Ambition

At some point before I was hired at Lake Arlington I had lunch with the youth pastor and the spiritual development pastor out there. I think it was a part of the interview process. Being hired at a church is a convoluted process. Anyway, the spiritual development guy's name is Eric. That is quicker to type. So Eric had some really good questions for me. I'm still thinking about some of them. Somewhere in the conversation, I asked about the dynamics between staff members at LABC. I probably wanted to take a bite of my delicious potato soup and needed someone else to talk for a minute. Somewhere in there he made the statement that alot of the guys on staff there were pretty ambitious.

I think ambition is good. I think aspiring to do great things is much better than the alternative of aspiring to do whats always been done, to never change, to be static and stagnant. But I've been chewing on the concept of ambition in ministry for a few months now. Its like a piece of over cooked steak that I'm not making much progress with.

Career is important for most people. Guys find alot of self worth in what they do. In many ways ambition is their driving force. In a normal job, like being a lawyer or something, you work toward the bigger and better job. However, in ministry, there is something really wrong about that being your motivation.

So, in the context of vocational ministry, what does it really mean to be ambitious AND to be in God's will? What does the Bible teach about that?