All tagged ministry
I have heard the prayers of a person with dementia after someone prayed with them and, although to our ear it may be difficult to understand, the Lord knows their heart inside and out. It is such a beautiful thing to witness. The Lord's Prayer is often familiar to those with a spiritual background and can bring a sense of peace.
Ministry can sometimes feel like sailing into the wind—navigating competing needs, weary congregations, complex situations, and quiet pressures. And in a world enamored with metrics, driven by measurable outcomes and focused on the correct formula for success, it is easy to forget that the kingdom of God does not advance in this way. It advances by the breath of the Holy Spirit.
Christ approached her and gently put his arm around her, and said, “My daughter, I do not want you to be deceived, so I must tell you that you did not pass this test. Satan has overcome you and you did not know it. And I have now come to tell you to repent. For it is not the poor that you love, but yourself.”
I would grow to be endeared by Sterling’s humor, caring nature, and honesty in the face of death. Sterling was not a particularly religious person, holding no particular allegiances to any established faith. We had very little personally in common, but sometimes you just click with someone.
It is not unusual for patients to experience spiritual distress throughout their medical journey. Conversely, many patients also find their faith deepened as a result of facing their own mortality. I find that patients who are allowed to express and explore their doubts and fears without judgement are the ones who find their faith most strengthened.
Perhaps most importantly, I was told told how to think differently. Instead of thinking, “I am wasting my time here,” think, “the gift of my time here honors this person as an individual worthy of love and respect.” A chaplain’s role is not to fix things or “do” something, but to bear silent witness to the suffering of another person.
At times, I am certain that Paul was frustrated by these cultural differences and the constant need to reacclimate to a new normal. He probably came to a point where he was never fully Jewish, never fully Greek, and had to rely on Christ even more to see him through.
Educators have long been familiar with the concept of a flipped classroom as a teaching tool. I have employed this method in a few of my classes when it comes to teaching additional material, books, and even sections of story and prophecy to explain. When the students have the opportunity to focus on one section of Scripture with the end goal of having to explain it, they have to grasp it at a deeper level.
These three convictions—everything we do derives from God’s doing, we are stewards of people, and God calls us not to a task but a people—provide something significant to us as leaders in our communities of faith. Even when we have persons that God entrusts to us that are “extra grace required,” persons full of anxiety, or those who are clothed in self-righteousness, we can find and hold space to care for them.
When people see me, do they just see a better-than-average person? Or do they see me acting in the world around me in the same way Jesus would act? Do my moral and ethical standards match his? Do I treat all people the same way he did? The answers to these questions will determine how effective I am as an evangelist.
Rather than beginning by convicting people of sin and its consequences, we need to begin by exploring the effectiveness of their present lifestyle in enabling them to have hope, peace, and purpose. From there we can move to the reality of failing to live by God’s principles for life (sin) and the need to be free from our failures (redemption).
We are creatures of habit, myself included, but we can change our patterns. We can choose, like my elder friend, to be more intentional on Sunday mornings. We can pay attention to where we go, who we talk to, which classes we attend, and the patterns of behavior we exhibit. We can choose to become more intergenerational in our presence at church, and thus leave a different kind of wake.
Pray for workers. Pray for those who will talk about the Jesus journey. Pray for those who will invite others to hear the good news. Pray for those who will teach the good news of Jesus. Pray for those who will walk beside the new Christians.
As I’ve spent time sitting with the story of Jesus’ sending out the disciples, I feel a sense of urgency to take seriously not only the humility, trust and faith of the disciples but also the compassion, awareness and hospitality of the countless communities that received them along the way. I pray that you and I, in whatever our ministry may be, will be ready to respond with the trust of the disciples on the journey, and to show up with the compassion of the disciple who invites the stranger to become a friend.
Your testimony is not about being untouched by pain but about surviving it and finding God in the ashes. Healing is not about forgetting. It is about living differently because of what you’ve survived. The scar becomes a story. The loss becomes an altar. The former thing becomes a seed.
As ministers of the Gospel, may we always remember that no one is too far from God’s love and forgiveness! He is not far from each one of us, and he is at work through his Spirit, drawing all sorts of people towards Godself.
We know that hitting people over the head with the Bible and proclaiming the wrongness of their actions doesn’t work. We’ve often been embarrassed that our well-intentioned but judgmental practices of the past left deep wounds and were certainly not effective evangelistic tools. At the same time, it feels two-faced to keep quiet.
To me, chaplaincy is the art of presence. It’s about stepping into the unknown, where the tapestry of life unfolds in unexpected ways. We arrive, often unaware of the stories that await us or the roles we will play. Yet we stand ready, like sentinels of faith, poised for the perfect moment to weave our threads into the fabric of the present.
To what extent may generative AI tools be appropriately used in the process of sermon preparation? Does this use eliminate the role of the Holy Spirit and the transformative process on the homiletician?
We truly, sincerely, want to be more like Christ. But do we really? I ask this only because it seems our impatience and avoidance of others is truly impressive. We have perfected the art of being angry, passive-aggressive, inflammatory, and obnoxious gloaters when things go our way.
