Ministry Struggles
SOME BACKGROUND
Every January, Journey kicks off the year with retreats for our members, held in the warm climate of Orlando.
Members arrive from all over the country for one of our two retreat weeks. Those who cannot afford the cost of transportation are scholarshipped by generous donors – how thankful we are for their partnership in making it possible for young ministers to attend. Our partners make it possible for us to make these retreats as cost-free as possible to our members – minimal, if any, cost.
Some members come a day early or stay a day later to take advantage of the many attractions found here in the vacation capital of the world; some arrive early or stay late to have more time with each other, iron sharpening iron in conversation, prayer, and laughter.
Each of our four sessions focuses on a different aspect of following Jesus as vocational ministers. Essentially, we do a deep dive into what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in our time and place. Members engage in strong conversation that encourages, challenges, and comforts. Gathered around the shared fire of Jesus, we draw into Christ in a way that many attendees say is completely unique and meaningful. God moves among us in powerful and life-changing ways. We thank God for the work He does in us in each retreat.
SUBJECT: STRUGGLES IN MINISTRY
In our recent 2023 retreat weeks, one session focused on struggles in ministry.
The Scriptures teach, and life demonstrates, that leading God’s people is filled with struggles – challenges in ministry, relationships, and especially within ourselves. Our retreat attendees identified many of these, took them out of the box, and looked squarely at them.
Discussion then focused on what we are learning about how Jesus is at work in our struggles, suffering, and us. We looked at how we can recognize God’s guiding hand, and, even more, lean into the transformation He is working in us and our ministries. We talked about how these struggles can bring glory to His name, believers into maturity, and even reveal Christ to those separated from Him.
OUR QUESTION
Here’s the primary question we posed to retreat attendees:
How can we as vocational ministers process struggles in healthy and redemptive ways?
OUR ANSWERS:
Below is a list of the answers we brought to the table. The answers are those offered by Journey members. We have simply organized them in categories.
ACCEPT
See struggle as a means of God’s transformation in us – healthy and holy.
Accept our humanity, His divinity, and His ongoing work to be our Immanuel.
Read the Psalms: their honest presentation of humanity wrestling with life grows our faith in God.
Always be honest with God in prayer – hands open, never clenched.
“I do believe; help my unbelief” is a powerful statement of faith: pray it.
FOCUS
Focus on Jesus as He is revealed in His Word.
See the sacredness of God in all of life, ministry, and otherwise, joy and pain.
Gaze into the Trinity; God’s Three-in-One relationship reveals to us His love.
Seek an eternal rather than a temporal perspective.
Focus all of life on Jesus, not self, but Jesus.
Study the names and attributes of God in Scripture.
REMEMBER
Remember that altars can become pillars of truth – God meets us there in life-changing ways.
Repeat “It is written,” remembering that God’s truth is forever – and here and now – established.
In God, we live and move and have our being.
I am a son/daughter; I am a servant – both truths define me; God is my Father and Master.
Remember what God has done in your life up to this moment.
Remember the last call and command of God; continue to answer and obey.
DISCIPLINE
Learn the value of ritual; it makes us a partner in declaring the truth of God.
Focus on God’s empathy, action, and healing in the holy communion service.
Disciples live lives of discipline; discipline helps keep us in step with the Master.
Pray always.
Pray specifically and pray generally, but always from the heart.
Learn the way of solitude and silence in Christ.
SHARE
Never walk alone. Jesus is our example.
Challenge and encourage each other.
Seek to learn and live the truth that it is in giving that we receive.
Walk in a small circle of believers in transparency, encouragement, and challenge.
Do theology with those with whom you share deep fellowship.
CONTINUE
Every morning, as a prayer, answer God’s call again, whatever comes our way.
Preach the truth to others; hear it for ourselves.
Give yourself to being a pastor: teach, pray, and disciple.
Walk by faith, knowing that he is faithful.
The last word God gave me; continue to walk it until I hear otherwise.
REST
Learn, love, and live Sabbath life. It begins, but does not end with honoring the Sabbath.
Seek to understand what it is to truly rest in the Lord.
End every prayer, especially laments, “Nevertheless, my hope is in you.”
Pray the 9:24 prayer (Mark 9.24): “I do believe, but help my unbelief.”
Read-to-need: read what Scripture and wise authors have to say about your particular struggle.
Let “Help me, Jesus” be our heartbeat and confidence.
A REAL WORLD EXAMPLE: UKRAINE
After Ukraine gained its independence from the former Soviet Union, missionaries went in to help the church as it came out from under the iron hand of communism. I was privileged to be a part of a team hosted by a Ukrainian Pentecostal union. While we found a nation decimated by communism, we found a church strong in faith in Christ. Followers of Jesus knew deprivation and hardship: everyday necessities and conveniences to us were completely unknown to people in the Carpathian Mountain region. But the Christians we met were a people who lived in the fullness of God even in their suffering. Their lives were marked by:
- Faithfully doing good for each other and their neighbors – 1 Peter 2:19-23
- Perseverance – James 5:10-11
- God’s consolation – II Corinthians 1.3-7
- God’s encouragement and renewal – 2 Cor. 4:16-18
- A passionate desire to glorify God – I Peter 4.12-16
- A life of deep, deep rejoicing in Christ – Matt. 5:10-12
After decades of struggle and suffering, Ukrainian Pentecostals were a people who exemplified the words of the Apostle Peter: they were mature, established, strengthened, and settled in God (1 Peter 5:10).
At the head of this great cloud of witnesses of Jesus were the pastors who faithfully shepherded them through those dark decades – pastors who had been persecuted, jailed, and beaten. Many had even been martyred for the cause of Christ.
I remember preaching in a small village where the still-Communist mayor surprisingly opened the town hall to us for our evangelistic meeting. Hundreds of people filled and completely surrounded that hall, including the mayor who became a follower of Jesus that day.
At the end of the service, my hosts introduced me to a middle-age man of bear-like proportions, and a second man of many more years, small and somewhat frail. Both greeted me in a way I will always remember: solemn and controlled, yet obviously and deeply moved. The younger man took the lead, telling us the older man was his father. He told us his father had given his life to pastor the Pentecostals of this area all through the years of persecution and hardship. Weeping, he told us his father had prayed all his life to see this day when the Gospel could be preached openly. The son shared the struggles and sufferings of pastors over the decades, and specifically, those of his father. His father stopped him, telling us his struggles were small and not worth noting. What mattered, he said, was God’s church had stood strong in its day of trial, had faithfully followed the Lord, and that this day had finally come.
This man and his many colleagues had passed through fires I have never known. And for it, they possessed a faith I do not know, but can only stand and look on with humble and awestruck wonder.
Through these struggles and sufferings, God had been faithful to His servants: the proof stood before me that day in the river-deep, mountain-high faith and spiritual strength of this pastor. Yes, he had suffered much, but his struggles had only served to make him, and so, his people, strong in Jesus Christ.
NOTE: To read more about the faith of believers who endured during Communism’s deadly reign, I encourage you to read Rod Dreher’s book, “Live Not by Lies.
FINAL THOUGHT
Our God is faithful! He is faithful! And He will be faithful to be our Immanuel in our times of struggle, however deep they may be.
This is the lesson we are learning as we seek to faithfully serve Him, our loving Lord.
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Saddled with large student debt, just beginning to set up homes and start families, and serving in low paying first and second positions, Millennials are those who most desire but can least afford to pay for pastoral coaching.
We are able to do so thanks to the faithful and generous support of individuals and churches like yours who want to see young leaders not only enter the ministry, but remain in the ministry.
Now, more than ever, we need your help.
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