The Skeleton - Part 1
Life is hard. Add a second life to that and it gets even more challenging. This is why so many marriages fall apart. Add more little rugrat lives in the mix and it is amazing the family unit is still in existence. You see, we were created in the image of God from the beginning. But something went terribly wrong. Man sinned and sin broke God’s perfect creation. From the time sin entered the picture every birth has resulted in the production of broken people. Broken people only have one option: marry other broken people and have little broken children. And the result is a world of family units comprised of broken people.
Now, as we join one family unit to another family unit the result is the best reality show on television! No wonder we have so much conflict in our churches. Think about it. We have one messed up family hanging out with dozens or hundreds of other messed up families in this melting pot called church. Why are we surprised when things go wrong? We should really be surprised when things go right!
Ministry, then, is our attempt to resource and rescue the hurting and broken family from certain discord and dysfunction. Herein lies the problem: Pastors are also broken people with broken families trying to stay afloat in this broken world.
Pastors are just broken people leading other broken people to God’s repair shop.
Just like life is hard, ministry is hard too! Every person is in a different stage of life, moving at different speeds, and at a different place in their spiritual journey. And for many of us, we are trying to figure out this thing called life too! We don’t have it all figured out, yet we are expected to help others when we need help ourselves. Ministry is hard.
But what if ministry wasn’t that hard to understand? What if there was a simple litmus test we could use to determine whether we were truly making a difference for the kingdom? What if we didn’t feel we had to neglect our families? What if there was a model of ministry that ministered to the minister too?
When we boil everything in Christianity down to the bare bones we can see it. Ministry is not as complicated as we make it out to be. Ministry is really just about helping people follow Jesus together. I am convinced that many student pastors waste a lot of time on things that don't really help students follow Jesus. I'm not saying what they do is bad, but I wonder how much time is poured into finding and creating the next Wednesday night game to the neglect of developing sermons and resources to help students follow Jesus better.
In the posts to come I will be sharing different ideas on how we can simplify our lives and ministries by keeping the main thing the main thing. But for now, pray about what life and ministry would be like if you were to only do what matters most...help students follow Jesus.
