This Sunday, our church celebrated its eleventh Churchiversary. I decided this was a good time to reflect on eleven things that have stuck with me through eleven years of leading the church (there are plenty more, but we will save those for later).
- People are going to do what they want
When I began as a pastor, I thought that I would have more influence on people’s lives. More often than not, no matter what I say, people are going to do what they think is best. You can give advice and point people away from danger, but until they are absolutely convinced, they will do what they want. This used to drive me crazy, because they would then come to me to help solve the problems that they created by not listening in the first place. This is part of the process. My job is not to keep people from mistakes, but to be a consistent place for them to go while figuring it out. Now I see it as a win if they are willing to come back to work through it, because it means trust has been developed.
- People will surprise you
While people are going to do what they want, there are times when their wants change drastically. It is amazing to watch people shift their priorities and really change. This is because God is working in the hearts of His people. It’s often not the people that you expect. One of the things that I have become sure of is: people will surprise me. I stopped thinking I had people figured out, which makes this pastoring thing much more exciting.
- It never gets easy
When I started, I thought there would be a time where I had things a bit more figured out. Every year, it seems like there are new challenges and struggles. Every year requires re-thinking what has been done and what needs to be altered. There is not a groove or a fool-proof system that makes everything work perfectly. To do the work of ministry requires continual creativity. Even then, you always feel like you only partially know what you are doing.
- Each person is their own context
I remember being asked to write out a contextual report on Mount Vernon before I planted. The idea was that looking at demographics and trends would help reach the people in a given area. The more time I spend with people, the more I realize that none of them are the demographic. Every one of them is part of what makes up the percentages, but every person has a unique story of sin and God’s grace. The more assumptions that you bring in, the less effective you will be at actually serving the people God gives you to lead.
- The line between physical and spiritual is often thin
People who aren’t in ministry are very good at separating the sacred from the secular. When you get into people’s lives, you begin to see that childhood abuse makes them struggle with the idea of God as Father, loneliness makes them question God’s love, and suffering is the greatest argument against God’s goodness. While there is a theological answer to all of these, it requires dealing with the underlying struggles that make God’s truth so hard for people to believe. While preaching and teaching is an important part of ministry, it is paired with addressing very earthly human needs.
- You have to be able to laugh
Even in the midst of painful and stressful realities, laughing is the very best medicine. While there are appropriate times to tell a joke (and others that are not), being able to laugh at the ridiculousness of life helps to put things in perspective. Sometimes, in order to give God the proper reverence and awe that He deserves, it requires recognizing how strange human life is. Learning to laugh at what is silly is the only way not to lose your mind in this upside-down world.
- Staying is harder than it seems
This is the one that surprised me the most. I am not a wanderlust personality: always looking for the next, better thing. After a while, the work of being the one who stays has gotten harder. In the life of the church, a lot of people have passed through. When you leave, you move onto the next adventure. When you stay, you have to figure out how to keep going with less resources; it often requires cleaning up the mess that those leaving have left. The more times you do this, the harder it is to invest in the next new person, to pick up the responsibilities that others have left behind, and to re-vision the next iteration of the church minus people that you love and miss. In a mobile and constantly changing society, it is hard to be the one who stays.
- There is joy in monotony
Along with the difficulty, there is something amazing about doing the same things over and over for years. I have been able to watch kids grow up, had a front row seat to the process of progressive sanctification, and seen what God can do with a small obedience in the same direction. In an entertainment-based culture, monotony is a bad word. I have always appreciated GK Chetsterton’s take on this topic:
For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. | Orthodoxy
Struggling to delight in monotony has helped me to get a better sense of God’s vitality and joy.
- Sundays always come (there are a lot of Sundays in 11 years)
572 to be exact. After Sunday service and a little bit of down time, it is time to start prepping for the next week. The rhythms of pastoral work are weekly. There are weeks filled with lots of needs: weddings, bats in the building, and someone who needs to sit down and talk about their failing marriage. There are weeks that are pretty quiet. In both instances, Sunday comes and the church gathers, the Word is preached and Communion is shared. At times, Sunday feels like a looming deadline. Other times it feels like an oasis in a desert. Either way, Sunday comes. As will the next one, and the one after that. The job of the church (and the pastor) is to show people that amongst all of the changes, the church keeps telling the same story.
- Culture changes quickly
In contrast to this, it is amazing how much our cultural sense of purpose and morality has changed in the last eleven years. The general sense of what it means to be a good person, a community member, and an American are unrecognizable from just over a decade ago. For many people, this is a scary reality, because if things can change this quickly, who knows what is next? It’s true, we have no idea where things are going. Which is why it is important to rest in number 11:
- God is always sustaining
The most comforting words in the Bible are given by Jesus to His disciples in the Great Commission. After giving the Apostles God’s plan for bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth (Go, make disciples, baptize, teach them), Jesus promises them: I am with you always, to the end of the age. Jesus does not promise success, influence, or acceptance (one could argue He has already promised them the opposite), but that He will be with them no matter what. This does not just mean that He will be watching us and taking notes, but that He will be the sustaining force in the working out of His mission. No matter what comes next, what we need is Him. We will keep learning what it means to depend on Him – the challenges are merely the tools by which He is teaching us this lesson.