7 Lessons For Ministry From Military History (Short Read)

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There are lessons to be learned for ministry, particularly church leadership, from military history. Here are seven lessons for ministry from military history highlighting key elements of church leadership and ministry more generally.

1 – Thermopylae and the 300: Not Everyone in Ministry is Remembered.

Remembered in films and comic books, the final stand of 300 Spartans and King Leonidas against King Xerxes and the Persian army is a resonant moment. We’ve been given images of 300 heavily muscled and long-haired men wearing red cloaks and not much else standing in a mountain pass. We’re told they bravely stood alone and sacrificed themselves for democracy.

What is often overlooked is the roughly 3000 other people who were there fighting with them.

Soldiers from other Greek city-states fought alongside the Spartans for days until they were outmanoeuvred. The Spartans provided the rear guard and died so the others could escape. But when we read the story or watch the films, these other people are often left out. When they are included, they are diminished and made secondary to the story.

Often, in ministry, there are people involved who are not spoken about, who are overlooked, or who are rarely noticed. These are people who make everything else possible but who tend not to be remembered.

It’s easy to overlook fundraisers and cleaners, tea makers and building surveyors, administrators, and media consultants. But so many people who make ministry possible need to be remembered.

A good church leader will never forget that there are dozens and hundreds of people standing with them who the people in front of them may not know about unless the leader is willing to raise them up.

People in ministry do not stand alone. They always stand as part of a great crowd. The myth of the rugged individual needs to be cast down.

2 – Marius’s Mules: Self-Suficiency Enables Mission.

The Roman Consul and Republican General Marius (Adopted Uncle to Julius Caesar) transformed how the Roman Military worked. Before his reforms, the military consisted of citizens who served only when needed, would go home in time for the harvest, and whose equipment and role were based on income and social status.

As the Republic grew and effectively became an Empire, it needed a professional military able to serve overseas for extended periods of time. Marius set up a standing army of people who would serve for 25 years, be paid a salary, and be given their equipment by the state.

Each soldier carried equipment, armour and weapons, food and drink for three days, and tools for making roads or setting up camp. Rather than relying on a baggage train, the normal soldier carried their own baggage.

This meant that when necessary, a legion could cover 25-30 miles in a day without being slowed by carts or mules. The soldiers were nicknamed Marius’s Mules because of how much they carried.

But it also meant they were effectively self-sufficient. They did not depend on long supply chains but could operate independently. The generals could deploy and use their forces quickly without first writing back to Rome for more support.

The more ministry can be self-sufficient, whether in funding, resources, staffing, or technical capacity, the more the church leader can carry out responsive and agile ministry. The more it has to rely on a central depot for support, the slower a ministry centre can respond to opportunities.

By increasing the capacity of local centers for self-sufficiency or by locating authorising power in the local, the Missional capacity of local ministry can be increased.

3 – The First Crusade: Ideology and Rewards Drive Results.

It is popular to regard the Crusades as undertaken by opportunistic warlords and warriors who wanted an excuse to fight and kill people in a world where they were meant to turn the other cheek. Sometimes, the lure of wealth, land, and excitement is offered as a reason why people went on crusades. But we must not underestimate the ideological drive behind many crusaders.

Most people who went on the Crusades did so because of their faith. They believed they were on pilgrimage, fighting to achieve a sacred purpose. They were told that their sins would be forgiven by going on a crusade, and they could find salvation.

You have two groups of people: the ones motivated by beliefs and the ones motivated by rewards. For some people, it’s about the process and the journey, while for others, it’s about the results and the end goal.

You need both groups of people. You need the ones who will remind you why you are on the journey in the first place, hold onto those beliefs, and be the conscience of the decision-makers. You also need those who can keep the end goal in sight, who are driven to achieve the results, and who see things accomplished.

When you can combine ideology and results, you have a powerful combination that can achieve all kinds of things. If you can get the idealogues to grasp a meaningful result, and if you can get the goal-oriented people to do so because of their beliefs, then you’ve got a game changer on your hands.

4 – The Siege of Malta: You Cannot Win Without the Community.

In the 16th century, Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, sent almost a hundred thousand soldiers, sailors, engineers, and slaves to lay siege to the tiny Island of Malta.

Why?

