I was chatting with ministry friends last night. A few things came together in my thinking. No time to process the thoughts into a paragraph... So, a list!
1. Ministry is best done where you are in life. Eg. If you are in the little kid phase, it's easiest if your day to day ministry is to mums and little kids. If you try to have some other ministry as your big thing (eg. speaking or 1-1 with singles) you will probably get frustrated that you can't do your 'ministry'.
2. Ministering predominantly to those in the same life-phase will mean you don't particularly minister to others. Oh well. Someone else will need to pick this up.
3. Your kids, your responsibility. Your husband has a full-time job. During his work hours, he should work uninterrupted. The two of you need to negotiate what these hours are. The benefit of church jobs is that there is often flexibility - but it's easy to wrongly take advantage of this and be lazy or committed to things you can't really do.
4. Training others to do stuff is a gift that some have more than others. This doesn't excuse those who don't have that particular gift, but...
5. (This one is for everyone) Don't ever speak of 'they'. 'They should do this. They should do that.' They is this mysterious other. Replace the 'they' with 'I', go speak to the person who you think should be doing the job, or shut down the thought directly because it is a whingey and horrible one.
6. Godly life is not for the faint hearted. Why expect it to be easy? The battle with sin, the devil and the world is fierce. And bad stuff happens. Expect it. Expect failures and disappointments and sin and just get on with it when these things happen.
A great list.
ReplyDeleteHave a good day at work.
Great thoughts Simone. I especially like no 1 - helpful reflection.
ReplyDelete6 looks familiar.
ReplyDeleteSo how does points 1 and 2 fit in with the whole Titus 2, older women ministering to younger women thing?
ReplyDeleteGreat question, Mel. Not sure.
ReplyDeleteOf course I'm not suggesting we are blind to others outside our age group... but I think you are probably kidding yourself if you think you can have your primary ministry to 15-18 year olds while you have 3 kids under 5. That kind of ministry isn't going to fit naturally into your life. Similarly, if you see your ministry as being primarily to younger working women, it is going to be quite a juggle to manage it while you have little ones at home.
I don't think that we always need to be ministering to every group of younger women in our church. There are other groups of older women who can cover some that we might not be able to at a particular stage. Younger for me at the moment, means women who have younger kids than I do and children. I am not in a night time bs group now. Apart from after church conversations, there are some people I will not be able to minister to much. So be it.
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ReplyDeleteI think it also depends on how you define 'ministry'. Is it only one-to-ones or leading Bible studies? If we define ministry more broadly, you can do a lot of it just talking to people along the way in your day-to-day life.
ReplyDeleteCan't really comment on most of this apart from:
ReplyDelete1. Could apply to everyone considering we are all part of the royal priesthood.
5. Have you seen the 'joke' about Somebody, Anybody, Everybody and Nobody?
6. Amen.
Jenny - yes.
ReplyDeleteLaetitia - 1. yes. 5. yes (I liked it!)