Diary of a ministry apprentice (Part 5): August to almost-the-end-of 2008

Here is the fifth instalment of Guan’s six-part series, covering his time doing ministry training (MTS) at the University of New South Wales in 2008. He is married to M.¹ By now, it is the latter half of the year. We last left Guan at the end of Mid-Year Conference (MYC), amazed at how the week has reminded him how many things in life are bigger than us as individuals: the body of Christ, Jesus in his sovereign reign, and the God with a plan for all of his creation. After the high of MYC² comes a massive down. And then a flat. And then down. Kind of a slippery dip with a fat mud patch at the end with a trapdoor dropping you into the Dark Dank Goblin Cave of D(ar)ankness.³ And even though Grimmo is gone from campus now, there are joys to see as I’m sliding down my slippery dip; MYC has revved people up so that they’re excited. Excited to be seeing one another, excited to share the things they’ve learnt, excited to get into Bible study. And excited to get into the campus mission that will run in the first few weeks of the new semester that come straight after MYC. And somewhere along the way, this well-weathered phrase pops into my head: there’s nothing that I’d rather be doing. Despite the moments of paralyzing terror. Despite the moments of angsty angst of angstiness. To put it plainly: what are we doing with the time that we have? I don’t know how we don’t talk about this more. Somehow, at some point, we realized that actually death makes us uncomfortable, and so then we decided that it’s not nice or polite to talk about things that make us uncomfortable. But really, where did that come from? Why don’t we sometimes say uncomfortable things, so that people will be saved? For what reason did Christ redeem us on the cross? For the purpose of timidity, to play the role of the people who don’t say things because they are uncomfortable? Or did he save us that we might bring life to the dying? To be resurrectionists, each and every one. Life is not about ease, but about working out what to do with the life that God has given you. It’s for working out who God has made you to be and, then, working out what you can do with that for him who has made you.

Measuring success

It’s hard to measure success in ministry. With every other job there’s hallmarks. For the doctors, it is (or so the movies tell me) a little machine that measures a pulse and beeps out a pass/fail mark. For a lawyer, it is the fine-grained timesheets, the constant call to make minutes into money. For me as a project manager in a web-design company, it was usually telling clients not to be so daft, and then pleading with the programmers and designers to do just slightly daft things, please, just this once. Whatever the profession, there is a way to count, to accrete the tasks—to procrastinate a little, dive in at the last moment, and cross it off the list—and then start again the next day. What there is in ministry is just, only, ever, people. And with people, it’s never what you expect. The thing about people is how stubbornly they resist being predictable, or static, or manageable. Some­times the quiet ones will show you that (despite the silence you interpreted as boredom) they get what you were on about, they totally get it. Sometimes the active ones, the ones who launch themselves into everything, they do something bone-achingly daft; and you realize, after the fact, that they were throwing themselves into everything because they weren’t very happy about where—or who—they were. You realize that they got the Christian-ish things, the activities and maybe some of the behaviours, without getting Christ at all. Another Ken-ism: “We have to keep remembering MTS is not about skills, but about character. Our character before God."⁴

Perceiving success

A few weeks later, we have staff meeting. “How did the mission talk go on Monday?” Lis asks Charles.⁵ “I think I botched it,” he says, looking slightly disgruntled. And as much as I’m sorry to hear that he didn’t think it went well, it’s kind of a comfort. People doing this professionally—or, like Charles, not only professionally but amazingly well—still have moments of botchiness. (Why do I always assume that everything is going well for everyone else? Why do we always assume that everyone else is in a different category to ourselves? We act as if we are the sole centre of the universe’s problems; heck, as if we are the sole centre of the universe’s anything!) “What do you mean when you say you botched it?” “Oh, well. I went overtime. And I don’t think I communicated it as clearly as I could have.” Someone hands me a feedback slip from a med student. I turn it over, skim it, and hand it on to Charles. “Well, be encouraged by this, brother.” The feedback slip reads thus: “Thank you for the talk and if it had been a university lecture and it had gone that long I would have been bored but because it was interesting it was great”. Charles looks baffled. “I think it’s a compliment…” I say. “I think.”

