How do you know if a ministry is right for you?

How do you know if a potential ministry opportunity is the right one for you?  As a church pastor, this is a question we need to ask ourselves on a regular basis.  There are plenty of opportunities out there, far more than we have the resources of time, energy, or money to be a part of, so how do we know if the latest idea is one that will really make a difference for the kingdom of God?  The usual answers about talent and passion can be useful guides, after all, few pastors are likely to be much good at trying to be someone they aren’t by tackling a problem where talent is lacking, and most pastors will find it hard to stick with a ministry that doesn’t speak to the passion that drove them to choose to serve the Lord in the first place.  Instead of looking at this from a philosophical or practical viewpoint, let me relate to you the story of how I came to be involved in the para-church ministry that now occupies a great deal of my ministry effort.

            In 2012 I was new to Franklin, Pennsylvania.  I had just moved her in January with my wife, Nicole, from Michigan where I had been a part-time pastor of a small rural church and a part-time alternative education teacher.  The First Baptist Church of Franklin is an established church with a rich history and a beautiful building.  The numbers at First Baptist had dwindled in recent years, but the passion of the people for serving God was still evident to me when I came here to candidate.  When I accepted the job I knew it would be a long-term process of turning things around, but I also knew I would have the support of the congregation to do it.

            In the spring of 2012 I was invited to attend a meeting of the Children’s Roundtable of Venango County, a group consisting of local government officials, civic leaders, and local pastors, by another pastor who was unable to attend this particular meeting.  Not knowing what the focus of this particular group was, other than guessing that it had something to do with Children’s issues, I attended the meeting.  The first meeting was informational for me, learning about some of the local poverty related issues that affect children, but didn’t point toward any particular involvement on my part.  When I attended a second meeting everything changed.

            At the second meeting of the Children’s Roundtable, it was clear that these local government officials and civic leaders were looking to the local churches as a potential source of manpower to help alleviate some of the previously identified problems.  At this meeting, the local CYS solicitor, a good man who I now count as a friend, asked me to speak on behalf of the churches of our county and represent them.  Now keep in mind, I was the junior member of anybody’s ministerium list, still trying to figure out my role in this community, and certainly not anyone with any particular authority to speak for others.  But I was there, and I went with it.

            During the next several months, I became more and more involved in the process of talking about what needs the local churches might be able to help address, and how they would go about doing it.  What started out as a wholly unexpected request to speak on behalf of my fellow pastors, soon saw me become the default leader of the church response and the host of the eventual meeting to share this proposed local government and church cooperative effort.

            When that meeting of about sixty interested people happened, we were covering ground that I had never imagined would be a part of my ministry here at First Baptist.  I do have a history of ecumenical efforts, and this church has its own history of participating in the local food pantry and benevolent fund, but where this was going was far beyond anything that either I or they had attempted before.  The basic premise of the idea that was then forming was to build a partnership between the Human Services Department of Venango County {It had begun as a CYS effort, but quickly grew to include Aging, Mental Health, and all the rest} who would provide the information of their clients who needed help beyond what they could give, and local churches of all denominations throughout our whole county.

            In November of 2012 I led a second meeting to formulate our initial action plan, hoping to find a core group of people from several churches willing to be on a committee to get this lofty idea off the ground.  Once again, I ended up with more than I bargained for.  We did find our core leadership group that night, many of whom are still vital to our organization’s efforts, but we also found something fairly daunting: our first referral.  One of the caseworkers in attendance brought the file of her client who was in need of help, and after getting her permission to share that information, she told us about the significant repairs that this home needed before winter set in.  Before we had a name, before we had an official leadership, we had work to do, and that is what we did.  We helped someone when we were just trying to figure out who we were.  From that day onward, the referrals started to flow in, first slowly, then a trickle, eventually a flood we can barely keep our heads above.

            We eventually settled on the name of, Mustard Seed Missions of Venango County.  It wasn’t a ministry that I went in search of.  The way that it functions today has a lot of my input on it, but the primary idea of government/church cooperation belonged to somebody else.  I had never been much of an administrator, and my teaching days certainly didn’t develop a love of paperwork in me, but when it came time to choose our first president, all eyes were looking at my end of the table.

  Why did I do it, why take on this significant daily burden when I already had a church that needed me?  One reason is that I felt liberated as a full-time pastor from my years of juggling two jobs and I really wanted to make a difference in this community.  A second reason is that I had this strong feeling as the idea began to be formed early in 2012 that it wouldn’t get off the ground if one of the local pastors didn’t adopt it as his own.  Lastly, I just couldn’t say no when I was asked if the churches of our county would be willing to help the poor, if we can’t say yes to that question, what can we say yes to?

How do you know if a ministry is the right one for you?  I’m not sure I have any profound answer to that question from my own experience, but I sure knew that I had found my answer when I agreed to be a part of our para-church, non-denominational, government/church cooperative effort to help the poor in the name of Christ.