Dust and tears. That seems to be the biblical response to disappointing ministry experiences. While you are in the midst of such turbulent disappointments, you can begin to wonder what it all means. What does it mean about God? What does it mean about you? What does it mean about the future?

How should we respond when ministry seems to fail?

Maybe you’ve given everything for a mission that, as far as you can tell, never yielded fruit. Maybe there’s someone in your family to whom you’ve been trying to minister and evangelize your whole life, but he seems to have no care for Christ or his kingdom. You may feel raging anger at the rejection of it all. Or overwhelming sadness at the thought of the eternal consequences. Or perhaps a mixture of both.

Jesus anticipates seeming ministry futility in Matthew 10:5–15, when he sends out his disciples to spread the news of the kingdom of God. He equips them to use all manner of authenticating signs: healing, exorcism, even raising people from the dead. Yet he knows that, despite this evidence, there will be some who do not listen. He gives his disciples another command when they encounter those hard of heart: shake the dust off your sandals, so that it may serve against them in the coming judgment (Matthew 10:14).

Still, that’s not the only scriptural response to the experience of ministry futility. Jesus shows the other when he weeps as he comes into Jerusalem during his triumphal entry (Luke 19:41). Why is he mourning? He was lamenting that the inhabitants of that sacred city would not turn to him, the one who would have loved and protected them as a mother hen does her chicks (Matthew 23:37).

Dust and tears. That seems to be the biblical response to disappointing ministry experiences. While you are in the midst of such turbulent disappointments, you can begin to wonder what it all means. What does it mean about God? What does it mean about you? What does it mean about the future?

What Does This Mean About God?

For many, our first impulse as we lick our wounds from the painful process of ministry disappointment is to wonder if it means something about God. Is he somehow less powerful than we once believed? Does he care less about me than I once believed? Does he care less than I do about the people or person to whom I’ve been ministering?

Our search for answers is understandable. The more we put of our heart into anything, the more painful it is for that thing to come up empty. Vince Lombardi was known for being a stickler about making his teams practice more than others. When asked why, he famously said, “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” If that is true for something as minor as football, how much more true is it for something as significant as someone’s immortal soul?

But sometimes we don’t have a choice. God makes it clear that the field we are currently tending is not the field where he would have us to continue to labor. And surrender, especially if one has given up vocation, home, friends, and more, is especially excruciating. Yet disappointment in ministry does not conflict with the character of God revealed in Scripture, but rather confirms what God has already promised in his word: “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:24–25).

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