Staff training

Staff meetings are, like administrative meetings around the world, both a burden and a freedom. A burden because when you’re in staff meeting you can’t do any of the other stuff on your to-do list, and a freedom because when you’re in staff meeting you can’t do any of the other stuff on your to-do list. And, looking back, it’s the staff training that makes the difference. Because (and I’m saying this assum­ing that some who read this will be working out whether they’re going to do the MTS thing at some point) it’s the staff that decide your experience. You can do the things you do on MTS plenty of places—you could do the traineeship at a church, or at a university campus⁶—but wherever you are, it’s the staff members who will be the most responsible for shaping you during those years. For better or for worse. It’s the same rule of thumb used to measure whether you should be involved in most ministries: is the minister that I’m under someone that I want to be more like, or less? I’m more thankful than I can say that the staff that we have are ridiculously good: godly, selfless, noble, and frankly hilarious so much of the time. Anyway, to get back to the point, staff training time is like the family meal. We meet as family—bonded together, in Christ of course, but also in the sharing of work and time and trust—and we discuss what’s been happening. The evangelistic events, the Bible studies. The girl who has been meeting up with Lis, who has become a Christian. The things to watch out for. Sometimes we’ll just have fun. One time we go ten-pin bowling as part of staff training and, yes, I know it’s the writer’s curse to see everything as a metaphor for something larger,⁷ but work with me on this one: bowling is a little bit like ministry. Even as we rejoice and celebrate each other’s successes, and commiserate in times of failure, bowling is a solitary sport; stepping up and aiming for an objective in the distance; you can do what you swear is the exact same action but get very different results; and how you follow-up is all-important in deciding whether the first result was good or bad. All just like ministry. But also, like a family meal,⁸ we partake of something together. I mean, yes, we do actually eat: the girls bring home-baked goods, and the boys bring store-bought chips. But there’s also a segment where we just engage in something from the Bible together. Sometimes it’s a topic, sometimes it’s something that one of the senior staff members has been thinking about, sometimes we’ll have a guest in. And on one memorable occasion, our guest is Peter Blowes, who was a missionary with CMS in Argentina for many years.

Equal to the task

Peter is a man with an effortless, angular smile, and I find it easy to agree with him, to nod along, even as he tells us that what he’s got written are mostly semi-prepared ramblings.⁹ He tells us about how, when they started in Argentina, they had four military uprisings in the first three years. Then, in the fourth year, they had 4000% inflation. He tells us that if you’re going to be in Christian ministry, it’s wise to know yourself, really, truly know yourself. He talks about purpose in ministry: why are you doing it? What are you trying to achieve? About how Matthew 28 talks about making disciples of all nations, but to just imagine for a moment that Jesus looked at you, and said “Go, and disciple that nation”. How sometimes we need to lift our vision. He talks about how, through the process of ministry, he changed from saying “Lord, give me the task I’m able to do,” to saying, “Lord, make me equal to the task you want me to do.” Peter tells us how his ministry was basically centered around asking people to read the Bible. About doing this as a model of listening, caring and loving, and realizing that part of the call of the Bible is the call to involve others. It’s best not to do something on your own, if you can instead do it alongside someone else, because then it goes from being a burden to being a training opportunity. And so, if you’re reading the Bible with someone and you ask them, “What’s the main point, and what should you do about it?”, you should also ask, “Who is one person that you could share that point with?” And he talks about the difficulties, and that sometimes the difficulties are our own fault. Because James 4:2 says “You do not have, because you do not ask”, and so it’s an insult to God to be chicken. How we shouldn’t despise the small ground, because the small ground of one person’s life is never small to the God of all things. And how sometimes, people don’t turn to the gospel simply because they love their sinful lives. And finally, we should keep remembering God’s promise to Joshua, quoted in Hebrews: “I will never leave you nor forsake you”.

Another year

Have we really come this far? I have to make a decision about next year—whether or not to do a second year of MTS—and with each tide of emotion and success, or lack thereof, the decision changes. Oh, people came to Bible study and are keen to meet up—I should definitely do another year! Oh, nobody came to Bible study this week—this is pointless and I should definitely not do another year. But if I don’t do another year, I won’t have the joy of meeting up with this person! But if I do another year, it will be difficult to convince people to keep on meeting up with me; surely they’ll be pretty sick of doing so. I am a fickle human being, at best and at worst. But isn’t that just what the glory of the cross is about? The best thing to do I meet with Ken and he asks me, “What are your reflections on the year?” I pause, trying to gather my thoughts, but there are so many that they keep spilling out and away from my mental grasp. I say something about how, when you’re trying to help another Christian grow, one of the things I’ve learnt is to always be thinking about their next step of maturity. What area of thinking or serving will help them to grow? What’s the next stage? I talk about one of the kids that I’ve been meeting up with. We’ve been looking at an overview of the Old Testament and trying to grasp the shape of the promises fulfilled in Jesus, even though, in retrospect, I don’t know if that was the best thing to do. Ken smiles. “Well see, you have learnt something since the start of the year. At least now it’s ‘I don’t know if this was the best thing to do with them’. At the start of the year it was ‘I don’t have any idea what to do with them’.”