Transformational Ministry looks at the role of leadership in Christian ministry. Whether we are at worship or in a committee meeting, speaking to children in church or providing pastoral care, the great goal of ministry is the transformation of persons into the likeness of Jesus Christ. As a minister, Michael Jinkins has known the struggles and exhilaration of a pastoral calling. Drawing from a remarkable range of sources, from Barth, Calvin and Gregory the Great to a host of secular writers, he addresses issues related to the core purpose of the ministry. Book jacket.

Michael Jinkins is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church. He was awarded an Oxford Foundation Fellowship by the Graduate Theological Foundation during his 1999 sabbatical at the University of Oxford. He is the author of many articles and eight books

From Chapter 6: The joyful ministry to which God calls usBasically, what we have said so far is that the minister’s activities are grounded, first, in the minister’s character, and, second, in the mission of God’s Church.The issues of character and mission are pre-eminently theological issues. We are who we are because the God who created and redeemed us is the God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our mission springs, in turn, from our understanding of who God is and what God is like. If God were capricious, careening between acts of wickedness and deeds of arbitrary kindness, our mission might be to warn people to tiptoe through life terrified of their eternal destination, uncertain whether God can be trusted at any moment. But, if God is the God revealed in Jesus Christ, the God who created all things from a wealth of unconditioned, unlimited, unbounded, unneedy love, the God who abhors not the Virgin’s womb, the God who at the cost of that which was most dear brought back to the Father’s house those who were most unworthy, the God who loves creation so much that God will not rest until all creation shares the wholeness, completeness and perfection of God’s eternal being-in-communion, then our mission is quite different. © Michael Jinkins