Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 1:01am
What I love about ministry
Column: New Houses from Old Bricks
Every year, the anniversary of my ordination on Feb. 10 offers an opportunity to reflect on ministry. Whenever I do so, gratitude is not far behind — for the privilege of doing sacred work, for the people I encounter, for the chance to witness God's power (and sometimes God's sense of humor) working in individuals, families and communities. I'm also grateful for the way that ministry, like many vocations, works on me.
I love the way ministry brings out the best self I can be — sometimes even better than I can be. It's difficult for me to be around people in deep pain, but the self that those situations sometimes bring out is compassionate and quiet and prayerful. I don't always recognize that person, but at the same time I also know that God is leading me just beyond the person I already know how to be. I'm grateful for that growth.
Paradoxically, ministry also seems to know how to push my buttons, bringing out the worst in me. A familiar demon has dogged me since my own school days: the desire to be cool, which surfaces particularly in ministry with teens and young adults. As a young adult myself, I managed to get through school and find my own niche in college, but I perpetually wanted to be cooler than I actually was.
A few years ago, I served as a resident minister on a college campus. When I walked the halls of the residence hall as the freshmen were moving in, it all came flooding back: I so wanted to be the cool resident minister. It was so tempting to focus not on actually ministering to the students but on soliciting their acceptance to prop up my ego.
I'm grateful for the way ministry brings those old demons to the surface, inviting me to see them transformed with the tools God has given me in the last 10 years, so I am not defeated in my 30s quite the same way I was at 19.
There's another paradox that I love about ministry.
Ministry often makes me ask, "How did I get here?" There are moments when it seems that nothing about my life path could have predicted this turn. Often those moments happen when I don't have (or think I don't have) the abilities or experience to meet the situation's demands.
For example, a moment from my seminary internship in Hong Kong (which in itself was one big "How did I get here?" — but that's another story): I found myself recruited by the worship and music professor at the Hong Kong seminary to lead a liturgical dance workshop at a conference she had organized. That in itself was strange, because my only experience with any kind of dance was the semester-long seminary course I had taken the year before. (Yoga was the only thing I knew in any depth, and she definitely hadn't asked me to teach liturgical yoga.)
Add in the fact that none of the participants spoke English as their first language, and many didn't speak it at all. And then factor in that I was on crutches with a broken foot, teaching 30 Chinese people how to dance prayerfully in worship. Still, the workshop and their dance in worship turned out beautifully, and literally the only explanation is God's grace at work.
That's what I love about ministry — it throws me into situations I'm not prepared for, sometimes not even gifted for, and leads me into the grace of God because there's just no place else to go.
"How did I get here?" is only half of the paradox. The other half is the way ministry sometimes seems to be a return to a long-lost self, a return to something I had loved or been and accidentally forgotten. As T.S. Eliot put it in "Little Gidding," it's a sense of returning to where we started and knowing the place for the first time.
In working on discernment with young adults, for example, I found myself comparing the search for vocation to a treasure hunt. Then, soon after I started in campus ministry, I rediscovered a story I had written in elementary school, about a search for treasure that could be shared with all creatures. Rereading the story so many years later, it sounded eerily like what I hoped to convey to young adults in ministry.
I love that about ministry — it picks up the pieces of myself that I may have forgotten or even discarded, and finds a way to honor and use them.
You might say that all these things — the "How did I get here?" moments, the sense of return, one's best self brought out, or one's worst self transformed — happen in all kinds of vocations, not just ministry. In fact, you would be right.
But when it comes right down to it, what I love most about ministry is that it is what has been given to me to do. And that's true whether I'm enjoying it in a particular moment, or finding it crazy-making — either way, it's the right thing for me to be doing.
What I love about ministry is exactly what Martin Luther said about any vocation: It is the place where God finds me. It could have been painting or teaching or fixing appliances or parenting. But for the past six years and presumably for some years to come, it is ministry. Thanks be to God.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Rebecca Schlatter.
I love the way ministry brings out the best self I can be — sometimes even better than I can be. It's difficult for me to be around people in deep pain, but the self that those situations sometimes bring out is compassionate and quiet and prayerful. I don't always recognize that person, but at the same time I also know that God is leading me just beyond the person I already know how to be. I'm grateful for that growth.
Paradoxically, ministry also seems to know how to push my buttons, bringing out the worst in me. A familiar demon has dogged me since my own school days: the desire to be cool, which surfaces particularly in ministry with teens and young adults. As a young adult myself, I managed to get through school and find my own niche in college, but I perpetually wanted to be cooler than I actually was.
A few years ago, I served as a resident minister on a college campus. When I walked the halls of the residence hall as the freshmen were moving in, it all came flooding back: I so wanted to be the cool resident minister. It was so tempting to focus not on actually ministering to the students but on soliciting their acceptance to prop up my ego.
I'm grateful for the way ministry brings those old demons to the surface, inviting me to see them transformed with the tools God has given me in the last 10 years, so I am not defeated in my 30s quite the same way I was at 19.
There's another paradox that I love about ministry.
Ministry often makes me ask, "How did I get here?" There are moments when it seems that nothing about my life path could have predicted this turn. Often those moments happen when I don't have (or think I don't have) the abilities or experience to meet the situation's demands.
For example, a moment from my seminary internship in Hong Kong (which in itself was one big "How did I get here?" — but that's another story): I found myself recruited by the worship and music professor at the Hong Kong seminary to lead a liturgical dance workshop at a conference she had organized. That in itself was strange, because my only experience with any kind of dance was the semester-long seminary course I had taken the year before. (Yoga was the only thing I knew in any depth, and she definitely hadn't asked me to teach liturgical yoga.)
Add in the fact that none of the participants spoke English as their first language, and many didn't speak it at all. And then factor in that I was on crutches with a broken foot, teaching 30 Chinese people how to dance prayerfully in worship. Still, the workshop and their dance in worship turned out beautifully, and literally the only explanation is God's grace at work.
That's what I love about ministry — it throws me into situations I'm not prepared for, sometimes not even gifted for, and leads me into the grace of God because there's just no place else to go.
"How did I get here?" is only half of the paradox. The other half is the way ministry sometimes seems to be a return to a long-lost self, a return to something I had loved or been and accidentally forgotten. As T.S. Eliot put it in "Little Gidding," it's a sense of returning to where we started and knowing the place for the first time.
In working on discernment with young adults, for example, I found myself comparing the search for vocation to a treasure hunt. Then, soon after I started in campus ministry, I rediscovered a story I had written in elementary school, about a search for treasure that could be shared with all creatures. Rereading the story so many years later, it sounded eerily like what I hoped to convey to young adults in ministry.
I love that about ministry — it picks up the pieces of myself that I may have forgotten or even discarded, and finds a way to honor and use them.
You might say that all these things — the "How did I get here?" moments, the sense of return, one's best self brought out, or one's worst self transformed — happen in all kinds of vocations, not just ministry. In fact, you would be right.
But when it comes right down to it, what I love most about ministry is that it is what has been given to me to do. And that's true whether I'm enjoying it in a particular moment, or finding it crazy-making — either way, it's the right thing for me to be doing.
What I love about ministry is exactly what Martin Luther said about any vocation: It is the place where God finds me. It could have been painting or teaching or fixing appliances or parenting. But for the past six years and presumably for some years to come, it is ministry. Thanks be to God.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Rebecca Schlatter.