I was 21 when I first set foot in Connecticut Valley Seventh-Day-Adventist Church. I was nearly a month married, full of enthusiasm and excitement for the adventure of “real” life. Totally unprepared for the reality of it. I was well armed with a bevy of important and well-educated sounding classes… Like, Advanced Biblical Preaching, Issues in Science and Society, Interpersonal Ministry, Biblical Greek, Personal Evangelism…etc. it would appear that I had all the tools I needed to launch into a successful fulfilling pastoral career, binding up hearts for Jesus and changing lives, all while contributing to the support of my family with a modest income and educational subsidy.
Well, its been a few years since the day of innocence. I wish my al ma mader would ask me to come back and teach an undergrad class. I would entitle it “So, you think you want to be a Pastor…” And it would begin with the Statement. “Ministry will break your heart.”
Secure it was not. I was among the class that graduated under the financial crisis of the Florida conference in 2004-2005. The pastors laid off flooded our inexperienced job market and as a female in ministry it took a little bit of a certain kind of church to want me. Long story short I settled for a stipend youth pastor position that made $1000 a month. Dustan was still in school as a student teacher so ends didn’t really meet. We spent the first few months of married life on a blow-up mattress that leaked in the food closet of the church kitchen. With a dog and a cat.
Easy it was not. I had unknowingly taken the job out from the head elders, nephews, cousins, brother…or something like that. At least that was what was decided in the heart and minds of a large contingent of people with very vocal opinions. I couldn’t understand why every idea I had for ministry was so scrutinized and criticized. Sometimes my most well-intentioned ventures were seen as ways for me to try and take control, or disregard important standards, or sometimes even to intentionally lead kids astray. I spent a lot of nights in tears and a lot of days wondering what I was thinking when I decided I wanted to be a pastor. I spent many hours wondering where the class was for dealing with Aunt Berthas opinion on the appropriate way to allow kids to be involved in church work was, or how to recover from a sleepless night spent on a hard gym floor, or break up a fight of a couple of testosterone filled almost men who happened to like the same girl, or how to recover from the heart break of not being able to stop the train of destructive addiction that came in cracks and drained bright sweet minds dry right in front of my eyes. It broke my heart and exposed my flaws.
Ministry is a Liability. If done right. We find Jesus in our text facing this liability. When His brothers question if he will go up to the feasts or not, He makes a statement in regards to the hate the world has for Him. “Jesus said to them, My time has not yet come, but your time is always here, The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil”. After some study of the context of the verse I’m not certain that Jesus wasn’t holding his brothers accountable for their lack of action as well as grieving the heavy understanding, that when you do ministry as it should be done, It takes just everything you have.
When Jesus references that he testifies against the evil of the world…it’s easy to conjure up images of him calling the religious leaders vipers, and rotten tombs…but within the context of Jesus ministry to this point, he hasn’t yet gotten into his strong statements against the religious leaders of the time. He has in fact only done a handful of things, yet he is being targeted by those against Him for annihilation. What has he done that is such a testament to truth that he is such a target of hate? How has he exposed the evil works of the world through his limited reach and mission. What are the common threads?
Although the gospel of John isn’t a comprehensive recording of all that Jesus has down at this point, it gives us a birds eye view. He has made water into wine at a wedding…a frivolous face-saving practical miracle. He has driven out the money-making ventures within the temple and called to a refocus of the simplistic mission of worship. He has interacted with the woman of Samaria at the well, radically breaking racial, gender, and moral barriers of exclusion. He has healed the roman leaders son, an enemy of his people…a heathen, but Jesus ministry reached out beyond the system in which he identified and met the real need of someone who needed it. He had healed the blind man without regards to the sacredness of the sabbath and claimed pardon for sin in an arrogant sacrilegious display. He has fed the five thousand with loaves and fish because when he looked, he saw the people were hungry. And then when the night was dark and the tempest strong, he walked on water to comfort his disciples and grow their faith.
As we assess the Ministry of Jesus to this point we find some common threads that we can pull out to compare to the authentic state of our own ministries. With these we can ask ourselves if we doing ministry well enough to be liability.
