Ministry Team Training

In our last lesson, we looked at how participation on a ministry team helps a person learn to move in God's power, to do the things Jesus did as per John 14:12. The team provides a relatively safe environment for people to learn how to flow in God's power and anointing. And it helps people grow in faith as they experience God's power moving through them to heal the sick, cast out demons, etc. The ministry team atmosphere provides many advantages to its participants. As people become aware of these advantages, they will want to serve on a ministry team.

Qualifications

So the next logical question is, who should be given the opportunity to be on a ministry team? The guidelines will vary from church to church and from ministry to ministry, but there are a few general criteria that all team leaders should consider.

The first criteria is that the person must be seriously committed to obey God and give Him lordship in every area of their life. This criteria comes from Jesus in John 14:15. In fact, in John 14:12-15, Jesus tied the believing faith (the faith necessary to do the works He did and to get your prayers answered) to obeying Him. It is clear that He expects us to obey Him if we want to move in His power and anointing. When a person is not committed to obey God, to make Him boss of every area of their lives and to live for Him, that person should not be allowed on the ministry team.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not requiring perfection here. I am more concerned with the person's motivation and heart attitude towards God than about their outward actions. As we commit our lives to Jesus' Lordship, He moves in and takes one or two areas at a time. After those areas are firmly under His lordship, then He moves in and demands lordship in yet another area. When we are very committed to God, most of us still have some areas of our life that are not fully under His lordship. I do not require people to be "perfected," I just require them to be sincerely committed to the process. A team member may still have some areas they need to put under His lordship. And that is OK, providing they are working actively towards that goal.

Let me clarify with an example. One time I used a team for an outreach in Canada. There was a young man who had been saved out of the drug counterculture. He had been a believer for about two years and had given up drugs and stayed drug-free for well over a year. He had stopped stealing and had gotten himself a job. He loved the Lord very much and he was growing in his faith and in his relationship with God. He was very committed to obey God in most areas. But he still smoked and he was addicted to cigarettes. He wanted to stop smoking but had not been able to accomplish that yet.

Some people felt he should not be allowed on the team because he had the "vice" of smoking in his life. They argued that if Jesus were truly his Lord, he would not smoke. However, from what I could see, the young man was taking a lot of very active strides to walk out Jesus' Lordship in his life, to honor and obey God. Yes, smoking was still an area that he needed to get under God's Lordship. But he had come a really long way and he demonstrated a day to day commitment to honor and obey God. So we let him on the team. God anointed him and moved through him, and he was a valuable member of the team.

This young man was not perfected yet, but he was seriously committed to obey and serve God. He was still "in process," but he was moving in the right direction.

A second absolute criteria is a commitment to personal holiness. If someone is in blatant or repeated sin, they are in rebellion against God. This type of person should not serve on a ministry team for a couple of reasons. First, God is not going to anoint someone who is blatantly in rebellion against Him. Second, we do not want to send the message that "sin is okay." So we don't want to allow people on the ministry team who are in willful disobedience or overt sin. If someone lives in an adulterous relationship, for instance, I don't care how gifted or anointed they may be, I don't want them praying on my team. People who serve on ministry teams should not be participating in blatant or repeated sin.

A third important criteria is that the person has a teachable spirit, and must be willing to conform to the ministry team rules. They must be willing to learn, to take gentle and loving correction, or helpful suggestions when they are offered. I have met people who will not listen to anyone and who claim "God told me to do it this way." These people refuse to conform to the team guidelines and they can become a real problem.

Let me share an example from one time when I used a ministry team in Africa. There was one lady on the team who was known for her deliverance ministry. She was considered to have a strong anointing for deliverance, so we had flown her in from about 300 miles away and even paid her a small honorarium to serve on the ministry team. Once she arrived, we discovered that she had a physically forceful style of prayer. She put her hand firmly on top of the persons head and twist her wrist strongly, forcing them to twist around. She would also grab their shoulders and spin them until they were dizzy and disorientated. She liked it when the people she prayed for had "physical manifestations," so she would force them to have these manifestations by manhandling them. We received several complaints about her -- many of the people who she prayed for felt abused by her ministry style.

I talked to her on multiple occasions and explained the team guidelines to her. I told her several times that she needed to stop these physically forceful behaviors. She would insist that God told her to pray that way and she had to listen to Him instead of to me. We finally decided to release her early because she refused to follow the prayer team guidelines, and she was causing problems for the team. Even though she was very gifted in one type of prayer, she was not a good team player and she was not open to learn other ministry styles. And that turned out to be a problem for the team instead of a contribution to it. It is really important for team members to be correctable and to follow team guidelines on how to minister.

Let me summarize what we have said so far. There are three really important criteria for ministry team members:

1. They must be committed to God and committed to obey Him.
2. They must walk in personal holiness and must not be involved in any blatant sin.
3. They must have a teachable spirit and be willing to conform to ministry team guidelines.

There are some other criteria that I learned from Randy Clark. Randy is one of the ministers whose team I served on while I was still growing in my own faith for healing. I traveled to Moscow with Randy in 1996 and again in 1997. We prayed for a lot of sick people there and we saw a lot of miraculous healings. In fact, serving on Randy's team in Moscow was where I saw my first regenerative miracle, where God grew back a missing body part. It was a lady whose kneecaps had been burned off in a fire, and God gave her new ones when I prayed for her. It was amazing and it caused my faith to grow a whole level.

I have a lot of respect for Randy and his ministry because of the experiences I have had in traveling with him as a part of his team. A year or two after Moscow, Randy began to allow people he did not know personally to travel with him and serve on his ministry team for some of his international trips. Because Randy did not know the people personally, he put some ministry team criteria into place, and they seem like very wise criteria to me. Let me share them with you.

Once criteria is that the person must be in good relationship with their pastor or church leadership, and they must obtain a written recommendation from their pastor if they want to serve on Randy's team. Another criteria is that the person must be a tithing member of a church, as tithing is an evidence of God's lordship in the person's finances and church membership demonstrates commitment. The other criteria is that the person must sign an agreement that they will submit to Randy and to team leaders, and that they will obey Randy's ministry team rules and guidelines at all times.

Ministry teams need to be win-win situations for all involved. The people who serve on them get to practice praying for the sick in a safe and anointed atmosphere; they get to personally see and experience God's power moving through them. This is both exciting and faith-building. The leaders who use teams get the advantage of having more people prayed for in their meetings, which increases the signs and miracles that God can do in a meeting. I prayed without a team in India in 2003, and it took two hours to pray for about 150 people. But when I was in Nigeria in 2004, I used a team of six, and we could pray for about 400 people in just one hour. The team was a great advantage because a lot more people received prayer a lot more quickly, and God was able to do a lot more healings because of that. And of course, the people who are ministered to by team members also benefit because they can receive quality prayer attention in a shorter period of time -- they don't have to spend as much time waiting for someone to pray for them.