Whoever you are, you are not enough.  Whatever skills you have, they are not enough.  Whatever your personality, education, or natural abilities may be, they are not enough.  We never accomplish the purposes of God alone.

With a little help from Jethro, Moses figured that out (See Exodus 18).  Nehemiah knew it.  Even Jesus invited other people to share His ministry.

But for us to share ministry, we must shift our thinking in at least 5 ways.  Here they are:

We shift from authority to empowerment.

Who’s in charge is important, but it’s not the best question.  Instead the leader asks, “How can I empower people to accomplish the mission?”  Egos are put to death and team members are given permission to do what they were made to do.

We shift from delegation to responsibility.

We are comfortable giving people a little rope to accomplish tasks we don’t want to do.  But sharing ministry means we allow other people to share the responsibility—to own their job by doing it their way.  J. Oswald Sanders suggests that conceit is the biggest barrier to this shift in thinking.  Our way is not the only way to accomplish the mission.

We shift from centralization to liberation.

Sharing ministry means that we liberate our people.  We refuse to be the gateway for every decision.  We train, we communicate, we invest, we disciple and then we release our people to lead.

We shift from informing to involving.

Leaders are great at making announcements, and we mistakenly think communicating data or even ideas creates buy in from our people.  But shared ministry engages others in a collaborative process that creates better decisions than we could produce alone.  And those better decisions produce genuine enthusiasm for the mission.

We shift from suspicion to trust.

Isolated and insecure leaders communicate distrust in others.  This lone ranger approach keeps people at a distance and rarely permits constructive input.  Sharing ministry, however, invites team members to speak into our lives and creates an environment of mutual trust and respect.

What other shifts have you had to make in order to share ministry?  Click the Comment button below.