1. One of the most prominent threads is that Jesus met the need at hand. There was no wine, so he made some. The woman at the well was isolated so he spoke with her. The romans leader’s son was sick and had asked for help. The man was blind, and he could make him well…so he did regardless of what day it was. The five thousand people were hungry so he fed them. Ministry like Jesus meets a need. Regardless of who they are, or what they need, or if they are saved or safe or grateful. If we are meeting needs as a church in the ministry we run, we are in a liability, but we will also be effective. But it will cost us. Everything.
2. Secondly, Christ was not compliant. He broke tradition and rules and culture. He disregarded the fact that the woman from Samaria was a woman, was an adulterer, and was a Samarian. His call to her was as personal and far reaching as his call to the Jewish men beside him, and in turn her response gathered movement in her circle of influence. He healed the son of a man, who he should have, as the expected messiah overthrown and annihilated. And perhaps in the most blatant disregard of the sacredness of the holy sabbath he healed a man and said it was right to do good on the sabbath instead of preform within the well establish and rigid standards his systemized faith upheld. If we do ministry as we should…we will have to tread in gray, where people raise their eyebrows and call us sacrilegious, and compromised. We will have to rub elbows with those who believe things we do not. We will have to break our own comfort boundaries to find the common ground in order to gain the relationship that we need to lead to higher ground. If we are doing ministry right we will be a liability to ourselves…we will be accused of being of the world and to progressive. Just like Jesus.
3. The last possibly most important thread is love. It was the love of God that placed him in human limitation for eternity to be with us. It was the love of God that always trumped anything stacked against it. It is the love of God that teaches us love. It is the love of God that saves us.
Jesus actions where all motivated by love which does not answer to tradition, or compliancy, or operate for self-gain as is indicated by his response of his brothers urging to prove himself through visibility.
None of these things were done with the intention of self-credit, which is why Jesus isn’t interested in His brothers’ concept of being more visible. Their insinuation was “if you’re going to perform signs to authenticate yourself as Messiah, you should do them at Jerusalem.” (Jerusalem is where mainstream Jewish apocalyptic tradition held that Messiah would appear.) essentially what they were saying is if you want to support your claims of messiah as legitimate, do it the way everyone expects.
But Ministry isn’t done for ministries sake or to prove anything. It’s done for loves sake and that is a liability. It’s a liability because it puts you in places you should never be. It makes you reach out to people who will suck you dry. It makes those who are comforted by the control within a system uneasy and draws a target on your back for those eager to make themselves feel better by tearing down anyone else. It will take all you have and many days you’ll never know if anything you have done makes a difference at all. We all can be these ministers. There is no need for a course, or a title, or a training…
Ministry in this capacity is the only one we have time for…Yes, there are other forms. As in those of the pharisees or even those of Jesus brothers…who wanted action but lacked any faith. Who fulfilled the expected and respected forms of credible ministry, but with exclusion and privilege, in rhetoric and impractical methods. If you have ministry like that…it does not garner tension and risk…than you have all day every day to do that. You will either be ignored or applauded, but you will not be at risk. You will not be hated. But if you are operating on Gods time, which is critical and pressing, you do risky ministry that creates so much difference that the world cannot take it and will do all within its power to crush its testimony against the evilness of complacency and self-focus. Ministry like that is a liability and will break your heart…But stand in the brokenness, because the cracks are where the light shines through. It is not talking of action, but living in action that is everything. Lean into the breaking because it keeps you humble and asking.
That first year in a ministry was a liability. We left Connecticut Valley with a lot of debt and not much of a resume. I had some scar tissue built up and had developed a strong dislike for preaching because it opened me up to so much criticism. But the liability of that first year has also been one of my most precious rewards. We carved a little family out of inner-city Hartford…we laughed together, ate together, grew together. One of those girls became our daughter and still lives with us and her daughter calls me Mimi. Those kids are all grown up and getting married and giving birth and the last few years I’ve done a half a dozen weddings, some dedications and even been present for births…all around the country because I wouldn’t’ miss the moments in the lives of these kids who gave me so much… and they did, give me so much. They gave me a sense of purpose and a reason to get up in the morning. They gave me joy and relationship. They gave me love and acceptance and a community. They have given me a vision, of what a love can do and it’s the fuel that keeps me going so many years later.
