There’s a saying among experienced ministers that often gets articulated whenever they are giving their advice to someone about to begin seminary. They will say, if there’s anything else you’re good at, or like to do, or could possibly imagine yourself doing to make a living – do NOT go into the ministry. Or as a ministry colleague shared his insights with me, “Ministry is the best, most wonderful calling in the world, but when it becomes a ‘job,’ it is the worst job ever.” One does not go into ministry because the money is good, or because there’s prestige in it. Neither is true but for a handful of pastors. One shouldn’t go into ministry because of family pressure or a desire to be “more religious.” In the end, ministry has to “choose you.”

God, in God’s mysterious , “Holy Spirit” kind of way, hand-picks those gifted as apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors for the work of ministry. God selects those who are mature in their faith, robust in love, and are living their lives from the inside out, allowing their inner character to be molded and fashioned by the creator. Those who will guide the Body of Christ, God’s true church, into greater unity and into greater connection with the holy will need every ounce of integrity they can muster. In such anxious times as ours, they will need courage in order to keep their resolve as mindless crowds try to get their own way. They will need to develop a sense of righteous anger about the greed and perversities of our world, and yet not be consumed by their rage. They will need to cut off from the old and apathetic way of life and embrace a new life that is alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences. Ultimately God’s ministers understand that forgiveness is the key to the Kingdom – not a naive forgiveness that dismisses discipline or minimizes consequences, but an authentic forgiveness that calls for repentance and recognizes the full gift of God’s grace as something that none of us deserves. Allowing oneself to be placed in the “biblical” category of minister seems to invite God to administer every imaginable test of spiritual endurance as a way of honing your spiritual gifts. It ain’t no picnic!

So Daniel – welcome to my world. But it’s not like you haven’t been there already. Thanks to the phenomenal bureaucracy of the institutional church, the title “Minister of Word and Sacrament” may be some time in coming. You have a lot of hoop-jumping to do – via passing seminary classes, having meetings with Presbytery Committees, and proving your ministerial chops before the title gets conferred on paper. Nevertheless, when God passes out the gifts of ministry to the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors, it doesn’t come with a certificate included. There are ministers with Masters of Divinity degrees, and ministers who are elders and deacons and the church members who pray every day, and there are probably some of God’s chosen ministers who have really never darkened the door of a church as we know it, but are slyly sharing their gifts with the Body of Christ in bars and coffee shops in neighborhoods all around the world.

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he writes a lot about doing ministry, but nothing gets said about the ordination requirements for doing so. There are no examinations to pass, no fidelity and chastity agreements to be made, not even any Constitutional questions one must answer. It’s a “just do it” mentality. If you have the innate ability to share God’s love in ways that are inspirational, prophetic, evangelical, or pastoral, get out there and do it. Paul doesn’t allow for any excuses. “No prolonged infancies” is how Eugene Peterson captures Paul’s sentiment. No babies in the ministry, well, Paul is really saying there’s no room for babies in the church. The text says, “God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love – to be like Christ in everything.” He knows that we must have a growing period, our literal childhood, and for some that may take longer than others, but he has little tolerance for adults in the faith community who continue to behave immaturely by stealing, or talking rudely, or intentionally hurting others, or in any other way grieving God. And remember, he wouldn’t have had to say those things if people weren’t doing them!

Daniel, I can almost guarantee that there will be times in your ministry where you come back to this text and sigh. We who love the church, who are in the church, who want desperately to guide God’s church into all God desires for us still know that we will miss the mark – a lot. It’s a painful realization to go into seminary fully intending on changing the world, and then to realize that some parts of the world will never change, at least not in our lifetimes. The same things Paul complained about are with us today. The faith community will always be a mix of wonderful keepers of the faith, challengers of injustice, sharers of the gospel, pastoral care-givers, and those few who never grow out of wanting the church to meet their own needs first so they act like whiny babies.

James Emery White, the pastor of the Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina writes in the Center for Congregational Health newsletter about having coffee with a fellow pastor who “needed more than caffeine to pick himself up.” He was growing weary of the church, and though he knew that seasons of weariness would come he still found himself unprepared to deal with them. Rev. White writes to him and to every pastor, “Nothing prepares you for how ministry can drain you emotionally, leaving you in pain or, even worse, feeling numb or in despair or seething with anger. This is why so many good men and women in ministry have careened into moral ditches or still soldier on with plastic smiles and burned out souls.” (Doorpost, November 2009)

Ministry is intense. It’s sometimes intense in wonderful ways. You will get to be involved in some of the most intimate moments in people’s lives – in their marriages, in births, in deaths, in crisis, and in joy. It still makes my knees knock a little to think about all the implications of preaching God’s word week after week – even though it has now become such a routine part of my life. But the details of a professional minister’s day to day responsibilities can also be mundane. Like any other job, there will be time spent organizing people or projects, going to meetings that don’t seem to go anywhere, sorting junk mail, and dealing with the minutia of who’s responsible for sweeping the leaves on the sidewalk. It’s a bit of an emotional roller coaster. The North Carolina preacher was right, along with all the other expected ups and downs in ministry, the growing levels of conflict that are found in churches everywhere are leaving many pastors emotionally exhausted. But what I didn’t realize until recently was that the prophetic side of my own gifts for ministry won’t allow me to be very satisfied when things seem too comfortable either.

Your own gifts and your limitations will be intensified through the lenses of ministry. You will learn to know your strengths and your weaknesses very well – perhaps far better than people who don’t have to center their faith at the heart of their vocational endeavors. You will be challenged emotionally like never before, and in order to stay out of the moral ditch, and keep your smile genuine – I charge you to take good and gentle care of yourself. In this letter, and others, Paul admonishes those who have the gifts for ministry to be clear about having their own needs met, and he calls those who care about church professionals to take those needs seriously. It’s hard to lead others to God, when our own relationship with God is waning. Though there is plenty of work to be done in the Kingdom, you are not required to do that work alone. Paul is clear about that too. It takes all the gifts present in the Body of Christ to help us reach closer to the goal of being more like Christ in all that we do.

I’m actually a little bit jealous of the path that you will begin this August. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in seminary. The richness of that environment where everyone comes together to test and deepen their ministry skills is amazing. At least it was for me. I pray that your time there will be fruitful, although I know that it will only scratch the surface in preparing you for your life in ministry yet to come.

Now I trust that there will be people along the way who will make all the difference. Just like you didn’t get to this point on your own, there will be professors, pastors, mentors, and friends who guide you along your Louisville Seminary journey. But we will miss you. Your care for the young people here has been tremendous. Your preaching and worship leadership have been a gift to me and to this church. Your courage to be yourself has grown since we first met, and will continue to grow as you step into the life that God has called you to. We will be looking forward to hearing about what’s next for you. God’s church will be richer because of your presence in it.

Amen.