In 2026, Blessing Point reaches a 20-year milestone of working to heal wounded churches and restore the radiance of Christ’s Bride. One of the important things we have learned over two decades is that Jesus cares about the motives behind a ministry as much as the ministry itself. He cares about why we do what we do – and He will discipline a church when motives go haywire.
The apostle John described Jesus as having “eyes like a flame of fire.” He uses those eyes to search “the hearts and minds” of church members and their leaders (Rev. 1:14; 2:23). Simply having a great vision and mission as a church and working hard at it is not enough to satisfy Jesus’ penetrating gaze.
At Blessing Point, we’ve seen too many ministries get sidetracked—not because they fail to do good work, but because their motives for doing that work have shifted.. These are not overt shifts, but subtle, hardly noticeable ones.
Such motives lie deep in the hearts of ministry leaders. When touched upon, flawed motives can squirm into hiding like a worm fleeing a hook. Secret desires for advancement, recognition, numbers, entitlement, or control can reduce a ministry to “wood, hay, and stubble” when the tests come. And tests always come.
We Are Not Immune
Even a ministry that works to heal other ministries, like Blessing Point, is subject to motives that don’t measure up. What I’m writing about applies to the leaders of our ministry, too (and me specifically). How then do I/we discern our real motives for serving the Lord?
From my experience, keeping our motives in check begins with recognizing that the human heart is corrupt. The Scripture says, “The heart is more deceitful than all else. And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). And, unfortunately, knowing Jesus does not eviscerate the deceitfulness interwoven with human motives.
To complicate things further, the Bible says the human heart is beyond “understanding.” That means that our true motivations may be beyond our ability to recognize them! This suggests that developing right motives starts with admitting that ours can go astray. (If one cannot humbly recognize this possibility, experientially and not merely theologically, they set themselves up for the very problem we are trying to avoid!)
Sinful Inclinations
Beyond humbly admitting that we can do ministry for the wrong reasons, there are the actual sinful inclinations of the human heart. What might these be in a ministry context? Here are a few possibilities that I have encountered:
- Pursuing a “great” ministry because we hunger to be “great” ourselves.
- Speaking, leading, or serving in the church to satisfy an itch for attention.
- Coveting a lead position when God has put you in a support role.
- Finding fault with others who make you feel less important than you believe you are.
- Allowing fear to keep you from correcting others in the body of Christ.
- Fostering unhealthy attachments to other leaders because of your insecurities.
- Believing that you deserve special treatment because of your role in the ministry.
- Pursuing or embracing comfort that shifts your ministry from its original mission.
- Replacing dependency on the Lord’s leading with expediency born of your anxiety.
- Allowing pride regarding size, impact, or theological correctness to infect a ministry.
- Using weak theological arguments to facilitate covert agendas.
- Wanting your way for the sake of wanting your way.
Faulty motives can derail any ministry, but their impact does not always appear immediately. The Lord sees our flawed motives in real time, but we often recognize His corrective discipline only in retrospect. A church may go off the rails without realizing it—or without understanding the motives behind the derailment—until long after the damage is done, if it is ever recognized at all.
Damage Done – Damage Repair
The kind of damage done includes inexplicable church conflicts, which Jesus uses to point leaders to their flawed motives. To be clear, conflicts involving competing agendas, attempts at control, broken trust for leadership, and flagging resources are usually not a church’s root problem. In reality, the church harbored flawed motives in its heart and left them unaddressed over time.
Fortunately, we have a loving Lord who longs to get ministries back on track. And while shifting motives may be discouraging and can even prove painful for a ministry, Jesus stands ready to restore ministries when they repent and realign their motives with His.
If you’ve witnessed other flawed motives behind ministry, post them in the comments.
Mark Barnard serves as President of Blessing Point Ministries. He is the author of several books in the field of church health including the newly released, Diagnosing the Heart of Your Church – Revised Edition. Learn more at blessingpoint.org.