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

Ugly Comparisons

I love this quote.  Evidently it comes from Theodore Roosevelt.  
Which makes me think of Tom Selleck and Blue Bloods.......anyone else love that show? (Because you are the only ones that will understand the super leap my mind just made there.)
But nevermind.  I'm comparing.

When my husband and I moved to Shawnee almost 10 years ago some of our very first friends had us over.  This quote is framed on the counter in her bathroom. It was the first time I ever saw it {way before Pinterest}. Our conversation when I asked her about it was the beginning of a beautifully deep and resilient friendship that is forever dear to me. 

The ugly danger of comparison has been a topic in my learning and teaching and conversations ever since, but especially for the last several months. This morning while brushing my teeth and contemplating issues both deep and shallow, the subject of comparison had a head-on collision with some other things I've got going on in my noggin.....let's see if I can tie it together the way it worked over spitting and rinsing this morning. It starts with a little thread from some teaching about True Beauty....

1 Peter 3:4 says this in the Amplified; 
"But let it {our adorning} be the inward adorning and beauty of the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible and unfading charm of a gentle and peaceful spirit, which [is not anxious or wrought up, but] is very precious in the sight of God."

We get the "gentle and quiet spirit" thing wrong when we think it means to be quiet on the outside.  What it really means is to be quiet on the inside.  Just because a woman can sit quietly and control her words and demeanor doesn't mean she doesn't have a super F5 tornado swirling around inside.  The most loud, outgoing woman can be preciously quieted on the inside, a beautiful example of True Unfading Beauty....

So if Peaceful, Holy-Spirit Quieted insides are a measure of True Beauty; what is the measure of True Ugly?  Could it be a heart that strives? An anxiety-ridden, stirred up inside? A couple of years ago I wrote about peace and joy after Christmas.  I thought about those definitions, especially peace, this morning when all of these ideas were swirling around in my mind trying to find footing to start walking. For me; the quote should read:

Comparison is the thief of Peace.  

Here is how this works for me, and PLEASE understand I mean no meanness....truly! I would imagine you have your own versions of these stories. 



I read a book for minister's wives and am so blessed and perfectly encouraged until, UNTIL we get to the chapter describing how Sunday mornings should go. When the author describes her perfectly homemade Sunday morning family breakfast served on the back porch; I'm done.  And Comparison sets her teeth in.  I am alternately offended with the author and disgusted with myself because my sweet little PKs are the ones who know where to find leftover donuts in various Sunday School classes because they often get NO breakfast on Sunday mornings.  Seriously, I hope this is the closest to "gang leader" my kids ever get.  And of course, I have no idea what the preacher eats for breakfast because I'm not even awake when the preacher leaves the house on Sunday mornings {note to any new or unfamiliar readers - I'm the pastor's wife}. Comparison here ate me for breakfast for awhile. Yes that pun was very intentional.

Or how about this one (completely imaginary, of course)....I get on Pinterest to find an idea for a Christmas gift for my hubs.  I find a 12-day schedule full of gifts and romantic notions including a new water bottle with a hand-crocheted cover complete with a big button. I don't know about you, but comparison can have my heart in an uproar and on a  journey dating all the way back to "my Grandma could crochet, she even taught me once, she would be so disappointed that I can't crochet...." before I even know I've taken a step away from Him. {I may or may not have dug out my favorite Grandma King afghan to further ruminate in the comparison trap....wow, TMI for sure}. This is why comparison is so dangerous, it roots in our minds so quickly and then runs for our hearts.

Comparison takes a heart taught and comforted and settled by her Creator and stirs her up with anxiety and the pursuit of the unsatisfying, transforming Beauty into Invisibility.

Can you see it?  We need to stop it and we can. Comparison is not our friend, it's the opposite of us, opposed to the True Beauty God created us to bear. So let's be women of unfading beauty, who make Psalm 46:10 our goal to "Cease Striving and know that HE is God."

