Ministry

The gospel ministers are those who work in a church or charity that directly makes disciples or supports ordinary Christians to make disciples on their frontlines.

Example roles

All kinds of work can be “ministry” if done to honour God and is not in itself sinful. But it’s helpful to distinguish direct gospel ministry where our direct output, or that of our organisation, is disciple-making. There’s a huge range of options for our various skills, whether we’re gifted operationally, pastorally or in gospel teaching. It’s a mistake to divide sacred from secular, or to see directly church-based and Christian work as inherently more spiritual. All of life can be worship. But we shouldn’t overlook the need for direct ministry workers and their massive potential for impact.

Jesus was clear in Luke 10:2 that “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” Two thousand years later, this remains true. Many parts of the world have only a few handfuls of Christians, and even in the UK, only half the population say they know any practising Christians^{1Note 1Talking Jesus Report, p. 15}.

Throughout the Bible, we see examples of people being set apart for direct ministry, such as serving in temple administration, teaching God’s word or working in mission. For example, God appointed the entire tribe of Levi to serve full-time in the temple and to be paid to do so: “I myself have selected your fellow Levites from among the Israelites as a gift to you, dedicated to the Lord to do the work at the tent of meeting.” (Numbers 18:6).

Church leadership in particular is described as a “noble task” to desire (1 Timothy 3:1), and those who serve faithfully are promised an eternal “crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4). Scripture honours this vocation, both in its importance and in the eternal reward promised to those who shepherd God’s people well.

Rachael Round

Serving in partnership at home

“I stepped down from leading Amazon’s college recruiting program when our twins were born. We knew one thing money couldn’t buy was time, so we chose to give one parent freedom to focus on our children, home, family and community.

I’m not saying every family could or should do this. It has been a sacrifice – but also a privilege and a joy. Life is unpredictable, and I’m able to adapt my time for our family and others, allowing my husband, Matt, to fully focus on his work, first at Amazon and now in church ministry.

This path requires a strong marriage, a clear sense that my identity is in Jesus (not my job title) and deep, open communication. Twenty-four years in, I’m deeply grateful to have had the time to work together with Matt for the gospel – in our lives, our children’s hearts, our community and our mission.”

Potential impact

Working in direct gospel ministry can be particularly impactful because it can multiply the ministry of others, equipping them to minister within their own lives and workplaces, and because it remains a deeply neglected field.

Pastors multiply impact. A faithful pastor may influence hundreds of people across their lifetimes, who in turn make disciples of others, finance full-time ministers, enter full-time ministry and shape entire cultures. Yet the number training for church leadership is falling across the UK, and many theological colleges are closing.^{2Note 2‘Outlook Apocalyptic for UK Theology Schools’, Christianity Today, www.christianitytoday.com/2025/02/outlook-apocalyptic-uk-theology-seminary-bibleschools/}

Missionaries can spark enormous gospel movements. The ongoing modern missionary movement, begun just two centuries ago, is responsible for hundreds of millions of Christians in previously unreached countries. For instance, Christianity in Africa grew from 9 million in 1900 to over 600 million today. Yet we need more missionaries. In the quarter of the world that’s most unreached, there’s just one missionary for every 500,000 people. That’s one gospel worker for a population the size of Liverpool.

Missional Entrepreneurship – Director of The Way UK

Michael Yelland-Brown

“I’m quite practical, so instead of A-levels, I trained as an electrician. Not the obvious launchpad for ministry. But around then I came across an evangelist on YouTube praying for people on the streets, and it gripped me. God took me from there to shadowing a pastor on a gap year, studying youth work and becoming a youth pastor in Leamington Spa. Suddenly I was running the whole thing with 60 young people.

What stirred my heart was getting the young people doing evangelism themselves. We’d film their testimonies during the week, play the videos at our Friday night events, and afterwards their non-Christian mates would bombard them with questions.

Inspired by this and then working at the Way UK, I pitched a new format of peer-to-peer interviews, built a team from scratch and somehow convinced the Church of England to fund it. God used this to grow the ministry to hit 1.2 million followers and over 100 million views last year.

Two weeks ago I met a girl I’d led in my youth group years earlier. She’s about to run an Alpha course in her school, and she told me, ‘I don’t just watch The Way each week. I’ve been using it as a discipleship tool for the last four years.’ To see someone who could easily have fallen off stay close to God – because something exists online for her at the times she’s not at church – that’s why we build.”

Explore the other pathways

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