One of the nice things about being older is you can say the truth and don’t really care if it upsets anyone. So I am going to say a vital truth because you really got to get this one folks. Really. It’s really important.
In ancient times, meaning before digital cameras and phones, people in our line of work frantically took photos to create a “slide show” just before they went home on furlough. This was a step of faith as the photos were not automatically in focus. But people were remarkably forgiving. The reality is, normal people do not spend their entire day creating events of which to take photos unless they are “influencers” which I believe is job that might be summarized as “I can tell a good story and do no work, but I make great pics that get likes”.
I have read posts that are very moving, and only in the last couple of years have learned how deceiving posts can be. There is a pressure to post to sound impactful. The truth is stretched, details that are untrue are added and honestly, I have read some and thought, “Wow, quite the tale, about half of it is true”. Posting pressure is so great, posts can be very misleading. People run into something, take photos, write a story based on their incorrect understanding and get a lot of likes. They are not trying to deceive, but they posted something, much of which was untrue, to meet a need to seem to be making an impact. For whose sake are we posting? For prayer? For support? For the glory of Jesus? Those are important questions to consider every time we hit the button.
Not every day is amazing, nor remotely fit for social media. The hours you spend sweeping up after the youth group do not make for great IG moments. The kid who calls you at 2AM is when you are dazed and half asleep and his girlfriend broke up with him, is your real job. You just can’t post that but it mattered a lot more than the paint ball party that made it to your feed.
Do what matters, not what the world wants to see. Jesus so often pulled people OUT OF SIGHT to heal them. He told them, “DON’T TELL ANYONE” after doing the miraculous. I guess He did not understand marketing. Maybe we are wisest to follow His example.
My concern for the current generation is that the pressure to look good outweighs the need to do well. Do things that matter, without a preoccupation that to sound like you are daily changing the world. None of us is changing the world. Jesus is. Your best moments are servant-like. They are not glamorous. Take out the trash even though you can’t do a post about molded plastic bags. Do it out anyway. Serve. We are called to imitate the Humble One, not to make amazing impressions. Those in the most difficult situations in the world, cannot share a thing about their lives, but the Almighty sees. Keep in mind, the importance audience is the Audience of One.
The character of Christ is summed up in the fruit of the Spirit. None of those traits can be captured on social media. Don’t let the pressures of the day, eat your fruit. Concentrate on fruit that “shall remain” and He, who sees that which cannot be posted, nor shared in public, will reward you with a crown that gets the only “Like” that matters.
Category: missions
You Can Never Go Home and That’s OK
My last blog was based on the last district council I attended prior to leaving the US. I was sitting next to Dee, who is now with the Lord, but we were about the same age and at a table full of overseas workers. A couple, who seemed elderly to me at the time, though likely would look much younger to me now, were seated nearby and were to be honored that night for their many years of service.
Being 30 and naïve, I asked how they felt about “returning home”.
“You can never go home again”, replied the husband with what looked to be basset hound eyes, but totally sincere.
I turned to Dee and said, “Chipper little couple aren’t they” and her eyes widened, and we smiled and carried on.
Thirty-six years later I can say with absolute certainty that you can never go home again. Here’s the thing:
The culture of your homeland is absolutely nothing like you imagine it to be. Furloughs consist of running frantically around from family to family and church to church and you really have no idea how much things have changed. You notice things but are not there long enough to really understand that the national mindset is different than you think. I do not ‘intuit’ the mindset of my home country, nor even, often, of my friends.
People at this age in life have a lot of family going on. Their kids grew up and got married and had other kids and we haven’t the energy we once had. One friend said to me, “I pictured retirement as a chance to unwind. Incredibly, I am a full-time babysitter”. Other friends, who are in time warps because of disabled children, or raising their grandchildren, are oddly more like me, because their life progression has kept them from moving along at the same pace as the rest of the world.
But even with our friends, and even with our families, we missed the years of shared memories that come with being able to see one another. We no longer have a relationship with the members of the church which sent us out. The demographic of the church has changed. No one knows who you are, and you don’t know them. The church family that once was the backbone of your support, has moved on either to Glory, Florida, or another church closer to their kids or assisted living facility.
We have developed odd habits, whether we realize it or not. In a European context, I am a notorious under-reactor. I tell that to anyone coming to work with me. “If it stresses you out, you need to tell me flat out because I am not going to intuitively know”. If something is not on fire, being fired up, in flames, or bleeding, I tend to triage it a bit lower than most. My take on most things is if people get enough sleep and some good ice cream and the moon quarters, everything will be OK. I don’t panic easily, which is not a trait in my homeland anymore.
