Everyone knows you’re not supposed to have expectations. As soon as we begin any sort of application or preparation process for the World Race, we hear this over and over and over again: Don’t have expectations. Don’t have expectations. Rid yourself of expectations. But for real though, don’t have expectations.
Yet as much as we try, sometimes it’s still hard. I thought I didn’t have any expectations for the Race, but then I found myself being shocked when I got to sleep on a bed for a few months or when I got to shower with hot water, because I was expecting to sleep in a tent and shower with cold bucket water for the entire year –after all, I was on the World Race, right?
Still, the biggest expectation I had was regarding ministry. I was expecting ministry to be this earth-shattering, world-changing, tear-jerking endeavor. I was expecting to be saving people and children from starvation, abandonment, abuse, and neglect every month, every day, in every country.
More often than not, though, ministry does not look like that. Yes, we’ve fed hungry children, befriended prostitutes, taught in impoverished schools, and loved on people who’ve been abandoned. But most of our time on the Race is spent doing other types of ministry: we pour into our team, we serve our hosts and contacts, we witness to church congregations, we get to know the locals; we paint murals, we build walls, we dig holes, we reorganize rooms.
All of these things are ministry, and no one ministry is “better” or “more real” than the other. Painting a wall may have an even bigger effect on a community than visiting people in hospitals, but we will never understand this unless we see the big picture. We don’t know how far one little act can go, and because of that we should never regard our ministry opportunities as invalid or label them as less important.
Ministry is everything we do. It happens every day, even when we aren’t aware of it. Ministry isn’t this structured thing that takes place on weekdays at 9:00am. Ministry doesn’t have an end time. Ministry doesn’t take vacation. Ministry isn’t a hierarchy. All ministries were created equal.
God has us at a particular place at a particular time for a particular reason. We are shoveling dirt for the same reason we are walking into red light district night clubs. We are not the world’s savior, so we should not let our arrogance and ignorance get in the way of serving in the ways He has called us to serve –keeping in mind that those ministry opportunities come in all shapes and sizes.
