The 'broken' are God's most useful instruments

I know we’ve only just celebrated Christmas and the Incarnation, but as Arsene Wenger famously (allegedly) said: “Christmas is important but Easter is decisive.” And the thing about the Easter story for pastors and ministry leaders is it’s not merely a doctrine we proclaim but a pattern we embody.

We follow Jesus who moved through betrayal, abandonment, agony, and the darkness of death before the stone was rolled away on the third day. He told his disciples plainly: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

This principle governs not only salvation but sanctification, and not only conversion but ministry itself.

Death precedes resurrection.
The cross comes before the crown.

And there are no shortcuts.

This is the pattern woven into the fabric of Christian ministry that many (most?) of us would rather avoid: the way of suffering, failure, and death before resurrection. Yet this is precisely the path our Lord walked, and it remains the template - the only template - for all who would serve in His name.

In a church-world that often prioritises competence, Jesus cares about character.

God's 'power is made perfect in weakness'

The apostle Paul understood this pattern deeply. He spoke of carrying in his body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus might also be manifested. He gloried and boasted in weaknesses, insults, pain and hardships, having learned that God's power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12). This was no theoretical theology but his lived and everyday experience - the great apostle brought low again and again (and again and again), that Christ might be exalted. We have this treasure - he reminded the Corinthians - in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

Voices of old

Previous generations grasped this concept with more clarity. Richard Baxter warned of the "palpable error" of ministers whose preaching far outstripped their living, recognising that effective ministry flows from transformed character, not mere giftedness.

Charles Spurgeon reflected that he never grew in grace so much as on the “bed of pain,” understanding that God even wounds His servants into usefulness in ways that seminary education alone never could.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne captured it memorably: "It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God."

Competence vs. character

Ministers must experience their own poverty of spirit before they can enrich the spiritually poor.

They must be broken before they can bind up the broken-hearted.

The minister must know the darkness of their own heart before they can truly illuminate the hearts of others.

This is formative suffering, the kind that deepens ministry rather than disqualifies from it.

Yet pastoral wisdom requires we must acknowledge an important but difficult distinction here. Not all failure is formative. Some falls reveal not a minister being refined but a minister whose character was never qualified for office in the first place. Cases of abuse, patterns of unrepentant sin, or fundamental unfaithfulness may indeed require permanent removal from ministry, even while we hold hope for personal restoration. The Biblical qualifications for eldership are about character, not perfection, but some lines cannot be uncrossed.

For most of us in ministry - perhaps however unwanted - the call is to embrace the pattern our Saviour established before us. Our greatest effectiveness often emerges from our deepest pain. Suffering is a greenhouse that grows us. The comfort God gives us in our affliction becomes the very comfort we extend to others. We limp into the pulpit, and somehow God uses our weakness to display His strength.

We preach resurrection because we have tasted death. We speak of hope because we have known despair. We proclaim a Saviour who is (more than) familiar with suffering because suffering has made us familiar with Him. This is the strange paradox of the kingdom: death leads to life, weakness reveals strength, the last become first and the broken become God's most useful instruments.

Friends, there is no resurrection without crucifixion, no Easter morning life without Good Friday death.

May we have courage to walk this pattern in 2026.