It’s easy to imagine the Apostle Paul doing the work of the ministry. We see him preaching to great crowds—some attentive, some hostile—but preaching nonetheless. Other times we envision him nestled with a tiny klatch in someone’s home. Our persistent picture shows him contending for the faith, waging the good fight as God’s mighty warrior. So, it’s easy to forget the other half.
Paul, like everyone else, had to eat, pay rent, buy clothes, and purchase transport. Sometimes friends and churches supported him. Other times he made tents. He shopped for material, measured, cut, and sewed. He sought customers, negotiated prices, and delivered finished products. Without that effort, he couldn’t be available to preach. So, his labor was an equal part of the work of the ministry.
Today, thousands of God’s ministers imitate Paul. They preach, teach, and counsel while also working as clerks, mechanics, or drivers—some permanently, others for a season. I recently spoke with Paraclete associate, Greg Wilburn, who serves the Lord just as Paul did.
How did you meet the Lord?
I grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, going to church occasionally with my family. I came to know the Lord personally when I heard a sermon on TV. I was in my living room with my stepdad watching Charles Stanley preach the gospel message about Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection, and how we can enter into a relationship with God through Jesus, and what that means with repentance and faith. I was 12 when I heard that message, and immediately I understood it and felt convicted. I went into my room and prayed and trusted in Jesus. That’s when I felt the Lord saved me. And so, yeah, I started growing my relationship with God and loved reading the bible, hungry for the word.
How were you called to ministry?
In high school, as I was growing in my relationship with God, I noticed that I really enjoyed reading the Bible and just loved studying scripture. As I walked through the halls of my high school, I started to feel a great burden for lost people, especially the students in my high school who didn’t know the Lord. For a year or two, I was paying attention to some of those stirrings. And then I started researching where I might go to college. I was interested in learning about Christian colleges, so I started getting applications and brochures in the mail. Through that whole process, I felt the Lord nudging me towards this calling, towards ministry. I wanted to study the Bible. I want to go into vocational ministry, and I wanted to go to a Christian college and get a degree so I could learn more. At the time, I interpreted that to mean youth ministry because I was a high schooler, so what else could I do? Over the years it developed in different directions under the umbrella of ministry.
So, where did you go from there?
So, I ended up going to Belhaven University in Jackson, Ms. and got my Bible and Christian ministry degree. I also got really involved with college ministry while I was in college through Intervarsity. I did a lot of Bible studies on campus and really enjoyed that. I also took the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement class in college, and that is where I felt more of a burden for overseas missions. After graduating, I knew I wanted to go overseas and work with unreached people groups, but I didn’t know where; I didn’t know how that would happen.
So, as a 22-year-old, I thought maybe I should get a little more experience in life and in ministry. People go all different ways to the mission field, but I thought for me it’d be good to get some more experience. So, after college, I joined staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and did college ministry in Louisville, KY for four years. I did a lot of evangelism and Bible studies with students and really enjoyed it. But eventually, I felt some direction towards India to work with the unreached there. Then, I met my wife, who was also interested in India. She had already been a few times on short-term trips.
After we got married, we went with Pioneers to the mission field in 2013. We were there for five years, working with an unreached Muslim people group. That was a great experience, and we did a lot of evangelism. Then the Lord began closing doors. The team we originally joined left, and we kind of got into an isolated situation. We tried to develop community with some other missionaries, but we were very alone in our focus on the Muslims and never saw the team come back and develop. So, we went through a season of burnout and seeking the Lord about his next steps for us. Then, I felt him leading me more towards the pastoral side of ministry with a burden for soul care. We returned to the US, and for the last several years, I’ve been involved with pastoring in the Louisville area, our home church and Indiana, and church planting work in Florida. Now, with Paraclete, I’m doing soul care and spiritual direction work.
What’s your current ministry like?
I received my training through Denver Seminary as a spiritual director and graduated last summer. Through Paraclete, I’m doing spiritual direction meetings with missionaries, pastors, and leaders via Zoom. Some people are overseas and some are here in the US. We do monthly meetings with guided readings of Scripture and some prayer time together. A lot of it is just asking them questions about their life with the Lord, their prayer life, how they’re doing in their relationship with God, what are the consolations and desolations of their life. Where are you noticing his presence? Where have you felt far from God? How are you processing the difficult parts of the journey? We have very open-ended conversations.
You say you do it part time. How does that split work?
I also work at Amazon as a delivery driver. It’s hard because I would like to be full time with Paraclete. But it’s been necessary to support my family. We had great seasons of fundraising when we were on the mission field. The Lord provided greatly. But we’ve moved around a few times, and it’s been a struggle because our connections have been scattered and I haven’t been able to raise the full-time support, just part-time. But I’m thankful that God has provided through that. I do four full-day shifts with Amazon, and then I have the other days available for family and my spiritual direction appointments. I devote Thursdays to my spiritual direction appointments, but it is a flexible schedule. One of the directees that I meet with is in India, so it’s a big time difference. I meet with him at 9:30 at night during daylight savings time. And then I work with a guy in Germany first thing in the morning before I go to work. I just have to work around people’s schedules.
What are some of your plans for the future?
I’d like to be full-time with Paraclete doing soul care, spiritual direction, and spiritual formation work with missionaries, pastors, and leaders. I would love to do retreat ministry and to travel to minister to the directees in person.
What advice would you give someone considering your type of ministry?
Well, there’s a lot that could be said about that. Thinking in terms of my current focus on soul care and spiritual direction, I think of the scripture in Corinthians where Paul reminds them that all that you have is something that you’ve received from God. We can’t give what we haven’t received. That’s an important part of soul care and doing spiritual direction work with leaders. It’s a very interior-focused work. It’s not all about how many converts you got, and how many Bible studies you led. It’s not those quantifiable numbers. It’s this deep work of God that he’s doing slowly inside the soul of his people. To sit with people tending to that interior work in their lives, you have to have done that yourself. You have to have received from the Lord and from others deeply in those ways in order to do that sort of spiritual direction ministry. I’ve done it through some of my experience overseas and hitting some walls in my life where I entered a season of receiving a lot of counseling, a lot of care for my own soul and my own life, and then meeting with a spiritual director.
And now I have a spiritual direction supervision group where we meet once a month and receive from them. I’ve learned that my soul has deep needs, ways that I need to be ministered to and I need to be willing to go into those deeper places in my life. Again, especially if someone is going to give that sort of ministry to others, it helps to pay attention to that in their own inner world. So, I would say that if someone wants to go into spiritual direction or soul care ministry, that they continue to invest in their own soul care journey and be willing to go into some of those deeper places that the Lord wants to minister to. Having had some of those experiences myself, having been a missionary, having been a pastor, I can relate to other missionaries and other pastors. The more experiences you get, the better, so that you can relate to people who are now where you have been.