As we settle into knowing Him we know ourselves and each other.  We love ourselves and each other. We don't create friendships where comparison can thrive in competition, we create safe community where we can celebrate authentic and imperfect identities {which happens to be way more fun than trying to be a fake version of perfect none of us can even define}!

So this post has taken me way longer to write than it should've and of course I'm already being tested big time.  I keep swearing that I'm going to write an entire blog post on Ice Cream so that I can be "tested" on that subject.  But I won't, I'll just keep on blogging about what I'm learning in real life in the Real Word, and hoping we can learn together.  So I'm settling into refusing Comparison....anyone want to walk away with me?  Take that, Comparison.

Dumbstruck at Falls Creek

I love Falls Creek.

I've loved it since the summer I finished 7th grade and was finally allowed to go to church camp there. Those were the days of no shorts, no AC, loooooOOOOng services, theme songs, gum tree walks to the Devil's bathtub {now that I'm grown I have no idea how gobs of students didn't die every day on the old route to the Devil's Bathtub}, Bible Study pavilions, and amazing wonderful weeks. I have lots of memories from being a camper to being a young sponsor, to being an older sponsor, to being a Camp Pastor's Wife this year. My husband was asked to preach for Youth Falls Creek so I've been full of all kinds of sentimental recollections.  This year, we rode around in a golf cart {which also means I can never go back, because Falls Creek without a golf cart after you've had one must be super depressing} and told our kids stories about all the places we'd stayed and all the things that have happened here and there. 

This Icee Hut hasn't changed much.....it even still smells the same.
Have I mentioned that I love Falls Creek?

When I was growing up our youth pastor made Falls Creek amazing. If the songs were long and cheesy he would make up new words for them.  To this day, "Lead On O King Eternal" is ruined for me {Lead On O Kinky Turtle, oops sorry now it's ruined for you too....read on quickly before it sticks in your brain}. He went with us to play and hike in the afternoons and taught us Truth during our cabin times leading us in worship and in the Word refusing to let us fall into adolescent emotionalism that was not beneficial.  He challenged us and had fun with us. It's amazing to be able to correct and instruct teenagers while still making room for them to find attachment to you. 

This place is where I first thought God might be leading me to some type of ministry.  I remember walking the aisle and finding myself in a counseling room with a bunch of students....I was paired up with an adult and an older youth. As the adult asked us questions trying to determine why we were there I didn't know how to answer.  The girl across from me said, "I don't know, I just know that I want to give God more...all of me."  When I was growing up there were three decisions you could make at the end of a Falls Creek sermon and she and I didn't really fit into these categories.  I was squirming with discomfort until she answered and my whole little teenaged spirit agreed with an inside out YES!  When I left that room by myself one of the older girls in our youth group was waiting for me.  We walked together toward the cabin right behind the tabernacle.  In the old days there were metal stairs that went behind this cabin toward the creek and our cabin.  She sat with me there and listened and encouraged and prayed for me. 

This picture is that very special spot today.

Figuring out what ministry would look like for me was not an instant understanding.  I felt like I could either be a missionary or a minister's wife.....so I went with missionary {Yes, enter chuckle now}.   It took lots of years and lots of failures and lots of seeking and a huge humbling process for God to bring me to exactly how and where He wanted me to serve.  Even after I married a pastor there was lots of refining and humbling. 


There still is - daily; but here is some of what I've learned.

