Troy Hamby

As everyone knows, I work at Comcast right now as an Customer Account Executive (sounds fancy, doesn’t it?). I can’t say that I really like my job (anyone that listens to people complain all day long and likes it is sadistic…wait, being a pastor was kind of like that:) Anyway, for the next 2 weeks, I am in a training class for internet and phone and I am EXTREMELY grateful because it increases my value to the company and it gets me off the phones for 2 weeks…YYYYEEEAAAHHH!

Today was our 1st day and we were doing our introductions and in the course of telling about ourselves, it came out that I was an Ordained Minister. Everyone was surprised because I have worked there for almost a year and I never told anyone because I didn’t want to rub it in their faces. My main goal is to just be a normal person, be receptive and listen to people and join in where the Holy Spirit is already working. I received the best compliment in the world today when someone said “wow, I’m surprised your a Pastor…you don’t seem like a hypocrite to me.” In a way it made me feel good, but it also saddens me to think that is the overwhelming impression most non-Christians have of Christ followers.

But then another person (who is a Christian) said something that really got under my skin. We were talking on the side and he said “so, when do you plan to get back into real ministry?” A year ago this comment wouldn’t have bothered me, but for some reason, what he said REALLY ticked me off. So, the past year of listening to , interceding for, forming relationships with, giving to and everything else I have tried to do for my co-workers was not ministry??? Seriously?? It’s not really ‘ministry’ unless you have a title and are getting paid for it? This is the exact reason why we have this ridiculous church system set up today where 1 man/woman gets up and is the super anointed person and 300 other ‘average’ Christians sit there and are spectators. We totally belittle the body of Christ and call them ‘laymen’ and limit their effectiveness due to the fact that they aren’t getting paid for ‘real’ ministry. Yeah, we may say that we are equipping the church to do the work of the ministry, but ARE WE? If so, then we have produced the crappiest and least effective way of releasing the church to do true ministry. We have taken Martin Luther’s reformation and turned it upside down and replaced the priest with the pastor and the parish with the local congregation.

I believe that we will continue to see the same rapid decline of discipleship in this country until we stop dividing the sacred from the secular and emasculating the Body of Christ by calling them ‘laymen’ and ‘church members’. Peter didn’t set himself up as super apostle even though he could have. He could have said “you must follow me now because I actually walked with Jesus and talked with Him and He called me the rock for crying out loud!!” No, when Peter looked at the church, he said “You are a chosen generation, a ROYAL PRIESTHOOD, a holy nation, a peculiar people; a people for God’s own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light!” When Peter looked at the church, he didn’t see a bunch of spectators and consumers…He saw a bride so precious to Christ that He has proclaimed her as chosen, royal and holy unto Him! And NONE of this had to do with the fact that they were paid, full time ministers!

If we truly believed that the job of the pastor/leaders is to equip the church to do the work of the ministry, we would stop putting so much time and effort into cramming as many people into a building on Sunday morning and start training and releasing our people to be God’s royal, holy priesthood at their jobs, school and EVERYWHERE else that ministry is supposed to take place! Sorry, sorry…that “real ministry” crack really ticked me off.