The nature of ministry itself can be a frustration: Even if there were no interruptions, you would never be done at the end of a day. When you work with people, when can you say, “Well, that person’s mature in Christ, so now I can move on to something else”?
As Presbyterian pastor Ben Haden has said, “If you’re conscientious in ministry, you never get a day’s work done. You always see more needs at the end of a day than you recognized at the beginning.”
Knowing this, many pastors have learned to compensate with the completable. Rick McKinniss, pastor of Kensington (Connecticut) Baptist Church, for instance, says, “I get great satisfaction out of mowing the lawn now. And I’m a lot more interested in gardening than I ever thought I would be. I love doing these things because I can see something finished, finally accomplished-done!-and I can go on to something else.
“At my previous church, we converted a storage room into a Sunday school classroom. I’d go three times a week just to watch it going up. Sure, it was important for me as pastor to check it once in a while. But I liked seeing something definitely happening, walls going up that were going to stay up, a project moving steadily toward completion.”
Says another pastor: “I’ve learned that if, in a given day, I can accomplish one or two things-they don’t even need to be big-I go home feeling a lot better.”
Still, even completing a few things each day, you ultimately have to accept God’s grace for the ever-incomplete. Says Phil Sackett, pastor of Excelsior (Minnesota) Bible Church, “The pastor has got to know how to go to bed at the end of the day with a clear conscience. If he had a thousand things to do in the morning and he’s done five, there are still 995 left. He’s got to be able to fall asleep peacefully, rebuking the Devil and refusing to accept false guilt over the 995 things that didn’t get done. I have to understand that all God really wants of me in a given day is my best effort. I’ll tackle the rest tomorrow.”
The never-done dimension of ministry holds the potential for discouragement, but seen another way it provides a rewarding challenge. Writes Deane Kemper, “The most satisfying activities in life are those we can never completely master.” The fact ministry is never completed says something about its greatness.
-Kevin A. Miller
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