Imagine that you want to purchase a new, sturdy, handcrafted kitchen table, assembled from the finest pieces of oak. You happen to live near an Amish community, and you know that the Amish have a well-earned reputation for fine furniture that endures the test of time. So you find an Amish carpenter – we’ll call him “Ezekiel” – and you arrange to meet Ezekiel at his shop. But when you arrive, you notice something very strange: there is not a single scrap of wood in the entire shop. There are tools scattered everywhere but not a single piece of wood to be seen.

Ezekiel emerges from the back of the shop and greets you with a firm handshake. “This may be a silly question,” you say, “but where is the wood?”

“Oh, I don’t use wood. I’m a wood-less carpenter,” he says.

You leave the shop, confused. What kind of carpenter doesn’t use wood? Wood is at the very heart of carpentry. There is no such thing as a carpenter without wood, just like there is no such thing as a computer programmer without code, or a doctor without medicine. Wood is absolutely essential to the role of carpenter.

The gospel is at the very heart of pastoral ministry. You cannot have true ministry without having the gospel at the very core. This means that the call to ministry is a call to gospel work. The gospel is absolutely essential to the role of pastor.

How come? There are many reasons, but let me offer a couple that are of critical importance.

The Gospel Fixes Our Identity in Christ, Not in Ministry

Sometimes men pursue ministry because they want to be praised and admired by others. They want to be the guy in charge, the guy calling the shots, the guy behind the microphone. Most jobs don’t have a built in affirmation flow. Mechanics and engineers are rarely praised for their labor. But a guy in ministry can receive a disproportionate amount of encouragement and admiration (“That was such a wonderful sermon, pastor;” “Your counseling has changed my life, pastor”).

Or, the opposite can happen too. An experienced pastor of two decades is still only a few bad decisions away from an approval crash. Seasons of intense criticism can come, where all those compliments he used to receive evaporate like mist on a lake.

Both the pastor pursuing admiration and the one under intense criticism need to be rooted in an unchanging gospel reality: Their identity is fixed in Christ, not in ministry itself. See, the gospel reminds us that because of Christ, we already have all the acceptance we will ever need. Our striving for glory and recognition grinds to a halt when we remember that we possess the only acceptance that really matters. The gospel also shields us from arrows of criticism by reminding us that God loves us and delights in us because of Christ, not because of our ministry success.

If you feel called, there is one thing you must never forget: Whatever God may say in the future regarding ministry, he has already spoken the most important things about you through the cross.

That’s why the gospel is so essential for ministry. It installs guardrails for the man pursuing ministry that protect him from distraction, and it guides him towards the real reason for his role.

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