Diary of a ministry apprentice (Part 2): March 2008

Guan’s story so far in four sentences: Guan likes self-deprecation, but isn’t very good at it. He is ever so slightly obsessive about his iTunes collection, he is married to M,¹ and at the time of writing (2008), he has just started ministry training (MTS) at the University of New South Wales (hereafter known as ‘the Uni’). So far, the year has begun with a whirlwind staff conference and recruiting students at the human flood that is the Uni’s Orientation Week (see Briefing #375). Now things begin to settle into a rhythm, but life is not without its challenges. One of the best parts of the summer was Paul ‘Grimmo’ Grimmond preach­ing on Titus 2:

Notice how Titus tells the women to love their husbands and children, and to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands (vv. 4-5). Then he tells the guys to be self-controlled (v. 6). See, even back then, they knew that guys weren’t able to multitask.

Worryingly, one of the applications from this talk is how many men throw self-control out the window when it comes to any­thing competitive. This doesn’t really apply to me though; I’m far better than most guys when it comes to competitiveness.

An average day

Starting out in a life of ministry comes with a freedom that saps you. Like walking through fog, almost everything takes more effort, and almost everything requires rethinking from first principles. You work out your way by trial and the error of bumping into things, and just as you resolve not to bump into more things, you step on a rake. Here’s what a day in my life looks like a few weeks into term. Wednesday is my longest and busiest day, which usually has the dual effect of making me feel like I’m actually doing something for once, and leaving me tired and drained. Today, however, I feel tired and drained before anything’s started. Depression weighs me downward. The black dog sinks its teeth into my ankle and tries to convince me that it would be a far better idea to spend the day in bed. I kick it off, and limp around the flat, getting ready to go. I grab the MTS backpack, which includes the following: an A4 folder (which is a kind of POW camp for the byproducts of paper warfare—Bible studies, theological papers, visitors’ slips from newcomers at church, brochures for conferences), my ‘To do’ list book,² a spare pen, a spare pocket Bible, a bottle of water, a box of nuts,³ index cards⁴ and generic painkiller tablets. Also it has necessities like mobile phone, iPod and keys. Then I go down to the Uni coffee shop for my weekly chat with Ken. Ken is my trainer. A major part of MTS is becoming more like your trainer. What I’m about to write might sound harsh, but I say it all with love (and it’s not anything that Ken himself would disagree with): think of the most charismatic, up-the-front, skilled preacher you have seen. Ken is not that guy. But he is the guy with the wisdom and good sense to know that the up-front stuff is not the whole ball game. It’s not even half. Ken is Anglo-Australian, aged in his 40s with hair slightly thinning and sometimes sporting an earring in his left ear. He loves quotes; today, for example, it’s Spider-man, closely followed by Sun Tzu, then Nietzsche. Much later, a few of us joke about the ‘tap on the shoulder’, which happened to almost all of us who considered ministry at Uni. One day you’re having a pleasant conversation with someone not-Ken, and then you get that tap, and there is Ken. He says, “Can I just have a quick word?” and you say, “Yes”, and then the quick word is actually a few slightly longer words, and they go something like “When were you thinking of getting into ministry?” But it’s the most loving challenge.⁵ You come to realize that—in time. Here’s just a smattering of the various bits of wisdom I extract from Ken:

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• Follow-up is all-important. When following someone up, try to call within 48 hours of first contact—whether that’s from receiving their contact slip or meeting them. It doesn’t have to be an epic conversation; it can be as simple as “Wanted to see how you found [whatever event they came to]”, “Would you like me to add you to the email list for Bible study?” or “If you ever need to get in contact with me, my email address and phone number are…”.
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• Always try to say goodbye to someone by reminding them of the next event: “So I’ll see you at Bible study next week?”, “Did you want to catch up for coffee on Wednesday?” or “Do you know if you can make it to the Med⁶ social on the long weekend?” This might also mean planning things so that they can have them in mind. (Similarly, think about this not just chronologically, but in terms of ministry. What growth area or ministry could you leave someone thinking about?)
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• The main thing to do when you’re meeting someone is to Read the Bible. What you do with them as you read the Bible is a matter of preference and personality. Ken’s style (and therefore the style soon adopted by me) is to do no preparation—not out of laziness,⁷ but out of a desire to teach the other person that the Bible isn’t something that has been placed out-of-reach by God; it’s something everybody can read. They will see this as you read it alongside them. It’s usually best to start with an epistle, but it depends on their background and the teaching program.

Finally, Ken says I’m free to call at any time, and that I shouldn’t be afraid to ask for time off. But it doesn’t work; I am afraid to ask for time off. And yet I’d like some right now so that I can pause everything else and come back when I’ve figured the heck out of this stuff. Then we start reading Amos together. We have half an hour left, and we get through two verses, which is actually pretty close to our average Verse per Hour ratio. We talk about the seriousness of Israel rejecting the laws, and thus their covenant with God (in context, it’s put on par with ripping open pregnant women). We also talk about the generational mandate given to Israel, and how that changes in Ezekiel 18. (Ken: “It’s one of those Old Testament chapters that you just have to know. Like Ezekiel 36. Like Jeremiah 31.”)