Malta was the sovereign territory of the most holy order of the Knights of St. John of the Hospital in Jerusalem, also known as the Knights of Rhodes and the Knights of Malta. Its members knew it as ‘the Religion.’ We know them as the Hospitallers. They were the last great crusading order.

The Knights of St. John used Malta as a base for their ships to go out, attack Ottoman shipping, raid the coast, and attack Muslim cities. They were a thorn in the side of the Ottoman Empire to the extent that even with only five hundred knights and seven ships, they were able to drive Suleiman to send a huge fleet to attack them.

The knights held out for months, long enough to grind down the besiegers until Spain sent reinforcements, and the Ottomans were forced to withdraw. It was an immense and unlikely victory attributed to a divine miracle, which fundamentally altered the future of the Mediterranean.

But the knights didn’t fight alone. 500 knights were supported by 1500 Spanish tercios, about 1000 mercenaries and gentlemen adventurers, and 9000 Maltese militia. By the end of the siege, thousands of women had joined the defenders.

Without the islanders’ support, fighting with the knights and providing them with food, water, engineers, and labour, the knights would have eventually been slaughtered.

Without the support of the local community and help from the other agencies we work with and other churches, a local church cannot survive independently. Ministry works best as a team. With people working together to achieve a common aim, even if they might be different. The knights couldn’t win independently, and a church leader could not succeed independently.

5 – Trafalgar: Training Wins Wars.

The battle of Trafalgar ensured Napoleon could never invade Britain, gave Britain the space to send forces to fight the peninsula war, and created the context where the British Empire could emerge.

The British fleet was outnumbered and outgunned by the French and Spanish fleets. A strategic victory for the French and Spanish meant getting past the British fleet. The British had to destroy the enemy.

In the end, the British won a crushing victory. Afterwards, the fleet’s success was explained by two things: the tactics deployed by Admiral Nelson and the training of the British sailors.

The French and Spanish sailors had been trapped in their ports by a British blockade, unable to train or practice. Their food was poor quality, their leadership was untested, and their discipline was weak. They had no drive to win and no expectation for victory, while the British were confident of their victory.

Moral is incredibly important. Having soldiers confident of victory means you’re already halfway to victory.

But the real deciding factor was the training and attention paid to the wellbeing of the sailors.

Compared to civilians in British cities, Royal Navy sailors were well-fed, healthy, strong, and looked after. They ate big meals three times a day, had rations of alcohol and lime juice with sugar to avoid scurvy, and were given time to sleep and play.

They also trained every day to sail the ship. In firing the guns. In manoeuvres and signals and general sailing. They could fire their guns three times faster than the French and Spanish. Their officers were promoted on merit; they had to pass an exam to go from midshipmen to lieutenant, and most of them would have started when they were twelve. Some officers had been seamen first before being promoted to officers.

The Royal Navy was as close to a meritocracy as possible in the regency period.

For church ministry to be effective, people need to know what they are doing. Training in evangelism, personal testimony, understanding scripture, and praying for people can help a congregation turn members into disciples and then into evangelists.

In addition to training, a church community needs to be confident—confident in its capacity to grow and achieve and confident that its leader knows what it is doing. Without this confidence, the community will not deploy its training effectively.

The church leader must instil this confidence in the way they behave, in the trust they engender, and in how they portray their leadership.

Then, the church community must be looked after. They must be fed and supported, and their spiritual and physical needs must be taken care of. Without this, they will not be able to carry out their mission.

The church leader must ensure the church’s well-being, train its members effectively, and lead them confidently.

6 – The Somme: Why Are You Fighting?

In 1916, on the Western Front, the battle of the Somme saw horrific casualties among the combatants. Men were cut down in their tens of thousands by machine gun fire or obliterated by artillery fire.

Why did people climb out of their trenches and advance against the enemy with such a high chance of death or mutilation? Discipline played a key role. The men knew that if they didn’t advance or tried to get out of combat, they would be executed. This definitely drove some of them forward. But the evidence from the time suggests that fear didn’t drive people forward. Something else was at play.

Ideology played a role for others. The genuine belief that the fight they were doing was good and righteous. They fought for a cause they believed in. Something which corresponds with the rapid growth in forms of spiritualism in the trenches. However, it seems only a minority of ordinary soldiers, especially conscripts, were motivated by ideology.

