The mark of commendable ministry isn’t numbers, hits, clicks, eloquence, growth or sales. It’s endurance. We’re commended “by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities...By truthful speech & the power of God...through honor & dishonor, through slander & praise”(2Cor6)

It was always going to be hard. It’s SUPPOSED to be hard to be a Jesus-follower in this world. He said so. Ease has atrophied our muscles & we’re going to need them. We’re responsible for discipling people in great endurance. It’s a fight here. A fight for joy. A fight for faith.

I am concerned that we, in this prosperous West (generally speaking), are unprepared for enormous difficulty ahead. We are compulsively entertained and entertaining and it has made us increasingly fragile. In touch with our screens, out of touch with suffering for the gospel.

Leaders & teachers, we’ll be held responsible for how we trained the generation we leave behind. Let’s train up hearty disciples. Hearty in love & Scripture. Hearty in joy. Hearty in compassion. In commitment. We’re asking so pathetically little, we’re no longer even compelling.

Oh I know, I know. Less people will be interested. Jesus saw the same thing. And He turned the world upside down with 11. Quit entertaining the thousands and calling it evangelism. Train up a committed group of hearty disciples and watch the gospel go to the ends of the earth.