When Discouraged, Listen
It is not unusual for any compassionate clergy to have moments of discouragement. You can hear ten compliments and one complaint and it is often the complaint that keeps running through your mind. Even when things are running fairly smooth in your congregation, you can hear about some other congregation that has a great program or attracted many new members and wonder what you are doing wrong. You listen to a strong lecture challenging the church to do more about justice, and you feel like you lack courage. Even when you have preached a good sermon, you have to face starting over to prepare a new sermon. It’s easy to allow the spirit of inadequacy to creep into your soul.
You Are Anxious About Many Things
In the Mary, Martha story, it was Mary who stopped to listen to Christ. What might happen if you stopped to listen to the Body of Christ where you are pastor. Think of the people in your congregation and imagine if the congregation could speak to you. If they were able to praise God for how both intentionally and unintentionally God has reached through your ministry and touched them, both individually and corporately, what would they say?
What are some of the tender moments in which a member felt affirmed? Go ahead and actually think of one or two people. Think of a person who accepted your words of counsel and began to see some light in the midst of a time of confusion? Was there a teen or an elderly person who was feeling unimportant and you treated them as important and it helped?
You conduct worship every week and often have other spiritual or liturgical experiences throughout the week. What is the possibility that a particular Scripture you read or a prayer you offered reached deep within the soul of someone present and the blind began to see? When has the hymns and liturgy shared together helped a person realize that they were not alone? When has a confession of sins unexpectedly released a person from a burden of guilt?
Has there been a mission trip, a special offering, an invited speaker enabled a parishioner to reach beyond their cocoon and join the body of Christians in bringing hope where there was despair? You can be modest and say most of those things weren’t specifically done by me. That is true but you were often the lynch pin that enabled a part of the Body of Christ to be good news. Like Martha, you may be very busy doing many good things, but sometimes like Mary, you need to stop and listen.
A SERVANT OF THE LORD
You don’t have to be such a tower of strength and wisdom or even a genius at organization to be a servant of the Lord. Often some of God’s best works through you happen beyond your awareness. I would urge you to take some time apart and actually identify some of those possibilities of which you are aware where someone has been touched by your ministry. Your ministry, occasionally in major acts but often in small ways is significant and filled with meaning. You are indeed a SERVANT OF THE LORD.
