A Word for Ministry During this Pandemic

I spend lots of time with those involved in ministry, and even more time teaching those who are ministering or entering into ministry. The last 18 months have been brutal. No seminary education or on-the-job formation prepared you for this. You have had to cut your own path and sometimes the path was too dense to cut. Sometimes the cuts you made led you into deeper thickets and quicksands.

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A pastor friend told me he knows of some thirty pastors who have walked away form ministry and as many as 50% of current ministers have considered resigning or retiring. You are suffering in your calling. The Lord is with you, and you are with the Lord in those sufferings.

Ministry during this pandemic enters into the heart of ministry in ways nothing else has. I was thinking of this passage of the apostle Paul’s as I was preparing recently to speak to an audience of engaged ministers. Please read it to hear from the Lord.

24 I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. 25 I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. 27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.

2:1 For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face. 2 I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself,  3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I am saying this so that no one may deceive you with plausible arguments. 5 For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ (Colossians 1:24-2:5).

Paul’s words are not as uplifting as they are true when he says he is suffering, but what comes to life is that he says he is “completing what is lacking Christ’s afflictions” (1:24). Claim Paul’s entering into the afflictions of Christ as your own. The restless nights of anxiety, the endless complications of technology for the streaming of services, the extra time required just to do ordinary tasks, the back and forth with the CDC and governmental bodies about regulations, the irritations and anger and frustrations and loud words of those who refuse the masks and those who insist on the masks, and behind and under and through it all the absence of bodies in worship services or the presence of only some of those bodies, and the wondering how many have actually “left” haunt you.

Those are the sufferings of Christ. Paul entered them and somehow found a way to rejoice in them (1:24). His wasn’t the power of positive thinking. His was the power of realistic ministry. Ministry is a cross. Daily.

Instead of positive thinking, his approach was through his commission from Christ to “make the word of God fully known” (1:25), or to “fill up” or “fill out” the word of God. Paul perceived his embodied suffering as filling out the preaching with actions that made the word even more visible and compelling. Your suffering does this too. You may not see it; you may not hear it from the lips of your people. But your suffering is Christoformity through and through.

Paul embodied the Christ of sufferings in his preaching of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27). This preaching-with-embodied-pain was shaped to nurture maturity, Christoformity, in his people – whom he could name, whose stories he knew, whose lives he had watched, whose pains and deaths and divorces and marriages and births he had entered. Just as you have done, are doing, and will continue to do.

You are sometimes all alone. As was Paul. In the dark night of pastoring.

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Yet, this is not a happy-face-all-the-time ministry. Your ministry isn’t either. Here are the words Paul used for what he was doing, and you know these by heart, you feel these in the marrow of your bones, you hear these words as feelings: “I toil and struggle” or “I toil agonizingly” but the toil – and you know this at times – is only pulled off because of the “energy that he powerfully inspires within me” (1:29). In your Angst and in your struggles you sense at times that were it not for God you could never have gotten through these eighteen months.

The God who was there is the God who is right there now with you. You can carry on because God will carry you on.

Paul is unafraid of telling the Colossians that his ministry with them is a case of struggling: “I want you to know how much I am struggling for you” (2:1). Struggle could be translated with agony and agonizing. These are not happy face terms. These are terms born in tears and anxious nights.

Presence mattered as much for Paul as it does for you. You want everyone to be back together in church in song and prayer and eucharist. Or in fellowship hall talking with one another. Paul knows some who have never once seen him and he wants to be with them. He wants them to be united in love, just as you long for your parishioners to stop the relentless squabbles and tensions and politicking. He wants them to know the deep rock unity that is found in Christ alone. He doesn’t want them fooled as you don’t want your people fooled.

His absence, he tells them as you have told your congregation, is an embodied absence transcended by some kind of Spirit-shaped presence. Like Paul you are beginning to “rejoice” so you can “see” them all together in a firm faith.

Remember that your struggles are opportunities to enter into the very sufferings and afflictions of Christ himself. Remember too that your sufferings for your people are sufferings that Christ did not complete. He left some for you. Remember that your sufferings for embodied presence glimpse that embodied reality as you long for it. Remember, too, that your pain works into the maturity of your people.

You are doing the Lord’s work with him and for him.