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.