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1 year ago
The Worship of the Work
I read this quote in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest today:
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work.
The truth is… I’m guilty of that. I’ve been feeling bad for myself recently (and by “recently” I mean probably the last month or so) because here I am a recent college graduate and I already feel like my life is going nowhere. Amanda has one semester left of classes and then a six month internship. So what that means for me is that I’m sticking around Sussex for the next six months, before running off to who knows where (probably California) for another six months.
Obviously I want desperately to be involved in ministry some how (that’s what I just spent five years in college training for) but it’s hard to get involved in any kind of meaningful ministry when you’re only around for six months. What that means is that for now I get to go find a random job. I then get to find another random job when we go on Amanda’s internship.
Of course, I originally had to potential beacons of light… at least for my time here in Sussex. My first thought was in the Pastor of Community position that Kings Valley Wesleyan is wanting to hire. My thought was that I could get that job, and when Amanda needed to do her internship that she could intern there. I would love to work at Kings Valley. I would love to work for Jim Agrell. I feel like I would be an excellent addition to the team.
But… Amanda doesn’t want to go there and as I have been taught multiple times from multiple professors and mentors “a tied vote is a no vote.” Which means if Amanda doesn’t want me to get the job at KV then I don’t get the job at KV. To be fair though, I now understand her logic. She wants to feel like her internship is about her and not any after thought. Instead of me getting a pastoral job and her coming on as an intern simply because they have me, she wants to find a placement that specifically wants her for her, and not because she’s my wife.
I get that. I really do. But that means that at best, I could go talk with Jim about bringing me on staff for six months, then letting us leave for another six months, and then coming back to work for two or three years. I say two or three years because my goal is still planting churches in Calgary. It is only because those same professors and mentors have said that I should really look to get on staff somewhere before going out to plant that I’m not thinking of moving to Calgary in the next year.
So instead I will try to get on staff with a church where I can work as an associate pastor for a few years to get some good experience. Then we will head to Calgary.
But when I look at the possibility of Kings Valley as six months on, six months off, two years on… I start to feel like there is no way he would want to bring me on. If I was a senior pastor looking to hire a new staff position and a kid straight out of Bible college, with no experience, came to me and wanted to come on staff for that short of a time, and take a six month hiatus, I would tell him we’re going to look elsewhere.
My second option that I was thinking of would be in the Bethany admissions department. My friend Ben is probably going to get the job as pastor of Shelburne Wesleyan in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. His wife Bayley works in the admissions department here at Bethany. So with them leaving I could get a job working there. It would only be through the summer and fall semester, but I’ve been here for five years, I know Bethany like the back of my hand.
But before I even went to talk to Scott, the admissions director, I was informed that they probably won’t be hiring a replacement for Bayley. Which means that option #2 is out.
Which leaves me in Sussex for six months without any good job prospects. However, Dave Cotnam works for a landscaping company in town and his boss is looking to hire. So I turned in my resume this week and Dave seems to think I have a near guarantee that I will get the job. So I will probably spend the next six months working landscaping before heading off to California and working who-knows-where.
The problem with this is that all my friends are either going on internship this summer (after which they are completely done with school and can job right into full-time ministry) or are actually going out into full-time ministry. And then there’s me… a recent graduate that is now taking a year long hiatus from ministry (a year and a half if you count this past spring semester).
Which is why I’ve been feeling bad for myself recently. But that also brings me back to that quote from Chambers:
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work.
As much as I don’t see it or understand it God has me here for a reason. For one reason or anything God wants to to stay in Sussex and work a blue-collar job for six months, followed by six months of Amanda’s internship.
To be honest my first thought is that I’ve done something wrong. There is something horribly wrong with me that God sees and thinks I’m completely unsuitable for ministry. That thought tells me that I’m a failure and will never be good at being a pastor. Obviously that thought cannot be coming from God.
In which case I don’t know why I’m here. But I can try to make the best of it. If my “great aim” is to fully worship and honor God wherever I am, than I can do that here is Sussex.
I’ll be honest, this is going to be a really tough year. I have a voice screaming at me that I’m a horrible, worthless failure because I’m not in ministry like all of my friends. But I know that voice does not come from God. And I know that I should be devoted, or worshiping, God and not the work that he could be giving me. My first responsibility is to God, not to being a pastor.
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