Quotes On Ministry

John Chrysostom (to his congregation): To me it is nothing when I am applauded and well spoken of. There is only one thing I ask of you — to prove your approval of me through your works. That is how you can speak well of me, and that is what is going to do you good. This, to me, is the greatest honor. I prefer it to a material crown. I do not desire applause and being well spoken of. I have one request to make — for you to listen to me in quiet attentiveness and to put my advice into practice. This is not a theater. You don’t sit here in order to admire actors and to applaud them. This is a place where you must learn the things of God.

Matthew Henry: Those who teach by their doctrine must teach by their life, or else they pull down with one hand what they build up with the other.

A.W. Tozer: I do not preach any new truth. I do not have any new doctrine. . . . We must have a revival that will mean purity of heart as a normal standard for everybody. We must be clean people, and not only clean outside.
John Owen: A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.

John Wesley: Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Arthur W. Pink: From every pulpit in the land it needs to be thundered forth that God still lives, that God still observes, . . . [and] still reigns. Faith is now in the crucible, it is being tested by fire, and there is no fixed . . . resting place for the heart and mind but in the Throne of God. What is needed now, as never before, is a full, positive, constructive setting forth of the Godhood of God.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne: Remember you are God’s sword — His instrument — I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.