Imagine for a moment that you’ve been tasked with overseeing the building of a paling fence. A long fence. Ambitiously long. So long, in fact, that people suspect it’s unlikely to ever get finished. 

But you intend to prove them wrong. 

So you do the obvious thing: you set out to recruit a big team of fence builders. Because if you’re going to get the job done, you’re going to need lots of people working on it. 

Of course, it may be hard to recruit enough qualified and experienced carpenters, so you might need to both recruit and train people—teach them the basic fence-building skills. But as the job is so big, it’s worth investing the time and money into training those extra workers. In the long run, that will help get the fence built.

Then you deploy them. You send each of them out to the building site with their wood, hammer and nails, and get them started.

A short time into the job, however, one of the experienced workers comes to you in your role as the project manager.

“Listen, boss, we’re making some progress. But you do realise, don’t you, that we could get the job done three times faster if we had some other equipment? Like, say, a motorised augur for digging the fence post holes and a nail gun to attach the palings. We could be an awful lot more productive if we just had the right tools.”

You realise straight away she’s right. You’ll not only get the fence done a lot quicker, but you’ll also save money overall by giving the workers the right tools to make their time far more productive.

It’s a no brainer. You buy the tools and get them into the hands of your fencing team.

-- Here endeth the parable. --

When Matthias Media first started its publishing ministry back in the late 1980s, we had a slogan we used on our catalogues: “Tools to get the job done”. Sadly, linguistic culture moved on and the word ‘tools’ took on an unfortunate secondary meaning. So we changed the slogan to something else. But I think we lost sight of a simple truth by giving up that slogan: quality ministry resources in the hands of a Christian worker are like nail guns in the hands of fence builders—they have the potential to significantly help the worker get more done, and, quite often, done better!

In our evangelical network here in Australia, I think we’re pretty good at the whole recruiting more workers task. We’ve had our struggles at times, with numbers worryingly on the decline at Bible colleges for a period. But the serious alarm expressed when those numbers dropped indicated that, as a network, we have been very conscious of how important it is to keep raising up the next generation. As a result, the downward trend didn’t seem to last all that long.

I’m not saying—by any stretch—that we can’t do better at recruiting more workers. But organisations like the Ministry Training Strategy and AFES help to keep our evangelical foot on the pedal in this area.

We’re also pretty good at training our recruits once we’ve recruited them. We have quality gap-year programs, apprenticeship programs and an enviable selection of good quality Bible colleges scattered around the country. 

But what I want to allege is that we haven’t always excelled at giving our recruits the tools that give their work a boost, saving them time and expanding what they can achieve (under God). We haven’t done as well as we could have, I believe, at persuading the next generation of recruits to make good use of Christian books and resources in their ministry.

You might be thinking, “Of course Carmichael would say that! He works for Matthias Media and he has a vested interest.”

But do you know why I worked for Matthias Media for 37 years and continue to do so now as a volunteer without any financial interest?

Here’s why: I am deeply convinced that, under God, resources like ours can make ministries like yours more fruitful.

This is a case I argued way back in 2010 in a brochure I wrote, and which Matthias Media produced and distributed, called Twenty-six Vine Workers. (Feel free to read it and pass it on to anyone you think would find it useful.)

However, even if you are convinced, like I am, of the value of books and resources, I admit there is still a practical problem. We now have nearly 500 resources in our Matthias Media online store, so very few people know and can bring to mind all the resources Matthias Media has on offer that might be useful tools for a specific ministry need. I mean, without wanting to seem immodest, I think I can—but it’s taken me 37 years to get to know them. 

So here’s my challenge to you. 

Next time you’re doing some sort of ministry work, and you think Matthias Media doesn’t have a suitable ‘nail gun’ you could use on the job, send me a quick email and test me out. Alternatively, try our online Resource finder, which will ask you a bunch of questions regarding what you want to do, and then recommend the relevant resources.

More workers. Better trained. And given quality tools to get the job done. 🙂 That sounds like a good plan for building the kingdom to me. What do you reckon?