This is a personal but hopefully an insightful SW about my greatest struggle through the years. I wrestled with even sharing it. Yet, the Holy Spirit reminded me that I’m not the only person that has faced this issue with some still living an unfulfilled ministry and searching for answers. I always try not to begin my writing with “I” but here’s my story and the lessons I’ve learned.
John and I started a house repair and cleaning business between ministries. He had served two decades as a missionary in Amsterdam. I had recently resigned as an Associate in a large local church. We were chatting one day as he painted and I stripped wall paper. “What are you planning on doing in the ministry now?” “I don’t know. What about you?” “Well, I don’t yet know what I will do, but I know a whole bunch of things I’m not going to do anymore.” We laughed and kept working. We had reached a point in our life and ministry that we knew the spiritual gifts God had given us and we were both well aware of the one’s He didn’t give us. After years of ministry, we knew what we shouldn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t do.
Unchurched and ignorant of scripture when I entered the ministry, church and denomination rules forced me to spend twenty years in ministry positions outside my spiritual gifting and the person God had made me. It began after Bible College when I was required to pastor two years before entering foreign missions. Problem—I did not have the gift of pastoring or the temperament one needs. I was a mess after a few months of pastoring, i.e. ‘refereeing’, a bitter split out of another church. Everywhere I turned ministers pressured and advised me that I must change. “You must develop new gifts.” “You aren’t depending on the Holy Spirit. Through Him you can do anything.” “You must become an extrovert and stop being so introverted.” “Even if you don’t like what you are doing, just suck it up and do it. Remember you are a servant.” Trying to live up to man’s standards and their unfounded advice led me to a complete collapse. Today we call it ‘burnout’.
I have focused my personal studies for many years on the subject of being the person God made. Ask yourself, does God really want me working outside the spiritual gifting He gave me? Does the Lord desire me to minister in a position where I am miserable and unhappy? If God fearfully and wonderfully made me and wove me in my mother’s womb (Psalms 139:13 14), does He now expect me to serve outside my temperament and the person He designed.
The most helpful principle I’ve learned is the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule. It originated in the business world and over time, church-growth specialists adopted the phrase in numerous areas of church studies. I have applied it to a rule for ministry. We should spend 80% of our time doing what God gifted us to do, what we have a passion to do, and is compatible with our temperament. What about the 20%? In any position, whether business or Christian ministry, we will typically have to do certain tasks that are outside our gifting and temperament plus ones we don’t enjoy. That’s just a fact of life. The problem arises when we reverse this and we spend 80% of time outside of what God made us and only 20% ministering within our gifting, temperament, and what we have a passion for.
In 2011, I wrote a SW about my Dad’s strange wrench, which ended up in my tool box. I never used it and didn’t even know what its purpose was. Years later Dad was at my house and needed a screwdriver. While digging around in the toolbox, I saw the strange wrench and told him I never figured out a use for it. He began laughing and shared why. “I made that wrench for changing the brakes on my 1948 Studebaker car.” No wonder I had never used it. But this wrench became an excellent teaching tool and a valuable lesson to me. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works (Eph 2:10). When I finally grasp the meaning of this verse along with several others, I realized God had made me His tool for a specific ministry and that no one else could fulfill that role. Trying to minister outside of being the workmanship He created and in the wrong role, only results in inefficiency and an unfulfilled life. It is like trying to hammer a nail with Dad’s strange wrench.
Through years of study and experience, I understand that God wants us to serve in a gift based, passion driven, and temperament compatible ministry in which we spend 80% of our time and energy doing what He designed us to do. God never makes a mistake when He creates our inmost being (Psalms 139:13). Yes, sin distorted us, but believers are a new creation and the Holy Spirit restores who He designed us to be.
That’s my story and today I fully enjoy my ministry using my gifts and working within my temperament—so can you.
Sustaining Word for the Week: You are God’s workmanship, woven together in your mother’s womb, given certain gifts, made with a particular temperament to passionately fulfill your role in the Kingdom of God.