Vacation

We're leaving tomorrow on vacation -- and I can't wait! I'm truly ready. But I have to confess that I find vacations difficult. I don't think I'm a workaholic, but I do find it difficult to let go for more than a few days. Even now, despite the fact that my vacation started three days ago, I'm in the office "just checking on things!" God, help me to grasp the reality of the 4th commandment!

Ministry is suffering

To some degree, I attribute my longevity in our church to a growing understanding of what ministry is all about. As a young man with dreams of large churches and numerical "success," I was devastated by the trials and struggles I faced in ministry -- struggles with my image of ministry, with people under my ministry, and with the circumstances of ministry itself. I was overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy and failure.

As I have grown as a person and as a pastor, I have come to appreciate that despite all the joys and satisfactions which accompany pastoral ministry and keep me going -- that the call to ministry is at its heart a call to suffer. Jesus commanded us to take up our cross (not a set of golf clubs) and follow Him, so we should not be surprised when we have to trail Him through Gethsemane and Golgotha on the way to the empty tomb.

Sometimes we suffer with our people -- we weep with those who weep. Sometimes we suffer on behalf of our people -- ignoring our admonitions and counsel, they bring grief on themselves, their families, and on us and the church. And sometimes, of course, we suffer from our people -- either from those who directly oppose us or from the "well-intentioned dragons" of which Marshall Shelley so eloquently writes. We neither seek nor enjoy such suffering; but we must grow to understand that it is a normal result of following Jesus. If we do not, it will crush us.

As I started this vocational journey over thirty years ago, I was often encouraged by my deep personal assurance that God had called me into ministry. I sometimes joked with people that I was more sure of my inward call to ministry than I was of my salvation. But as I struggled through some of the great trials of ministry (and through my own personal issues), I found ultimately that it was the confirming outward call which sustained and carried me. Somehow (notwithstanding all my self-doubts and weaknesses) God really was using my ministry in the lives of my people. I began to see those providential events that had brought me here and were keeping me here (despite my best efforts to manipulate them). I came to understand that while I could do many things with the rest of my life, this was the only thing I truly wanted to do.

Great rewards in unexpected places

Listening to a program on public radio this morning reminded me of a wonderful experience I had several years ago. I had been counseling a young woman from the community who (among many other issues) had had an abortion and then later gave birth to a son whom she had given up for adoption. So she was grieving for the child she had lost and for the one she had graciously given up to another family. She desperately wanted to know how her grown son was doing, but because of the adoption arrangements made years before she had no way of contacting him.

Through a series of extraordinary events (that I can only ascribe to God's providence in an Internet age!), this young man (who was also desperately wishing to meet his biological mother) found me and asked if I would put him in touch with his birth mother. Through another equally extraordinary series of events, I was finally able to bring them back together. (When I first saw him, I realized that I could have easily picked him out of a crowd -- he is certainly in his mother's image!) What a privilege for me to be a part of that process!

I wish I could tell you that "they all lived happily ever after." Unfortunately, the young man has had some legal and emotional problems that have brought pain to his family and now to his biological mother. But, even so, she wouldn't trade meeting him and keeping up with him for anything.

There are privileges in being a pastor that other people can't imagine. (Challenges and struggles as well -- but incredible privileges and joys.) And for me, this was one of greatest of my ministry.

Fear, anger, and the ministry

I've been thinking about the connection of fear, anger, and depression -- especially in my early (pre-midlife crisis) ministry. So much of my life was driven by fear: fear of failure as a parent and as a pastor; fear of not enough money for the church or for our family (and, obviously, those two are closely related!). And, I believe, that fear led to a lot of anger -- directed primarily at my family (never, at least overtly at church members) and now, I have come to understand at myself (and probably covertly at God -- though only rarely was I able to identify that aspect of it at the time). And, I am now beginning to appreciate, that anger turned inward was probably the primary cause of the severe depressions that I experienced up through my 40th birthday. There were likely some physiological contributors, but I believe that my own unexpressed anger was probably the root cause. And so, as I came out of that awful year of midlife crisis in which I tried so hard to leave the pastoral ministry, I discovered that this is what I truly wanted to do. And that great sense of contentment (as well as my letting go of the inward anger that had so controlled me) led to the "mysterious" disappearance of my depressions. It wasn't really a miracle (though it certainly felt like one!) as much as it was a decision not simply to accept my vocation but to choose it as my will as well as God's. Nor was it simply a coincidence or a growing out of the depression. It grew out of my being willing to rest my full weight on Jesus -- which, if I recall, is my standard way of defining faith!

The obstacles that seemed so fearsome in years gone by are just that -- gone by! And the energy that I consumed in worry was so wasted. But maybe not. Maybe I can look back from time to time on Ebenezer and laugh at myself -- just as surely as God was smiling at my little-faith.

I still have those child-like fears from time to time. But I think I'm learning to look past them and see them not as great mountains but bumps in the road that we'll get over. I will always feel inadequate for the tasks given to me, but I have developed a certain comfort level with what I can do and what I can't, with who I am and who I'm not. It would be nice if I had found that serenity earlier in my life, but I'm not sure that's possible. There's no shortcut to maturity.

The Value of a Long Pastorate

Long pastorates (like long marriages) are not much in vogue these days -- nor do they come easily -- but both are wonderfully rewarding. What can be better than seeing the children I have baptized grow up in the Lord, go to school, and then come back to be married? Or to see children who have sat under my ministry grow up and sense God's call to their own ministry? The downside, as I have often said, is that I also have to "live with my mistakes" when it would be so much easier to escape to a different church and let my successor mop up after me.

Long pastorates (particularly in a rural setting where membership turnover is minimal) also lead to a trust between the pastor and members that carries you through stressful times. When we were starting our first building project, a deacon (an older man) said to me, "Why should we do this? You're just going to get us into debt and then leave." As we built our latest addition, the only person who asked if I would be staying around was our banker.

Similarly, when we've gone through the painful work of church discipline, I have been able to draw on a track record of trust and friendship that gives members confidence that their leaders won't act hastily or do something that would bring harm to the body. Even when people don't always understand or agree with hard decisions we have made, they have been able to draw on the reservoir of trust that we've accumulated over the years to carry us through those bumpy times that inevitably come in the life of a church.