Ministry is nothing if not a grand balancing act. I imagine you'll relate to the dilemma of thought and feeling that Mandy Smith expresses in this sweet-and-sour meditation. -Paul
A former student of mine just left the ministry. Totally walked away. I understand why. She had been doing good but hard work in a place where she rarely saw results. It’s only natural to be discouraged.
It has made me think about the times I want to walk away.
Strangely, it’s my imagination that usually brings on the discouragement. Things are never as wonderful as I imagine they could be. I see the brokenness of the world. I believe God cares about it, and I believe God is powerful to do something about it. So I set out to fix it, making grand claims on God’s behalf, imagining all the miracles I’m about to see. I’m like a child—throwing myself fully into what I’ve dreamed up. But the outcome is often less spectacular. So I put away my dress up box, and decide it’s time to grow up. I go small. I stop imagining. And then the depression sets in as the brokenness and limitations overwhelm me. I stop talking to God, stop hoping.
This is one of the hardest ministry skills: finding that somewhere-in-between where I can trust in God’s power but at the same time not be discouraged when it doesn’t show itself in the fullness I had imagined.
The sweet and the sour
The Stockdale Paradox has an interesting application here. You may have heard the story of James Stockdale, who spent 8 years in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp where he was tortured over 20 times. Unlike many of his fellow prisoners, he survived the experience emotionally and went on to be an influential leader. When asked what made him different, he pointed out that often the ones who didn’t make it out of prisoner of war camp were the optimists: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be,” (Jim Collins, Good to Great, p. 85). It’s not our call to be pessimists or optimists but realists. Especially if reality and truth are the same thing. Our reality is this: God is good and all-powerful and the world is not as it was created to be. These together are truth. These two realities co-exist, at least for now.
I wonder if James Stockdale was familiar with the book of Revelation. The lamb looks slain—but he stands. The two witnesses seem to be overpowered—but then they rise again. Like the little scroll that John is told to eat, life is sweet in our mouths but turns sour in our stomachs. We can never lose the faith that we will prevail in the end. But that doesn’t remove the most brutal facts of our current reality.
Life is a sweet and sour sandwich.
Counter-cultural imagination
This is living counter-culturally in a way much bigger than the morality of the movies we choose to watch. This is choosing the see the world through God’s eyes, as broken but ultimately redeemed. And living into that reality although it’s not yet fully true.
While my imagination can be the thing that leads me to discouragement, with a tweak, it can also become the answer.
This takes imagination. While my imagination can be the thing that leads me to discouragement, with a tweak, it can also become the answer. Walter Brueggemann speaks about the role of imagination in our interpretation of scripture, teaching that in obedience to the spirit, we are given a capacity to think, see and sense a reality beyond the givens in front of us. Imagination is subversive. The world we see is not all that there is.
Our role as leaders is to nurture this imagination, not to say what will be but to paint a vision of what could be. It’s a vulnerable place to hope for things that we don’t yet see, to tell others to hope for them. But, in a strange way, our call, as leaders, is to have childlike hearts, being willing to describe the scene for the other children and invite them to step into it with us.
But we’ve been taught to be reasonable and adult. So how do we nurture that imagination? The best thing I’ve found is choosing regular practices which help me live in the in-between.
In Sabbath-keeping we choose to rest because we believe in God’s rest even though all we feel is the weight of this world. In prayer we choose to talk to God because we believe he hears even though we feel alone. In working and worshiping with our brothers and sisters, even those who seem to come from a different planet, we live into the reality of our unity in the Spirit. In generosity and hospitality we show the abundance of God even though we may feel only scarcity. In choosing justice and goodness and beauty and self-sacrifice we work towards change and freedom even though we don’t see them fully … yet.
In these in-between choices, we nurture our imagination.
In these in-between choices, we nurture our imagination. We bring into existence in part the things that we long to see in their fullness. And, as we model it for those we lead, we create communities who live in the in-between.
And the fullness begins to unfold.
Mandy Smith serves as lead pastor at University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is the author of Making a Mess and Meeting God: Unruly Ideas and Everyday Experiments for Worship.
