Majoring on the Minors

“When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to remember

 that your primary objective was to drain the swamp” (anonymous).

I’m a pastor of a small community church, which means that I am regularly involved in the messiness of people’s lives. At any point of the week, I might need to be a marriage counselor, career coach, AA sponsor, handyman, volunteer coordinator, financial planner, crisis counselor, or prayer intercessor. And Sunday still comes the same time every week. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. I love walking with a couple as they prepare for a lifetime of marriage. I love coming alongside a family who is reeling from the death of a loved one in order to comfort and help them through the grieving process. But those are secondary responsibilities inherent in the pastor’s role; they are not the main focus.

You see, try as I might, I will never be someone’s savior. I will never be able to truly heal, fix or free anyone from addiction, depression, or spiritual apathy. Sure, I try. I come alongside them and lovingly support them in any way that I can, but at the end of the day I can’t save anyone – I can’t make them grow or change them in any way. Only God can.

Sometimes I forget that I’m not called to be people’s savior; 

I’m called to point them to the savior. 

The Apostle Paul understood this fact. In his first letter to the Corinthian church, he exclaimed, “when I came to you, I didn’t not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:1-5).  If my efforts throughout the week or on Sundays don’t connect people to Jesus Christ, then I’m nothing more than an entertainer, or, worse yet, a guide who is leading people along the wrong path.

Now, if I really believe that my ultimate purpose is to nurture their spiritual intimacy with Jesus, then EVERYTHING I do needs to be filtered through that: my teaching, my approach to weddings, funerals and counseling, the programs we implement and promote at the church – everything! And I need to constantly be asking myself, “Does this help connect people with Christ? Does this help me fulfill the Great Commission of making disciples (followers) of Jesus, baptizing them in His name and teaching them to obey all his teachings?” Because if it doesn’t, then it’s probably not worth the effort.

But as I assess how I’m actually pastoring right now, I recognize a major issue – I don’t control God. I can’t invoke His presence any more than I can force His hand to my bidding. He’s God; I’m not. So the fruitfulness of my efforts is dependent upon God. And my ministry has to be steeped in prayerful intimacy with God. After all, I’m a disciple before I’m ever a discipler; I’m a part of Christ’s flock before I’m ever a shepherd of His church. I can’t lead where He hasn't taken me; I can’t impart what He hasn't already given me. 

As both a pastor and a follower of Jesus Christ, I have to make prayer my steering wheel, not my spare tire. Otherwise, I might succeed in the external, but fail in the eternal. I might build a huge church, make a name for myself as an eloquent, insightful teacher, bind the wounds of hurting people and send them back out to the front lines, but in the end the fruits of my efforts won’t last, because they will be the crumbling fruit of human effort. 

I don’t want to indoctrinate people into a philosophical worldview; I want to introduce them to their creator and sustainer. I don’t want to comfort them as they drown in sin; I want to impel them to the savior of their souls. What’s more, I don’t want to get so focused on “doing” the ministry through my own strength that I forget to nourish and invest in my own relationship with God. Like Paul, I need to discipline my flesh into submission to Christ, “so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” (1 Cor. 9:27).

So I guess these are my marching orders: Pursue Christ in everything that I do, and point those whom God has entrusted to my care towards the true shepherd of their souls.
Bring on the New Year!

Life by Committee

You’ve heard the saying, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, to be frank, I don’t get into the woods nearly enough to care about the warning cries of lonely trees, but here’s a question that made me stop and think this morning: “If something happens in my life and I don’t post it to social media, does it still matter?”

Laugh all you want, but to me this is a real conundrum! I mean, here I am playing with my kids; one of them does something hilarious and I don’t think, “They are so cute. I’m so grateful to be their daddy.” No, the first thought that flies through my overly publicized mind is, “Oh, I wish I had taken a picture of that, so that everyone would know what cute, brilliant kids I have.”(They are, in fact, both cute and brilliant, but that’s beside the point.)

Or I go body surfing in the stillness of the morning, sharing the waves with only the pelicans and a pod of dolphin. When a couple of the dolphin steal the wave I was about to ride, my first thought isn’t, “How amazing is this! I wonder if I could ride one” (though the thought did cross my mind). No, I think, “man, I need to get a Go-Pro with a waterproof housing so I can record this!”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love social media and the way it allows me to eavesdrop on my friends’ lives (or at least the sanitized, glamorized parts of their lives that they choose to broadcast). And I love the way that I can share moments from my life with my extended circles of family and friends (especially the ones that make me look adventurous, romantic, insightful and awesome). The point of this rant isn’t to critique the shallowness of social media relationships, though that is an issue in our already narcissistic, self-promoting culture. Rather, the point of this is to confess that my desire to construct an epic social-media presence actually hinders me from being present, truly present, with the flesh-and-blood people right in front of me (primarily my wife and kids).

Most family holidays are consumed not by having deep, meaningful conversations with my extended family. Rather, they are consumed by getting that one shot of my boys and all their cousins looking into the camera at the same time (we’ve long since given up trying to get them all to smile at the same time. Heck, I can’t even get my two boys to do that, let alone a hoard of two to five-year-olds). By the end of each family gathering, my wife and I are left exhausted and frustrated, with the sneaking suspicion that we have once again missed out on truly connecting with our extended family. But we do have a bunch of pictures to show what a great time we had!

Methinks that my social-media life is getting in the way of my real life. I have begun to exchange reality, with all its wonderfully mundane moments, for some glamorized online facsimile. Because, let’s be honest, in this day and age, it doesn’t really matter how much fun you had, or how beautiful the sunset you shared with your spouse was, or how awesome your children really are, unless you have at least 25 people who agree with you through their “likes” and their comments. The more online feedback you get, the better it must have been! Oh, the wonders of living life by committee.

Hit “like” or comment below if you agree (only then will I know that my private musings matter). J