Ministry Life Lessons

Hi! I’m back! My family and I took a break for almost a month. We vacationed and endured the joys and perils of a 5500 mile road trip….with 2 teenagers and a kindergartener {Please feel free to insert any jokes here, we lived them all}. It was a much-needed time and one we will never forget for lots of reasons; sweet, fun, smelly, serious, delicious, and ridiculous reasons.

Here's a few pictures from my cellphone....

I couldn't resist snapping this as Todd was "coaching" our 16yo son as said son drove us through San Francisco.

We are a ministry family. I say family because there are no families whose mom or dad is a minister while the rest of them are just a regular ole’ family. Ministry belongs to the whole family. There are more joys and blessings and perks of being a ministry family than I can begin to list….many of those allowed us to take this trip. But there are also sometimes unpredictable seasons of demand and discouragement. Hurts and helplessness can take a toll that is hard to regain. Our main goal in taking this time off was to enjoy our children….do stuff, eat stuff, watch stuff, and laugh at stuff they love. It was fun stuff. Another goal was to regain some clarity and ministerial footing in a role that is difficult but so worth it.

Here's my kiddos on the porch of the house in the mountains.

We ended our trip with a week of nothing doing in the mountains. I hesitantly opened up my life to introspection….afraid of what I’d see after some months of survival mode. I fiddle-faddled around a few days and found myself in Hebrews 12:12-15 {not coincidentally, a familiar passage I taught to hundreds of women just 2 months previously}….sigh.

“Therefore lift your drooping hands

and strengthen your weak knees,

and make straight paths for your feet,

so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. 

Strive for peace with everyone,

and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God;

that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble,

and by it many become defiled;”

This passage hits struggling ministers pretty hard with a double dose of challenge and encouragement. I’m a list-maker, so this passage turned into a list in my journal….something like this:

• Hands – serve family and ministry; work and comfort.
• Knees – walk, support movement; there is no standing and no forward progress without them.
• Feet/Straight paths – this is about direction; eyes up and forward, not down. Look toward healing, no wasted time wandering.
• STRIVE for healthy relationships with people (peace) and healthy relationship with God (holiness).
• Cling to grace for ALL – this is the hallmark of ministry, marriage, mothering. Protect against all bitterness, not just me – for others too.

Had my service become droopy? Had my direction become lazy and self-focused? Was I striving for ease instead of peace and holiness? Was I teaching grace to others even while absorbing bitterness myself? Yes. {See? I hate these questions!}

We all have seasons of droopy hands and weak knees. This passage is in the context of discipline and we all need it. Ministry is not about being something special, or showing off your gifts, or serving for leadership’s sake, or keeping up with the church or minister down the street, or a hundred other selfish things that we can make look and sound spiritual. Ministry is about building a Kingdom that doesn’t belong to you and isn’t about you, yet is miraculously where you belong. It’s about building a Kingdom that is completely invisible except for the people who love the King and each other and the lives they live that show it. I’m constantly led to both simplify and deepen my ministry life.  For someone (hint: me) who tends to over analyze and complicate every SINGLE thing in my life, this is a challenge that often feels backward.

Over my 20 years in ministry God has encouraged me through irrational fear. He has chiseled out the frantic “fill in all the empty spots” tendency, most of the people-pleasing tendency, and lots of the selfish ambition along with comparison syndrome. He’s annihilated the “my kids have to be perfect” issue, only for me to recreate it all again and again. When I’ve tried to stay aloof He’s allowed the burden to become so heavy that I tossed it myself. Things I’ve mistakenly tried to root out of my personality He has reminded me to cherish as I settle its growth under His care. It seems to me there has to be a better way; I can’t believe how much time He gives to teaching and re-teaching me lessons that I should already have mastered. 

And then... in quiet moments in the mountains....

I remember all the repetition and patience He gives and realize it isn’t wasted effort. It is His intentional point that sends my gaze to Jesus, the only effort that matters, and the example I am to follow. And I'm encouraged.

So, let’s build His Kingdom with strong hands and knees, striving for peace and holiness, and being completely intolerant of bitterness. Eyes on the prize, which is not our own success but the arrival of a Kingdom both beyond and encompassing us.

“Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;

say to those with fearful hearts,

“Be strong, do not fear; your God will come…’

Isaiah 35:3-4 NIV