What fires you up?

I was at a conference recently when the speaker, Robert Fergusson, said “fire overcomes fear every time”.  At first I was puzzled.  Robert went on to say that anyone who is really fired up about their subject matter will be able to overcome any fear they have of public speaking.  Anyone pumped up enough about an extreme sport will be able to overcome the fear the task should naturally raise in someone.  So the best way to overcome your fear is to stay focused on achieving your goal.

Many of us have at least one fear within our ministry, what if it doesn’t work?  What if I can’t get support? What if I can’t find resources to make it work?  What if nobody comes?  Yet if we take this image of “fire overcomes fear”, when you are passionate enough (fired up) you will overcome your fears.  So in ministry how do we get “fired up” in a positive way?  Here are three simple questions:

1. What are you passionate about? When someone doesn’t want doing a certain job you can always tell.  The check out operators at my local supermarket don’t want to be there.  Yet when someone is passionate about their subject, topic or ministry it has a natural pulling power.  When I hear someone speak passionately about their mission trip I want to book my plane ticket right away.  When you are passionate about your ministry it fires up the other people around you.

How can your passion move people from caring about your ministry to helping in your ministry?

2. What are you discontent with? Is there some problem that makes you a little angry?  Do you ever wonder why nobody is doing anything to fix it?  We all have things that we feel need to be fixed, solved or corrected.  You might be the solution to a problem.  This discontent with how things are may give you an insight into what might fire you up.  If you can align your “holy discontent” with your ministry then you are more likely to overcome the fear of running the ministry. (find out more about this here)

How can you use your discontent to find a positive solution to a problem?

3. What do you enjoy doing? After almost 20 years in youth ministry people ask me why I still work with teenagers.  Because I enjoy youth ministry I find it gives me energy to keep going.  The people that I admire are those who work in children’s ministry; they have so much energy and patience.  People in ministry stay around longer when they enjoy what they are doing.  Perhaps you need to look at the specific tasks within your ministry that you enjoy doing; do more of that.  Have a look at the specific tasks that drain you of energy and see if you can delegate those to someone else.

How can you do more of what you enjoy doing and delegate the rest to others?

There are obviously parts of every ministry that are hard to handle.  Yet someone will still need to do them for your ministry to succeed.  Perhaps instead of enduring or fearing them, in the future you can stay fired up about your passions and enjoy your ministry.

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