The single biggest reason men were willing to climb a trench wall and charge machine guns was loyalty—loyalty to their friends, to the honour of their regiment, and to the people around them. They went forward together because the person next to them went forward, and they didn’t want to let them down or be seen as failures or cowards.

The relationships of trust and friendship that grew between the people in the trenches were the reason they were willing to go forward. They fought for each other, risked their lives, and ultimately died for each other.

The lesson for ministry is understanding why people often come to and then stay at church—not necessarily because of their beliefs or fear of what comes after death, but because their friends do. People will try to be good Christians because their friends are because they don’t want to let each other down and because people they respect are going to church as well.

An important part of the role of the church leader is supporting people in making deep relationships with each other. Those relationships are what will help you sustain faith during difficult times. A friend’s faith acts as a kind of surrogate faith when your own faith is struggling.

Strong, deep, and loving relationships help to sustain people and give them the courage to venture forward into the unknown together.

7 – El Alamein: Combined Arms Brings Results

The second battle of El Alamein changed the course of the Second World War and turned the tide in the North African Campaign.

If Romel had broken through the Commonwealth lines, they would have been able to make a dash for Alexandria. Then, they would have been able to take control of the Suez Canal, which would have allowed them access to the oil fields that the Reich was desperate for.

With that oil, they wouldn’t have had to drive so fast into Russia and would have been able to sustain their mechanised warfare in Libya. The Allies needed to win to control the Mediterranean and deny fuel to the Axis powers for their European campaigns.

The commonwealth forces had been driven back again and again. They had bravely defended their positions but had been defeated. They were outmanoeuvred in the desert, and their inferior armoured equipment was destroyed in battle.

They won for five reasons: control of the air, strong supply lines, upgraded technology, trust in leadership, and dissemination of plans to every level of combatants.

The Commonwealth forces strengthened their air power and took control of the skies. This meant the RAF could provide close air support, deliver strategic bombing raids against supply lines, and counter attempts to bring supplies by the coast.

The Commonwealth had clear supply lines through Suez and, thanks to the Royal Navy, through the Mediterranean to Malta, Gibraltar, and Britain. They could get hot food and drink right at the lines and were well supplied with fuel and ammunition.

The Commonwealth improved its armoured resources with new tanks, armoured cars, more trucks for motorised infantry, and Jeeps for reconnaissance. The improved technology increased the army’s capacity to fight effectively. Time to train on this new equipment gave the men confidence in their abilities.

Time was taken to ensure that the men knew their general. Montgomery visited the soldiers, ensured their welfare was seen to, and was generally trusted by the soldiers to care about them. This meant that when orders came down, they were trusted. The soldiers did not think they were being thrown away but rather that they were being used for a purpose. This trust in their leaders gave them confidence in their orders and in their chances of winning.

Finally, the Commonwealth generals made sure that the plan was passed down as much as possible through the lines of command. The soldiers knew what their objectives were. They weren’t just blindly following orders; they knew what they were meant to be doing, so they would still know what to do at any point in the battle if they lost contact with their officers.

For effective ministry, we need to ensure that we draw from all available resources. Are we effectively using our mission specialists? Are we working closely with finance and business elements to strengthen those areas of our ministry? These specialists’ services provide us with top cover and help provide the effective infrastructure for battle-winning ministry.

Are we making sure that we have the correct equipment and the right amount for our mission? Are we using the latest ministry methods, looking for the latest bible study materials, and keeping the furniture and fittings in our halls in good condition and working order? Without effective supplies, the mission runs out of steam.

As church leaders, are we taking the time to build trust and confidence? Do our members expect victory, or do they feel like they are fighting a losing battle? We must instil a fierce spirit of victory for effective and transformative ministry.

Clear and open communication is one of the easiest but most overlooked ways to help drive the mission forward and improve ministry effectiveness. What decisions are being made and why? What choices are there for the future? What is the purpose and task of the church? When people know the answers to these questions, they are able to do their own mission rather than having ministry done for them.

Conclusion

I hope that the lessons I have drawn from historical examples resonate with you and give you something to think about. By getting involved in ministry, everyone has a role to play in achieving victory for the church.

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