Full-time Ministry?

I had to finally come to terms with myself yesterday.  I was on my way to the airport in Flint to pick Jake up and bring him back to PoHo (my new endearing term for Port Huron).  For most of the way there I decided to have a two-way conversation with God, you know, the kind where you talk and wait for him to say something back.

It worked.

I’ve always been uneasy about settling into full-time ministry, into dedicating the greater part of my days to ministry or anything that revolves around it.  I think it’s because I have this negative impression in my head.  I learned in a lot of my ministry classes in college of all the dangers of dedicating too much of your time to ministry, that you need to be sure to not over-commit and get out and ‘live‘ once in awhile.  And then I learned from other people who were then in ministry of all the personal dangers of full-time ministry, like your wife will start to hate you and you’ll reach that stage where you’ll never see the light of day because you’re always in the office, or schools, or hospitals.

And I think I was infused with a spirit of fear.

I think there’s some validity to what these guys over the years have said because I definitely think there’s a point of what we call burnout, which we want to avoid, but I also think there’s a way to find balance.

So I kind of bickered back and forth with God last night in the car about what I’m really doing here.  I might have made a deal with God a few years back that I would never settle down into full-time ministry and that I would never be a pastor. 

I think He just kind of laughed now that I look back on it.

Maybe I am in full-time ministry.  I’ve dedicated my life to Kingdom work, to seeing God’s glory weigh itself over the planet.  I’m currently committed to finding missionaries and equipping them to go out into the field to serve, and I’ve committed to seeing them through the process.

God and I talked about how I’m going to be provided for, like how I’m going to make ends meet every month.  He said that if I continue to do His work, continue to serve Him and dedicate myself to this ‘Kingdom thing’ that He’ll provide for me.  In other words, I shouldn’t lose sleep over how I’m going to make my next student loan payment because He’s going to ensure that the money is there; just like I shouldn’t be anxious about whether there’s going to be food in the fridge or not, because He’s going to take care of me.

And so – yeah – I still look at my support account and feel a cloud of depression waft itself into the room.  There is a very small number in it.

But then I think of how God has told me, “I’m going to take care of you, Matt,” and I kind of breathe a little easier.  If God has taken care of the harvest workers throughout history, surely He’ll take care of me.