Bible study

And then I walk up campus to lead Bible study for the Medical students. There’s quite a few of them today; on average, each session would have three or four, but the numbers fluctuate pretty wildly because of exams and exam stress. Today, there’s nine, including myself. Even better, quite a few sign up for Mid Year Conference (MYC).⁸ The study itself goes well. It’s on the last passage in Philippians, and the background knowledge of these guys is fairly sound. To generalize, the main challenge with the Med students is to get them to speak in the first place, and then to get them to speak on answers that are from the passage, rather than from their (usually good) general biblical knowledge. But this involves trying to nudge them out of a culture that so frowns on mistakes, volunteering an answer becomes fraught with trepidation. The exception to this is Lucy, who is bright and kind of fearless when it comes to most things—up to and including evangelism. Answering questions is a cakewalk for her. She’s also the exception to the rule—an Anglo-Australian in a course dominated, numbers-wise, by Asian-Australians. We agree contentment is something that’s hard for all of us. I (hopefully)⁹ scare them a bit with stories of how hard a medical career can be for Christians. And then we split up into little groups of guys and girls to pray. The next few hours, I take a break, then meet for a caffeinated beverage, chat and pray with Jimbo, a fellow ministry apprentice, fellow struggler and an all-round excellent man. Then I limp to church meeting, then staff meeting, then church Bible study, and at the end, my brain is a rag and I limp home.

Failure

And so these few weeks, I do a lot of think­­ing about failure. What does it mean? Why do we fear it so much? Why do we especially fear the term applied to us¹⁰—“You, you’re a failure”? Me? I’ve barely begun this MTS thing, and I feel like a failure. Why?

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1. Almost everybody else looks self-assured—calm. The ones who don’t reassure me calmly that they feel the same. But… really? Surely they’re just saying that to make me feel better.
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2. I’m an Arts graduate. Half the staff are doctors—or lawyers, gifted teachers of gifted kids, sons of missionaries, engi­neers, accountants. I feel adrift. Things go over my head. I can’t concentrate as long as anyone else. I can’t wrestle things in my brain the same way. I don’t have enough time. I’m restricted by situ­a­tion, race, marital status, this… well, this physical form, this “light momen­tary affliction” (2 Cor 4:17). Depression. Sickness.
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3. Time: I have barely any. Being part-time, I have two days to spend on campus, and before a single student has set foot there for the semester, one of those days is almost plundered by meetings. With the other one, I’ll have to navigate the chaotic timetables of Med stu­dents,¹¹ my own limitations in terms of how often I can meet people (which will depend on how draining those conver­sations and/or those people might be), time for rest, time to lead or attend Bible studies, and time to meet with the leaders to spur them on. I am exhausted just thinking about it. (Not that I feel like I have the time to think about it…)
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4. I don’t regard myself as good with people. I don’t know why I’m doing this. Is it perseverance to head into ministry despite all of this? Or has God made me this way so that I can easily tell that going into ministry is a really bad idea? Am I just too boneheaded to take the hint? Or am I simply supposed to rely on him more?
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5. I don’t know how I managed to get through last year. Already the idea seems so foreign: getting up at 6 in the AM, wrestling through the selfishness of the bus queue, going into work with 12 people who are essentially and critically different from me, making decisions that affect expensive websites at the drop of a hat, explaining to clients why the delay in their website is actually a good thing in the long run. Was that really me? And if it was, why does it seem like all the things I learned have already faded? And if that was harder time-wise than this, why do I feel like a hermit crab that’s crawled out of its shell, only to curl up and lie defenceless?

I guess I’m scared. Is all failure just an exposure of the self—a fear that people will get a peek behind the curtain that we all put up to hide an inner self—an inner self that we’re in some way ashamed of? And the most disappointing thing? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be the one who succeeded at MTS and proved them all wrong. (Yes, that is entirely the wrong attitude.) Or is this just what everyone thinks—that “I’m the one who’s going to be different”?  

Endnotes

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1. Mary, who is hereafter mostly referred to as M, if only to bring the universe of James Bond ever so slightly closer to my own.
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2. A frightening number of these things remain undone as of time of publication.
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3. Food provision comes up surprisingly often as an MTS occupational skill.
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4. These are ideal for random notes, or for collecting or providing contact details.
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5. The least loving thing is simply never to challenge.
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6. ‘Med’ meaning ‘Medicine’, the faculty whose students I am ministering to.
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7. No, really.
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8. See my next instalment.
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9. ‘Hopefully’ because medicine is the sharp edge of a culture that worships careerism and money, and too many start out as Christian doctors, and finish as the second part of that phrase and not the first.
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10. Sometimes by us.
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11. Imagine that two ninjas, experts in the ancient technique of tennis racquet-hurling, are standing at either end of a tennis court. Imagine that you stand at the net, needle and thread nervously in hand. Now imagine that each of the ninjas throws their respective tennis racquet in such a perfect way, at one moment in time, the two racquets are perfectly adjacent to one another and to where you are standing. And you—your job in that single moment in time is to thread your needle through both racquets without disturbing their flight in any way. This real world situation is strangely similar to the task of organiz­ing Bible study times for university students.