Section 04 - Preparing for Ministry

But before we get into that, I want to put some final touches on the subject to help you understand where you are headed and what your ultimate goal is.

Remember at the beginning of this study I said that there is a difference between a ministry and a calling. You need to understand every possibility that is available to you.

The Right Place to Start

Calling is a progressive, unfolding understanding and revelation of how high you will go in your ministry level. In other words, you can start ministering - and most people do - without even knowing what your calling is.

It is not very often that a person gets a revelation up front of what their calling is. I know from my own personal experience, that for years before I went into ministry, I wanted God to show me what my calling was.

I remember the first time I was in a meeting where someone was operating in a prophetic ministry. He was calling people out and prophesying over them.

He was telling them various things about God's purpose for their life. I waited anxiously and thought,

"Come on Lord, let him call me and prophesy over me and tell me what my calling is."

But he did not notice me, or at least that is what it looked like.

I figured that I obviously was not very important to the Lord and did not have a very big calling, otherwise he would have called me out. If it was important to the Lord, surely He could have told this prophet what my ministry was?

It took me a long time to find out that the opposite was true. My calling was far higher than that prophet had ever been himself, and he would never have understood what my calling was.

So do not get hung up on the calling issue. I will show you before we end how to go about this.

You have to start somewhere in ministry. You need to work your way through the possibilities, until you find that thing you chew on that tastes like the rubber and you know you have found your place. Then you will have found your calling.

The Lower Level Ministries

We have been looking at the various levels of ministry, starting with those that begin when we are born again and we have a relationship with the Lord Jesus. Then we saw that it worked up, and we would add to it the influence of the Holy Spirit.

We saw that by adding the Holy Spirit to those basic foundational ministry types, we would add the Gifts and the Fruit of the Spirit. These are two different kinds of empowerment or anointing.

These influences from the Holy Spirit would then help us to add power to our ministry. We can do it better and more effectively.

Many people do not go any further than that. They have found what they like to do in ministry based on the original ministries we looked at.

They have entered into the Gifts of the Spirit. They have begun to grow in the Lord and experience the Fruit of the Spirit, and they are quite happy to minister at that level. They never expect to go any further.

Five Leadership Ministries

But there are also those whom God is pushing to a higher calling; to rise up and become leaders in the Body of Christ. Jesus especially is responsible for this, and we have not even reached the Father yet in these things.

We started with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But the Bible says concerning Jesus, that when He ascended on high He gave gifts to men. He poured something down and gave a gift to the Church.

We are told that He gave five main gifts to the Church. These gifts were five kinds of ministry leadership functions. These have become known as the Fivefold Ministry.

What exactly is the Fivefold Ministry?

If we return to our illustration of the dove we see something new. It is fine to have the dove flapping its wings, but which direction does the dove fly in? What gives the dove direction and helps it to steer?

It is the same thing that steers an airplane or even a ship; it is a form of rudder. This is built into every bird and it lies in the tail of the bird. The tail feathers of the dove are the part that does the steering.

The Tail of the Dove

Here we have another very good picture. Just as we saw nine feathers in each of the wings, we now see five feathers in the tail of the dove. We call these five feathers the Fivefold Ministry.

You can read about these in Ephesians where we are told,

He gave some to be apostles, and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.

They are the five leadership ministries that Jesus gave to the Church.

So you begin to rise up in ministry starting from the lower levels, and you receive an empowerment from the Holy Spirit in the Gifts and the Fruit. Now you are ready to get moving in ministry.

There are now five possible directions that you are likely to move in as you rise up higher in the Church as a leader in the area of ministry. You will move into the realm of these five ministries.

Until now we have still only seen Jesus and the Holy Spirit being involved. Where does the Father come in? He is the ultimate leader and director who controls everything from the top.

So in addition to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, there is something that the Father would be directly involved in. Remember that the members of the Godhead never work independently. They always work together as one.

The Father does not work apart from the Son or the Holy Spirit. So when we move to where the Father Himself becomes involved, we get to the very highest levels of leadership ministry in the Body of Christ.

These are ministry positions of ultimate leadership through which God will direct the Church. The full control of where the dove goes and what it does is of course in its head. That is where the brain lies.

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