The American church is the definition of a Type A personality. There are the basic programs, such as youth group, children's church and the choir or band if you're into more contemporary scene, that come standard in almost every church. There is the 10am Sunday morning service, the 6pm Sunday evening service and the 5pm Wednesday night dinner and prayer meeting. If you're a good Christian you plan your weekly schedule around these events and are at the church every time that the doors are open. Yes God is a God of order and schedules are fine (being person that is driven by routine, I welcome any and all forms of planning) but he is also spirit and is constantly moving in new and different ways. What if ministry doesn't just have to happen at these appointed times. During the last month my team and I have had a lot of free time. Ministry looked nothing like what I expected it to (you would think that by this point on the race I would have learned not to have these or any kind of expectations) but all of the free time presented a unique opportunity. Instead of focusing our attention on the people in the community we focused on the contacts that we were with. It was apparent from the time we got there that Andrei and Larissa had a lot on their plate, much more than they were seemingly equipped to handle. Between raising 2 young children, moving into and decorating a new home, teaching middle school students in a nearby village and pastoring a local church the couple was running themselves ragged. So over the course of the month, my definition of ministry quickly changed. While ministry, by nature, involves interacting with people it is not always about the people outside the church or the layperson inside the church that need to be ministered to, sometimes it's those in charge that need it the most.
Over the course of the month we were blessed time and time again by Andrei and Larissa. They gave to us in every way imaginable even when they had nothing to give and as we got to know them better we were better able to speak life into them, it was essentially a mutual exchange of blessings. They were blessed by our work around the house and in the church and we were blessed by their provision and hospitality. In the end our prayer was that they continue to find peace and comfort even in the midst of all that they have going on. God is also a God of rest and all he wants is for us to crawl up into his lap and give all of our struggles to him.
