Patience in Ministry

Zack Eswine:

Most of us have trained for pastoral ministry as if the “game speed” of the pastorate requires a quantity of results all at once. We’ve learned languages in thirteen weeks, skimmed books in thirteen minutes and mastered divinity in six semester bursts of adrenaline, reddened eyes, missed time with wife and kids and breath that both smells and depends upon coffee or mountain dew. Many of us also find ourselves in organizational ministry structures that likewise measure our daily ministry output on this same value of doing the most amount of work in the least amount of time for the biggest amount of influence.

We are prepared for a “game speed” that values results large and fast only to find that most days require our patience and our ongoing presence among unfinished people whom we can neither fix lightly nor heal quickly.