Be The Fruit

Fellowship or Ministry?

by Bill Blair on 10/10/07 at 11:37 am

Take a second and think about some of the people in your life.  As you reflect on them think about which ones build you up and which ones drain or just annoy you.  I would guess that all of us have both kinds of people in our lives.  The people that build you up are great to be around, but what do you do with the people that drain you?

One answer to this question is to just spend more time with people that build you up and less time (or no time) with the people that drain you.  Life is too short to be spent dealing with negative people that tear you down.  Life is too hard so we need only good people around that build us up so we can make it.  It makes sense, right?  Yes, but… 

I think that maybe we should re-frame how we view our relationships.  We should look to people that build us up as opportunities for fellowship and the people that drain us as opportunities for ministry.  There is no doubt that we all need strong healthy people in our lives that support and encourage us to live more fruitful lives.  We, therefore should cultivate our relationships with these healthy people for our own good, but at the same time, we should not neglect relationships with people that may be in some need.

My basic idea here is that we should know who we can have fellowship with in order to be built up.  We should have fellowship with those people then go out and spend time with the ones that drain or annoy us and find out if there is some need there.  I want to be clear.  I think we need a balance.  We need the fellowship in order to do the ministry.  We should not neglect one over the other.

We need to seek out the people that drain us because they might be doing so because of some problem in their life.  If you spend some time with them, help them, and build them up they might turn into people that can build you up in the future.  The people that were opportunities for ministry could turn into opportunities for fellowship if you lend them a helping hand. 

In a way, Jesus took this approach.  He maintained his perfect fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill his ministry of being a sacrifice for us so that we can be saved and transformed into beings that are able to have fellowship with him for an eternity.

Give this idea some thought and give me some feedback.

Disclaimer:  Before you attempt to help your “opportunities for ministry” with the spec in their eye, make sure you remove all logs, planks, and 2×4’s from yours.