JULIANNE ATKINSON |GUEST

It’s easy to proclaim the gospel with our words. It’s not as easy to follow Christ’s path, embodying the gospel as we inevitably fail, embracing our sins, frailties, weaknesses, and limits. Can you remember a time you felt weak as a ministry leader? I once talked with a prospective volunteer about her background and quickly found that I disagreed on biblical grounds with her father’s profession. It wasn’t a controversial field that he worked in, but an illegal one. Knowing her father wasn’t a Christian, I assumed that she agreed with me. I was wrong. I tried to convince her using Scripture to no avail. 

Unsurprisingly, this was not what she wanted to hear. It didn’t change her heart about her father’s profession. She couldn’t believe a ministry leader would speak out against how her father provided for her family. Needless to say, she decided not to volunteer with the ministry. This encounter was humbling for me as a ministry leader. It revealed to me the complexities of working with people with different life experiences than mine and my need to have patience as God works in people’s lives.

Weakness Before Strength

We want to look like we have a glazed clay pot among the rest of the basic ones. We want to be Paul in Acts 17, winsomely connecting to the culture as we proclaim the gospel, immediately seeing fruit. If you’re like me, your weakness occasionally comes out more like John the Baptist and you end up insulting people’s families and end up with your head on a proverbial platter. The way God has designed our paths as ministry leaders is death before life, down before up, shame before glory, the cross before resurrection, our weakness before God’s strength. Sometimes we can’t kick the sin patterns that trap us or escape the finitude of our human condition. Instead, we are sidelined to watch God do the work we hoped to be able to do in our own strength.

Sometimes in ministry we can be like a bull in a china shop, pushing people into what seems like a clear answer to us. We think we have the right answer to a person’s problem, but she disagrees when we present it to her. When we rush to present a solution, change a person’s mind, or transform a person’s circumstances, it can reflect our need to feel competent to fix their challenges, more than seeing God at work in their lives. ”If they would hurry up and get better it would say a lot about me and my effectiveness in ministry.”

As in my story above, this kind of push backfires. Instead of accelerating the solution, the other person no longer feels safe to think through their challenge and now has to respond to the anxious leader’s push as well. They don’t feel heard or cared for. They feel threatened and put up walls.

God Works in His Timing

We often forget that it is the Spirit who does the work of change in a person’s heart. He merely uses us in the life of another person to point the way to Christ. This means, we don’t need to push people or argue with them. Often a gentle nudge goes far. Listening to another person and asking them questions about what they think and feel will often help them see things they hadn’t noticed before. Sometimes, we merely plant seeds and much later they grow and bear fruit.  One person came around to something I had been telling them for years only after reading Pilgrim’s Progress on their own. As ministry leaders we can be patient, continually entering into the relationship, while not expecting immediate change, knowing God will do His work in His timing. We can still nudge and direct and invite as we’re able, trusting God to produce the fruit.

I saw a reel on social media that presented an image of before and after a hoarder’s home was cleaned and renovated. It stuck out to me because I’ve cleaned a hoarder’s home when I served with a homeless ministry in Philadelphia. We needed gas masks for the smell and wore full body suits. We used shovels and heavy duty trash bags. It wasn’t an instant job. It was hard labor and took a lot of time. Likewise, when we enter into ministry in the world of clay pots, it’s a messy job requiring patience. We’re weak. We can’t do it alone. We need tools, community, and instruction from those who have gone before us. It’s by the strength of the Spirit that we finish the work and we see the renovation at the end. It’s God’s plan to use us in our weakness to accomplish His good purposes in the life of another. 

I felt badly for how I responded to that potential volunteer but God used the encounter to remind me of my own weaknesses and sins. I am a work in progress helping others who are also works in progress. We are all jars of clay with cracks and dull finishes. We don’t have to keep up the pretense of being a glazed one. The glaze always wears off to show our true weakness anyway. As ministry leaders, may we trust the Lord to use us in spite of our limitations and wonder at the amazing work He does by His Spirit.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash