Change is needed because there are things in you, or in your ministry situation or relationships, that need to be uprooted or torn down, and if change is actually going to be change, there are new things that need to be planted or built in the place of what was uprooted and torn down.

God’s words of commission to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1) have a powerful and practical application to your commitment to a daily lifestyle of reconciliation in your ministry relationships. Yes, I know that God’s call to Jeremiah is individual and specific, since he was being called as one of God’s prophets. It isn’t God’s call to Jeremiah that’s interesting and helpful; it’s the content of the call. Embedded in God’s words is a model for how real and lasting change takes place. It’s wonderfully helpful for diagnosing and correcting your ministry relationships in the places where both are needed.

The words are brief but beautifully and accurately descriptive: “See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:10). If change was to take place in Israel (and it was desperately needed), God is saying that this is how it’ll have to happen: pluck up and break down, plant and build. God is saying that change always has two sides to it: destruction and construction. Change is needed because there are things in you, or in your ministry situation or relationships, that need to be uprooted or torn down, and if change is actually going to be change, there are new things that need to be planted or built in the place of what was uprooted and torn down.

For your ministry relationships to be healthy, you must have destructive and constructive zeal. I know that this sounds funny, but for these relationships to be what they were designed to be, there are things that need to be destroyed. But like the problem of weeds that keep jutting their heads out of once-clear ground, this destructive agenda cannot be a one-time commitment. In some way, there are always things, little and big, in the way of what our ministry relationships should and could be. I’m going to suggest what some of these may be, but it’s important that you know that what I’m giving you is a general, pump-priming list that you need to expand and apply to the specifics of these important kingdom-work relationships.

Selfishness
It really is there in all of us – selfishness – because it’s the DNA of sin. Perhaps nothing is more destructive in ministry relationships than this. Perhaps it’s the root of all the dumb and nasty little things we do to one another. Maybe it’s the reason we make those big, disastrous choices that have the potential to end ministry trust and partnership. Doesn’t Genesis 3 point us in that direction? At the bottom of it all, what’s wrong is that we want our own way, and, in wanting our own way, we want to be sovereign over our little worlds, making sure that what we want is exactly what we get.

Busyness

Inattention

Self-righteousness

Fear

Laziness

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