Welcome to Ministry. What Exactly Did You Expect?

26 01 2012

When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”  Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Matthew 8:18-20

It seems to me that the scene has by now played out for me at least a hundred times.  I am counseling with a pastor who has been put through the wringer by his congregation and has been maligned and injured and his family has been as well.  He has fallen victim to the church at its very worst and he now has the scars to show for it.  He expresses to me his utter dismay and surprise and talks about how seminary simply did not prepare him for this.  His wife expresses shock that God’s own people could behave so badly and that this was NOT what she signed on for when she agreed to marry a pastor.  I listen, and I weep with them, and I grieve for them…and then I think to myself, “Welcome to the ministry.  This is it.  Welcome.”

Jesus was always pretty clear about the downside to following Him…the cost would be great, the sacrifice extraordinary.  He never sugar-coated that.  He was completely unapologetic about it throughout his entire ministry.  So, I suppose my thinking has always been, “If that is true for every follower of Jesus, how much more so for those called out to shepherd other followers of Jesus?”  Vocational ministry, in short, is simply not about comfort.  It is about ministering to a bunch of poorly-behaved, stinky sheep who bite and who hurt you and who get it all wrong at least as much as they get it right.  On top of all that, if you happen to be of certain Christian persuasions, you have to add poverty and celibacy to that list of sacrifices!

This is about the point in my counsel where many younger pastors might interject, “Wow, Blake.  We’ve got to work on your bedside manner.”  Believe me, I know well that this sounds grim.  I know that it is depressing, especially if you are already down for the count.  And I know that it is not necessarily helpful counsel in some circumstances.  But seriously, there is a reality about ministry which I am not certain our seminaries and Bible colleges are getting right…I am not convinced we are really painting a realistic picture of life among God’s people when we send our young men and women out onto the field with visions of large churches, large salaries, large influence, and large prestige.  Jesus would cringe at that picture!

Ministry among God’s people was never intended to be easy.  It is hard.  And the rewards are few.  But my, my…they are rich, are they not?

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : conflict, Everyone's a Minister, leadership

Transparency for an Older Generation

20 12 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

“The peace of mind one experiences on one’s own, one’s certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship.” Muriel Barbery

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” Oscar Wilde

One of the trends I believe we will see in the church over the next 20 years is its people growing increasingly comfortable with genuine transparency in their relationships…knowing each other more fully and having fewer and fewer deep dark secrets. I believe this because our younger generations (generation X and millennials) just seem to hold genuine community as a much higher value than those of us who are baby boomers and older. If you don’t believe this, spend about 30 minutes on your college student’s social media pages. OMG…LOL! On the other hand, go to their respective grandparents’ facebook pages (if they have a page at all) and you’ll find an utter vacuum of any personal information. These older generations, after all, are the generations who brought us firewalls and the right to privacy and LifeLock and gated communities. For our generation, the walls are up and the shades are drawn! Transparency, it seems, is just difficult for those of us over 40.

If I am right about this trend, then that means we still have about 20 years or so of having to teach the importance of being transparent…the significance of truly knowing each other and of being truly known. Being the New Testament church demands that we live in relationships of accountability and that we learn to be involved in one another’s lives. I suspect I will spend the rest of my ministry life finding creative ways to teach this to my generation of church leaders. Then, by the time my work in this world is done, a new generation of church leaders will be in place and they will have a whole other set of issues to complicate their lives!

The protests I hear from my generation of leaders sound something like this:

  • It’s just not safe for a leader, especially a pastor, to share too much personal information with his congregation…it will always lead to his undoing.
  • There have to be limits…you have to be careful to whom you show your faults and flaws.
  • My people don’t want to think of me with flaws…that is not the leader they want to follow.
  • My accountability is to God and God alone. He is the only one with whom I can be that transparent.

And by the way, it’s not just the leaders who feel this way. It is two entire adult generations of church members.

Here is what I say to those of us over 40 and struggling with all those troubling scriptures about confessing our sins one to another and holding one another accountable and being transparent with one another: everything in moderation… including transparency (with apologies to Oscar Wilde).

You see, scripture does not demand that every member of my church know every sordid detail of my life. Surely, the vast majority of my acquaintances at church would never want to know those details. So, while I may show only a measured degree of transparency in the larger congregation, I might be a little more transparent in my Sunday School class, and a little more transparent yet in my home Bible study group, and even more transparent yet in my addiction support group, etc. The bottom line to transparency in our Christian relationships is simply that we have somebody (i.e., some small circle of friends) who know our deepest struggles and who carry those burdens with us. In effect, we have “levels” of transparency, depending on the group and the circumstances. And for me, that squares quite nicely with scripture.

So, to my baby boomer friends, take a deep breath and find a support group ministry you can plug into in order to learn what genuine Christian relationships look like. And for my daughters and all their friends…quit laughing at us. We’re trying!

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Christian Accountability, Church Unity, Genuine Community, leadership

The Rhythm of Rest, The Malaise of Ministry

8 11 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark 6:30-31

The sending out of the twelve in Mark 6 was the disciples’ first real taste of ministry.  Up until then, Jesus alone bore the burden of having crowds pressing in around him with their pains and brokenness.  But for this short time, Jesus filled the disciples with the miraculous powers of the Spirit.  Suddenly, they were casting out demons, healing the sick, speaking amazing words of wisdom and drawing the crowds.  Quite apart from Jesus, each of the disciples were, for the first time, feeling the long hours of bearing the burdens of broken people following them all day long insisting on miracles and healings and words of wisdom.  For the first time, the disciples had to deal with the utter exhaustion of personal ministry.  No surprise, then, that Jesus addressed their exhaustion when they gathered back together for their debriefing.  Jesus’ very first words to them were words of wisdom to every pastor and minister today…

“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Every leader in the church, EVERY LEADER, must take seriously these words from Christ.

Even the secular world has figured out this eternal truth.  Nobody wants a surgeon operating on them when that surgeon is in a state of exhaustion.  Nobody wants a pilot flying their airplane when that pilot is sleep deprived.  Nobody wants truck drivers operating 18-wheelers on our highways when they are falling asleep at the wheel.  When none of us in our right minds would trust our physical well-being to an exhausted person, why do we trust our Spiritual well-being in the hands of an exhausted minister?  More importantly, why, when we are the minister, would we think we can minister effectively when we are at the end of our rope physically?

I could fill this blog with true stories I have seen or heard about pastors burning their candle at both ends until they reach a point of burnout and end up doing serious damage to themselves, their families and even their congregants.  You see, when our physical labor is ineffective because we are too tired, well, that’s just a waste of time and effort.  But when MINISTRY is ineffective because the minister is physically spent, it is more than just a waste…it is harmful.  Significant emotional and spiritual damage can occur.  That, I believe, is why Jesus demonstrated for the disciples the need for rest even in ministry.  Without rest, without emotional regeneration and physical restoration, even our Spiritual gifts become ineffective.

My pastor pulls away several times a year for just a day or two of quiet and solitude and prayer.  I LOVE that he does that.  I am convinced that his emotional stability and his effectiveness as a pastor depend on it.  In fact, I am convinced that is true of every church leader.

So pastors, ministers, leaders…take a break, won’t you?  Seriously.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Everyone's a Minister, leadership

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