• Ministry is about service - God first and people next.
• Service has to start with little things; attitudes and actions before it can be anything dreamy and big....in fact it may never be dreamy and big.
• I can't change people.
• I can't really change myself. God's job, folks.
• I need God, but more than that I love God.
• He really loves me, in fact He loved me first.
• Learning this {bullet points above} emotionally and intellectually is what changes me and puts me in the proper position to share Him with people.
• Ministry is also about Truth-telling, but not personal agenda-serving. Hate that agenda-pushing stuff in myself.
• Truth-telling works best surrounded by People-loving.
• Nothing kills Spirit-filled ministry as quickly as entitlement. Stop it.
• Entitlement is super stinky and super selfish and is often the first crack in a ministry that falls to immorality.
• I need to serve from passion, BUT....
• I most need to submit....to God and to people so that He is my passion first and then I can rightly serve my people. {I started to say "peeps" there because the no AC comment at the beginning of this post is making me feel old, but I just can't pull it off.}

As I was sitting in a service at Falls Creek last week listening to my husband preach to the thousands of students there I was dumbstruck.  By dumbstruck I mean completely struck dumb....rendered reasonless and speechless...."shake your head in wonder and knock on your forehead to try and make one iota of sense out of the situation" kind of dumbstruck.  Nothing about this life God has given me makes a bit of sense.  It is completely different than I planned and imagined.  It isn't easy and is not about me, but looking back it is so beautiful and so tenderly inclusive of me that looking forward brings a smile to my face.  I spent most of that precious sermon distracted by my bored preschooler who didn't recognize the sentimental soundtrack playing in my head. No one around me noticed that I was deeply connected to what was happening from the stage. I saw students taking notes and reacting to the amazing teaching they were hearing.  I saw a sponsor (not from our church for the record) nodding off and wanted to shake her for not listening better. I remembered walking down the aisle in almost the same exact place 25 years ago, and was so humbled. If He had given me my way I would've messed it up completely though my intentions were pure.  I have never been more aware of that truth than that dumbstruck moment.  In His faithfulness He has given me family and ministry and marriage that connects every moment to the Kingdom.  


As I submit, He uses me to serve and it matters. I am both humbled because I don't deserve this life He's given and grateful that He uses me still.  Maybe you are discouraged in a ministry that seems to be fruitless.  Maybe you are newly seeking what a lifetime of ministry will look like.  Take heart.  Cling to Jesus. Serve right where you are.....He is faithful.

Faith Walk

I’m married to a preacher, who sometimes meddles in my life when he preaches.  It’s not personal, mind you – he meddles with everyone.  He recently started preaching a series on Faith based on Hebrews 11 – a passage I loved until he started this meddlesome sermon series – which is vexing.  [Obviously I’m suffering from Snow Day number 3 – using words like meddlesome and vexing].  And I still adore this passage, I can’t help myself – all my heroes are here.

One of the illustrations he used to kick off the subject of faith was the lyrics to a Wham song…..sing along with me….”You gotta have faith, faith, faith…..”  He recollects even as a teenager hearing the song and asking the question, “faith in what?”  His point being that faith always has to have an object.  I remember listening to this cassette in my bedroom hoping my mom wouldn’t realize I’d borrowed it from Krissy Pigee who lived next door – true.  I’m pretty sure that my only reaction to Wham was something along the lines of “Wow, that guy has cool hair” or “I wonder how he keeps his facial hair exactly that length all the time – does he ever shave it smooth?”  But I digress – faith can be hard.  As I’ve grown up I have questioned faith.  As a young newlywed trying to understand the waiting for and then loss of a baby, a friend suggested to me gently that my faith wasn’t strong enough since God gives us what we believe Him for (there are a hundred things wrong with that statement beyond ending with a preposition - perhaps sometime I’ll blog on that subject).  This little thought along with the questions that naturally come with trials sent me into a bit of a tailspin for awhile.  God grew me right up and out of such erroneous thinking.  I learned to discover and trust God’s character and His unwavering determination for my growth and His glory.  He is not wavered by my temper tantrums or confusion any more than He’s wavered by the plans of our Enemy to sabotage His work in my life.

