A favorite part of ministry was...

"Don't you miss ministry?"

One of those questions that comes up occasionally.  

There are aspects of "ministry" I missed at first and then I realized that I didn't have to or need to "miss them" since I don't have to work at/with a church to do them.

And then I realized how misguided the language of the question is - at least in my mind - at this newer point in my life.

IF I'm "following scripture" then ministry has nothing to do with a job, it's what you do with life. It's not a person with a certain college degree or title, it's someone who uses their interests and gifts to help others.

Most of my life, I've been the beneficiary of people who have helped me and my family - connecting us to information, relationships, resources, etc - when we were in need, relative to the world around us.

At some point in my early years, I realized this was what was going on and paid attention. I could see how "the system" required someone to guide you to it and through it and that. regardless of where you came from in life, everyone needed help with it.

It was at least one of the things that drew me toward working with full time church ministry early in life.

Me and mine were significantly helped by others and I wanted to "give back", knowing how important it was and is for those whose life would suffer greatly without help.

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When you get training for ministry, depending on your tribe, it's like any other job - what you learn "in school" is just the beginning - you essentially have no idea about anything until you start to work.

No one cares about your Greek language class and how you can translate an ancient, dead version of a language into the current language. 

Even fewer care about your "interesting insights" into the Bible that you've picked up in a couple of decades since you hatched.

Plenty of people are encouraging and will "ooh and awe" over your freshman efforts of teaching, leading, etc. 

You find out later they had pretty low expectations and even later that they have the same response to anyone and everyone who "gets up to do something" in front of a crowd - even if they suck at what they're doing.

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There are a lot of "wake up moments" in church work, just like any job.

Personalities vary greatly and you learn whose backside you're supposed to kiss more so you get what you want done more quickly.

You discover that the social rules that applied in high school still apply for many church groups, large and small.  People are still categorized and treated according to age, appearance, interests, etc.

We did a lot of service projects that really were for PR, when all was said and done. 

Don't get me wrong, there are many who do good things for the sake of doing good things and it was and is always wonderful to see people with a serving heart, blowing through their own time and resources to benefit ofter people with zero expectation of a return of any kind. 

I learned that loud people get a lot of attention, at least at first. 

Cranky people get a lot of attention. 

People that others think have money get a lot of attention. 

People who are "good looking" get a lot of attention. 

I've nearly laughed out loud on many occasion when I watched people fawn over a "good looking person" - it's like their brain just shuts completely off.  It's amazing how many people get funding or support for something because of how the decision makers' heads were turned.  And vice versa, 100%.

People that are from your network of relationships or your college or your whatever group always get preference over any other group or people. I don't know how many times I heard people walk away from a church and say, "Well, they all went to Harding University (or insert any other Christian college name) and that's kind of the main thing with them. I didn't and don't have any desire to listen to a group rehash the good times they had with their 'social club', whatever that is."

I could go on with a long list of who gets attention and why, but you get the idea.

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What was often interesting to me early on was stacking up different variables and noticing how the different "attention getting variables" shaped a person's influence.

For example, if you have a loud, cranky, good looking person who had money and went to a certain Christian college, they could bowl over a room.

If you were popular in any sense of the word because of a stacking of personal variables, people would just stand back and let you run the room.

The fewer "winning" variables you had, the less influence you could have and typically you'd be written off as a crank or a needy person.

I'd like to say that changed over the years, but it didn't. Not at all.

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So, yeah - my favorite parts of ministry I'd say would be dominated by watching and working with people inside the system, ditto with those outside the system, and the interplay between the inside and outside.

It was/is a system where you have to learn the rules and know your limitations and your strengths. It's actually no different than any other job in many ways.

Over the years before and during college, I'd worked a number of different jobs with a lot of different dynamics.  After college, while still working with a church full time, I worked some side gigs, mainly teaching intro-to-sociology classes at a local university, and a few other things.  

Some of those "outside jobs" were "more Christian" than working in a church at times, depending on who you worked for or with.  So I learned a lot of different systems over time.

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Regardless of the system or job, I'd say that helping people was/would be my favorite part of what I've done - especially people who I perceived to be in the hole and who were subject to being used or abused because of where they came from in life and because of their lack of understanding or connections they had as the approached the situations I was observing.

The social outcast who didn't fit in.  

The outgoing person who appeared to have it all together but you could tell, if you were watching, was struggling with some deep issues or insecurities.  

The poor person who had no resources and were floating through life at the whims of the people around them.  

The advantaged person who had inherited a great deal but didn't care about stuff and was looking for purpose, love, and acceptance.  

The person whose personality, gender, or appearance made them different enough that they were automatically having to work harder than anyone else to fit in at a base level.  

The person whose background or dress made them look suspicious to "church people" - I was especially fond them them and extra prickly if a church person said something like, "We don't need people like that around here."  And "around here" meant "at church".

The addicts - whether it was alcohol or drugs or food or shopping or approval or porn or relationships or attention - anyone who was hooked on anything had a soft place in my heart.  

Just about the only addict I didn't have a soft place for was the one whose addiction was power or control.

I could go on with a list of people like that.  My heart always did and still does go out to the one who is outside.  

And I was always shocked at the number of people who were "inside" and yet outsiders.  It's way easier to be lonely in a crowd than people know sometimes.

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On the other side of the equation, I really enjoyed working with people who also liked to help other people.  And they came from all kinds of backgrounds.

When I say help other people, I mean people who would go out of their way to reach out to and serve, mentor, love, etc - those people who weren't naturally or normally in their relational path in life.

They never sought out any attention for it and would hide their "good work", but if you were paying attention, you'd see those people do amazing things - giving hope, guidance, etc - to those that no other person saw.  Those were amazing things to see.

They didn't look to turn their helping people into a structured ministry, they just did it. I think they saw or knew that when you turn that kind of help into a formal ministry, it becomes about something other than actually helping people and so they avoided that kind of thinking and acting like it was evil.  

And at least a couple of them were in positions where they could have done so, but they quietly and lovingly served behind the scenes, eschewing the spotlight, and making an enormous difference.

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I enjoyed helping people learn. Teaching was fun and I enjoyed putting together lessons, curriculum, plans, etc - but helping people learn was paramount.

I learned early on that not everyone learns the same way and that, if you're not an insider you're often left outside the loop because your vocabulary, experiences, etc don't allow you to hear or understand those who do a lot of "inside baseball" sharing with others who come from the same background.

To me, education can and should be the great equalizer, but it's not - at least in the way our educational systems work in public education, churches, etc - it's usually pretty jacked up.

One of my favorite things was/is to watch a collection of people from different backgrounds come to a more mutually understood place through conversation and/or discussions. 

Over time, I realized that the monologue was good for some purposes, but not many and not very often. We've made a profession out of speech givers and it's not served the church very well.

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So yeah, in some ways I miss "ministry" because I miss some people I don't/won't see anymore.  

But in other ways, ministry is and always will be around me like it is for anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear.

What's the old saying? "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, just like going to McDonald's doesn't make you a cheeseburger". 

"In the original Greek language" - see, nobody cares - ministry or minister comes from the idea of serving other people - that's the old, original word that we eventually turned into a churchy sounding job.

And I see places to serve all the time - in my own house, at the store, in traffic, with my neighbors, with strangers, on the internet, etc.

That's the heart of what God has done for us through Jesus.

He served us and set us free.

You can only give what you've received.  

And I have been served.

Grace and peace.