I learned that I am terrible, truly terrible, at “code switching” which is a complicated way to say, “Please do not use more than one language with me in the same sentence” because I genuinely cannot understand you. This is apparently very common, and I had observed it in friends before I realized how often I must have seemed rude by saying, “What?” to someone who tried to insert English in a friendly way in a sentence. When I return to my home country, if you want to speak another language to me, please tell me so I change gears.
We have never owned a home. I have zero skills in buying one. I do not understand Medigap insurance. I find US politics confusing and dislike it intensely. I have also learned that disliking politics is considered a hate crime as one is obliged to agree with whoever one is talking to at any given time. People are fragile. If they like broccoli and you do not they might need space because you are threatening to them because you have different vegetable preferences.
Our children do not live in the same country as that to which we shall return. We need to be independent as long as we can be lest we burden anyone. We need to be useful as long as we can, because so long as we have breath in our body, God has a purpose for us on this earth.
And all of this is good.
I realize it didn’t sound so good the way I said it, because I hate being lonely. But years ago we set our face to a better city and a better country, “One whose Builder and Maker is God”. That is when we will be home again. From now, till then, we are pilgrims and strangers and sojourners, which is exactly what we were called to be.
Ministry is a Real Job
Thirty-six years ago, I was attending what was then called, “District Council”, the annual meeting of ministers in our region of the country. I remember the message well, because the speaker had the good sense to speak the truth in humor, which in our neck of the woods is the same thing as love. Laying a foundation of scripture, he pointed out that many a ministry struggles because the ground where the worker labors is hard ground. Many other ministries, however, struggle because the stewards of the ministry simply don’t show up and put in the work necessary to see fruit. He told the story of a pastor who complained of the challenges where he worked, and with whom he spent a week to observe how things functioned in the church on a daily basis. What struck him most was that the pastor arrived at 9:30 in the morning, had his devotions, and by the time 11 AM rolled around felt it was too close to lunch time to begin anything new, so he would go home for two to three hours for family time. He would then return in the afternoon around 2 PM and finish up around 4 PM when the church secretary left the office. For clearly predictable reasons, he was often stressed out on Saturdays trying to prepare his message for Sunday morning and again for the evening service. He was working about ten to fifteen hours a week, plus speaking on Wednesday night and twice on Sunday.
I recall a church planter who said the best thing that ever happened to him was getting off a church staff and having to plant. To launch the church he needed a part time secular job and he had his first glimpse into the lives of his congregation. The people who attend your church are out the door at 7 AM to get to work by 8 AM and rare is the soul who works only 8 hours in a day. In our years leading up to full time ministry we worked about 50 hours a week at our regular jobs, drove straight to church, and were there for volunteer staff meetings, youth events, and the twice Sunday service. That meant we spent another 12 to 15 hours a week at church after our secular jobs, and the commute to church was about thirty minutes each way.
The pastor under whom we worked, had four kids and a house close to the church, and recognizing that his volunteer staff was fairly hungry by 8:30 PM would often have us all over and his wife would cook something up, so we were happy as we headed back home to rise at 5:30 the next morning. (I was normally at work by 7AM and left about 6PM). The staff were all full time professionals but one mom, who was a full time mom, which as we all know, is a 24/7 occupation.
As I look at the young people making an impact, they understand the importance of “showing up”. If they are tired, or the baby cried all night or whatever else it might be, they take their ministerial work for what it is: a matter of life and death for the lost. They understand that if the people supporting the work of the ministry, do not have checks magically appear on their desks but must spend time in prayer and intercession before they attend their day job, and often are showing up at service after a long and stressful day at work. That is entirely healthy. It is a sign of good stewardship.
In these days of storytelling, influencing, and social media, there are invariably people who appear to be doing a great deal when in fact, they are just really super with media. I have read posts and chuckled, because I either knew the real story, or recognized that a moving and emotional post that would cause people to believe they were following a planet shaker, was in fact, created by someone who spent about an hour on the job and an equal amount of time “content creating” to keep themselves employed. The kingdom of God is not so built.
