A Spiritual Cram Session

When you feel hard-pressed by the demands and difficulties in ministry, it helps to know you’re in good company.

“We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles,” writes Paul, “but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down but we haven’t broken” (2 Cor. 4:8-9, The Message).

One big demoralizer in ministry is not having enough people to do the work. A few years ago at Leadership we’d been short-staffed for three months. After an extended thorough search for the right associate editor, we thought we’d found our person — and it didn’t work out. We had to live with more work than people for a while longer.

The same day I received that disappointing call, the mail brought two letters criticizing me or my work. Vance Havener once said that in ministry you need the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. I guess I haven’t achieved rhino status.

During that same period of time my family and I were moving (within the area), a happy move, yet major financial decisions stress me. I got a call from our attorney saying that the seller’s attorney had pulled a move I thought was patently unfair. I felt anger, but I was too busy to really deal with it.

I took all this home from work with me, and when I got home, the front storm door broke. We had guests coming for dinner; they got lost and arrived an hour late. I joked with my wife, Karen, “I know God wants to refine my character, but does he have to do it all in one day?”

On Sunday I preached, and it happened to be on a difficult and controversial topic. I sweated over that sermon, and afterward, I felt relieved and good, yet drained and spiritually vulnerable. Many people told me how much the message had helped them, but one person told me that a member had been offended and was thinking about leaving the church. Of the many comments, guess which one I still was brooding on a few days later?

Searching for some wisdom and relief, I turned to 2 Corinthians 4, a passage that has helped me over the years. There I found Paul’s confession of being hard-pressed and perplexed. But this time I drank comfort from these verses: “We always carry abound in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body … death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (vv. 10, 12).

If I understand Paul correctly, it’s a good thing for the Corinthians that he suffered. His sufferings forced him and the Corinthians to realize that the only reason he hung on was by God’s amazing power. While being “spiritually terrorized,” Paul must have felt he was dying, but that forced him to be humble and dependent on God — two qualities that always bring life to others.

Here’s Paul’s equation: Struggling minister = blessed church members.

I don’t like that equation, because I’m called to minister. I don’t like being battered, unsure, and thrown down.

But that’s Christian ministry.

I really do want God’s blessings to flow though me to others (at least, most of the time), and such life comes only from deaths. Yours and mine.

When we’re experiencing this, cheery Hallmark-card words won’t do. Only true and tested ones. Like Paul’s: “Death is at work in us, but life is at work” in the people to whom we ministry.

Kevin A. Miller is executive editor of www.PreachingToday.com. To reply, write Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.