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

Like the apostle Paul's.

"We've been surrounded and battered by troubles," Paul writes, "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, and here at LEADERSHIP we've 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'll have 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 Havner 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 ...