Who would think that giving permission to minister would be a powerful tool of evangelism? I’m not talking about dead mainline mortuaries either. Yes, giving permission to minister has become a powerful thing in a church where all kinds of unbiblical limitations on ministry are common.

I was reading an article this morning on the New Circuit Riders. In it Yasmin Pierce, one of the members of a CR team says, “Many times, it’s about telling women they have permission to evangelize.” [August 2020, Charisma Magazine THEY DON’T OFFER A WAY TO LINK IT FOR YOU]. 

PERMISSION TO EVANGELIZE!? Are you kidding me?

They do their work on campuses, and they say they are seeing amazing results after they simply let young women know it’s all right to evangelize. My wife was a pastor, so I know about gender bias. But this is appalling.

Giving permission to minister —young or old; male or female; trained or not

I can hear the seminarians sputter. We left a mainline church because we couldn’t minister without a collar. My wife finished seminary and had an obvious gift—so her blockage may have been bigotry. But I don’t have the call to be ordained, and I was blocked also. Thank God that Jesus, Peter, John, Philip, Steven, Barnabas, Paul did not ask for permission — nor did they go to seminary. There are many more including Spurgeon, McPherson, and so on.

But the Endgame Harvest is being lead by the youth in many cases. Circuit Riders, Perry Stone, and Karen Wheaton are seeing powerful growth by preaching the Gospel and encouraging all youth to respond to God’s call and minister. My concern is if you have a young person or a woman ask you about ministering because of a call on his or her life, you pray and ask the Lord to give you the grace to encourage and mentor such people so they will do what God is calling them to do.