Many thanks to my dear brother Rob Wilkerson who has served us all so well in my absense (along with the other guest bloggers). His last post was fantastic, and I am really in some ways quite sad to be reclaiming my blog, but changes in my real life plans which I will not go into details about mean that I am now going to be able to blog more than I expected for the next month or two. Rob’s honesty has been outstanding, and I trust that many will continue to read him over at Miscelanies of the gospel, as well my other guests.
Rob asks good questions about how to transition from pastoral work to so called “secular”. Despite many people who have wrongly assumed my own position, I have never worked full time for a church, so I cannot fully appreciate the positon Rob is in. I can speak to the challenge of sometimes feeling like I have two lives though. The simple fact is that when you are at work you are employed to do a job. Your employer does not expect you to spend your time preaching the gospel, and if you are meant to be working and don’t do so you are actually robbing your employer. This does not of course mean that human relationships developed at work cannot ever lead to sharing our faith, or more commonly sharing certain biblical principles we live by.
One of the things that helps me in this is realising that even Jesus when meeting people didn’t always pull out the four spiritual laws or some other summary of the gospel. Jesus said he only did what he saw the Father doing. This meant that in some conversations (and no doubt in many, many conversations in the workshop before his ministry began) he was vague, evasive and at times far from clear about what he had come to earth to say. He almost seemed to tease at times, intreging people with snippets or short stories, and leaving them wanting more. Jesus was attractive, and then when the time was right he wouldnt pull his punches. But even at his plainest Jesus was not as clear as his followers are meant at the right time to be.
I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes it helps me to realise that it is not my responsibility to pastorally care for every person I meet, or even necessarily to preach the gospel to them. In some ways, once you trully believe the implications of the gospel, it takes more faith not to try and share our faith with everyone we meet.
What I do need to learn to do more is to be faithful to God, to always be a good example, and to always be willing to give an answer for the hope I have. Sometimes it is encouraging to see people make small steps on their personal spiritual journeys which lead them closer to God. Often, though we will need to simply get on with our job, and no more talk about our religion than we necessarily talk about what TV programmes we enjoy watching.
I love one of the things Rick Warren said- and I am soon going to share my thoughts on the conference of his I attended recently-
“We tend to overestimate what can be accomplished in a year and understimate what can be accomplished in a decade.”
God is always playing the long game, sometimes we need to learn to do the same,
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