We rely on the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit. We have a message so compelling that if we truly believe it, we will be unable to keep it to ourselves. To share the gospel effectively, no matter what form of ministry in which one is involved, also requires an honest work ethic. If you do not put as much time and effort into ministry as you would if you had a secular job, you need to remember to Whom you ultimately will give an account. “It is required of a steward, that a man be found faithful” (I Cor. 4:2). Be faithful. Work at ministry with the at the very least, the level of commitment you would be required to give to a secular employer. Daily faithfulness, will bring rewards.
Processing That Summer Ministry Experience
This post is dedicated to those of you who think you already have, or still are processing your summer ministry experience. You will generally fall into one of these two categories:
- “Everything was amazing. It changed my life forever”. This reaction is normally spoken by those who got on airplanes and went to new and exotic places. Some worked very hard building things for two weeks, sweating profusely and being exposed in real life to sights, sounds, faces and souls that are a lot more heart-tugging up front and in person than they are on a video. For those who took those trips I applaud you for going and remind you to please remember the following: you took a two week trip. You did not commit a lifetime to the foreign field, don’t really know what it is like, and all Americans are not spoiled hypocrites. You are in the initial stages of processing an experience unlike any you had before so give it time to gain perspective. Be nice to your classmates and fellow church members when you get home. For those who spent an “entire summer” in (name that country) you are not experts on any place you lived in for just a couple of months. You were probably caught tourist sights, had some ministry experiences, and got just enough exposure to fall in love with someplace.
- “It was a total waste of time and all I know is I never want to do that with my life. I might even crawl through glass before I spend another week in a cabin with 7th graders”. This reactions is typical of people who spent the summer doing things within the realm of their skill set, faithfully serving in settings with fairly predictable outcomes. Nothing was spectacular except the level of aggravation pre-teens can arouse in an adult and the work got to be rather repetitious “I never want to do that” can be said of many jobs. I once spent a summer making shoe tongues (really, 40 hours a week, stamping out leather shoe tongues) and I can honestly say the high point was sharing the gospel with people at lunch. The job itself was mind-numbing. Years later I learned that five people converted as a result lunch time conversations but at the time I thought God had me in the factory so I would have greater insight if I needed to write an essay on the hardships of working conditions around the time of the Industrial Revolution.
To those in group “a”, the dust will settle and while the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, you were entrusted with a great experience and now need to ask the Lord how to best use it for His glory. Other people are not called to live up to your experience, but you are, so if the Lord gave you that opportunity, He gave it to you to use wisely for His Name’s sake. Whether it is pray for the people with a certain need, support work in such a place, or return there yourself, treasure the experience. It will not be wasted.
To those in group b, you have had the tough and real experience of faithfully doing things that need to be done and are not personally thrilling. Good. It’s part of growing up and growing up means learning there is a lot of value in things you do not enjoy. As you get some distance you will see more of the bright spots, remember the kid at camp who dogged you and will one day pray he or she can find you again and thank you for what you have done to help them. For those camp counselors and youth pastors you met who looked tired and burned out, the summer is a lot of work for camp leaders and youth pastors and they were tired. Cut them some slack and buy them a smoothie. They are not less genuine or less passionate. They might just be tired. But they are faithfully serving an age group that is notoriously time consuming, self-centered and thankless. It is an interesting reality that if a group of 50 people banded together to save a life it would make national news. Yet that scene is repeated over and over again in camps and VBS and summer programs across this nation, when college students, and youth workers spend themselves and the eternal lives of dozens are saved and as it was not observably dramatic the miracle of what occurred goes unnoticed. The fact remains that 80% of those who come to Christ do so before the age of 18, so before anyone bashes a youth pastor, show some respect. Those of you doing those jobs no one wants to do, are actually the “top harvesters” in the kingdom.
Fall is coming. Perhaps you graduated and are now beginning to really transition. Perhaps you are returning to school. If you graduated and don’t know what to do next, take a peek at my last blog. If you are going back to school, embrace what you learned this summer and keep growing and you will find that you eventually have a healthy perspective. The great part about having a fantastic experience is you realize this is not about you but something so much bigger.
The great part about having an uninspiring experience is you will understand it was not a waste because the experience wasn’t about you. You did those skits, sang those songs, and got covered in mud for some kid for whom that was the greatest week of his or her life. Life is not about you and your ride on an elephant or the camp staff who showed the same maturity as the campers. It’s bigger than that and you all did the part you were given for these short weeks. Now be thankful: You all had a great summer.
Things You Did Not Learn in Bible College 