My struggles with faith now tend to be more along the lines of fear of following Him into the unknown. It’s not that I don’t trust Him, it’s that I still cannot fathom that He would use me.  And yes, I do recognize the absurdity in that sentence – both parts.  But honestly, that’s where I often find myself.  Asking Him again, “I know You are trustworthy in the lives of my kids and in my ministry, but why did you choose me to raise them, teach them, counsel them, lead them again? Just wondering, need a little reminder….maybe you don’t see how inadequate I am?”  It’s just a bunch of insecurity which I detest and cling to.  Stupid, I know.

So I’ve been digging my feet in on some things God’s calling me to do and then BAM, a sermon SERIES on Faith.  Some of the points of the first sermon?  Glad you asked - because as vexing as they have been, these sermons are unbelievably amazing.  You can find some more here courtesy of Todd Fisher.

·         Faith is based on what God has said, not what I know.

·         Faith always has to have an object.

·         Faith means the Future trumps the Present.

·         Faith means the Spiritual trumps the Physical.

·         Faith means the Calling trumps the Comfort Zone.

And yes it’s only gotten better from there……..truth is an odd uncomfortable security sometimes.

The first and the last points just made me so excited and cranky, hopeful and terrified.  I must get out of defining myself and my calling by what I know – my weaknesses and the expectations of others.  Why would I find comfort in my weakness and the expectations of others when my Creator and the God of all things calls me His (Isaiah 43:1), Equipped (Hebrews 13:20-21), and Pleasing (2 Corinthians 2:15)?  Talk about absurd – look these verses up, they belong to us.   

“Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God's Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.” 

2 Corinthians 1:20-22 MSG

And Amen to that.

These pics are from my birthday surprise, my friends' giddy efforts to encourage me to keep Walking by Faith.  Love them!



Leftover Muffins

This week I was baking muffins for a church lunch we host every month.  I had a great time making about 5 dozen yummy muffins on Wednesday afternoon just before I had to herd the kids into the car and head to church dinner - choir - Awana - Youth.  I had set the muffins onto the counter to cool, but didn't have time to put them away - so they were still there waiting on me when I got home that night.  I walked into the kitchen and was met by two sights; one beautiful and one not so much.

Here they are:

I was very proud of the beautiful muffins that I had made to serve; but kinda bummed about the dirty dishes I'd forgotten were still in the sink, shrug and sigh.

I do love to bake, but my family is kinda wary to eat just anything they find in the kitchen.  They've all seen and heard me come running screeching at them not to eat something I've prepared to go to some church-ish function.  All of them (except the baby who eats what she can find - especially ice cream while I'm in the shower) ask me before they touch anything really good or well-wrapped.  I have to tell them, "It's OK - I made it for you!"  OR, and it pains me to say - they get what's left over from said church-ish functions.

Prioritizing family and ministry is always a tricky balance and one I've been working on for.....well, since I married a pastor. These two images in my kitchen Wednesday night really encouraged me to refocus on this issue. Does my family get the yummy muffins or the leftovers and dirty dishes of my efforts?

I love being a ministry family and count it one of God's most amazing and surprising blessings.  I have great compassion for all those who are hurt at church, especially those called to serve there.  But every time I hear petty complaints about being in ministry I'm reminded of the flexibility and the "instant" family support and the precious gift of spending our lives on what really matters and want to scoff and roll my eyes.....I may not do it outloud, but such complaints usually get a great big "puh-shaw" at least in my brain.  I believe in making sacrifices as a family for the ministry we have given our lives to serve.  BUT I also believe that sacrifice shouldn't be all that our family knows.  The struggle and pain that often goes hand in hand with ministry should NEVER be the usual for our kids, or for us for that matter!  In other words, it's OK to eat leftover muffins sometimes, but there better be some WONDERFUL and intentional "just for you" treats and celebrations too.

So, I wrapped up my muffins and took them to the lunch and brought home leftovers.  But this morning I'm making their favorites - Chocolate.  I think I may even decorate them so that when they say tentatively, "Hey, whodja make these muffins for?" I can say, "YOOOUUUU", they are all for you!"