students for the Lord is ultimately about Him. While our hearts are usually for the latter, sometimes the former comes out due to our own insecurities and church politics.

Does your ministry primarily do evangelism out of a burden for lost souls?

If not, it starts with us. Why do we live the rest of our life the way that we do? Do those issues flow over into how and why we do ministry?

Is your ministry’s outreach ultimately about recruiting or evangelism? If a student trusted Christ as a result of your ministry and then left to attend a different youth group, how would you feel about that?