{"id":28,"date":"2012-04-18T13:38:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T13:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/?page_id=28"},"modified":"2018-09-27T13:48:46","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T13:48:46","slug":"juggling-with-chickens","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/?page_id=28","title":{"rendered":"Juggling with Chickens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the first chapter of a book “Juggling with Chickens – Reflections on Pastoral Ministry Today”,<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

A variation of this article was published by Baptist Times in 2010.<\/p>\n

\u00a0How many live chickens do you think a\u00a0talented juggler could keep in the air at one time? I ask because it seems to me\u00a0that being a Christian minister, a Vicar or Pastor, is remarkably like juggling\u00a0with live chickens. When I say \u201clive chickens\u201d, I am NOT thinking about Deacons\u00a0or church members, however much clucking and flapping and squawking they may\u00a0do! I\u2019m thinking about all the different responsibilities Ministers have to
\njuggle with. Preaching. Teaching. Visiting. Counselling. Worship. Weddings.\u00a0Funerals. Giving a lead. Steering the ship. Evangelism. Training. Enabling.\u00a0Administration. Union. Association. Ecumenical activities. Prayer. Study. Wife.\u00a0Family. Friends. All of these demanding and deserving our time and energy, but\u00a0each as slippery and hard to juggle as a live chicken.<\/span><\/p>\n

The great Doctor Martyn Lloyd Jones once said, \u201cA man should\u00a0only enter the Christian ministry if he cannot stay out of it.\u201d And he was\u00a0right! Gone are the days when the calling was to be simply a \u201cMinister of Word\u00a0and Sacrament,\u201d days when a pattern of study in the morning, visiting in the\u00a0afternoon and meetings in the evening would be a sufficient description of the\u00a0minister’s activities. The Post-Modern, Post-Christendom world God calls us to\u00a0reach demands new patterns of Christian ministry.<\/p>\n

Paul Goodliff (Head of the Ministry Department of the\u00a0Baptist Union of Great Britain) wrote in Care in a confused climate <\/i>that\u00a0the role of minister should not be that of chaplain but of spiritual director,\u00a0guiding people on their spiritual journey and equipping people for service. The\u00a0focus should not be on healing but on growth, not on firefighting but on\u00a0discipling. So the minister must be herald, servant, priest, parish theologian,\u00a0educator, evangelist and peacemaker.<\/p>\n

So in the area of Pastoral Care alone, the\u00a0minister has many responsibilities: Building a caring Christian community;\u00a0Creating healthy relationships; Healing wounded souls; Praying for people and\u00a0with people; Welcoming and integrating newcomers and new Christians; Encouraging\u00a0the struggling and wandering as well as Special ministry situations e.g.\u00a0deliverance ministry. Beyond caring there is the challenge proactively to build\u00a0disciples: Nurturing and sustaining faith; Guiding folk on their spiritual\u00a0journey; Identifying and releasing gifts and ministries; Training and equipping for service and witness.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there are so many other aspects of\u00a0ministry as well. <\/span>A recent exercise in appraisal asks the minister to\u00a0rank in order from best to worst how gifted he or she is in fourteen key skills:\u00a0Preaching; Working ecumenically; Information Technology skills; Training others;\u00a0Written communication; Research; Evangelism; Church planting; Developing plans\u00a0and policies; Working alone; Leading a team; Working as a team member; Pastoral\u00a0care; Mediation. And all of this must be worked out in the brave new world of\u00a0charity law, health and safety legislation, child protection and equality\u00a0regulations. So many and varied skills required, so many different and demanding\u00a0activities expected, and always the challenge not to be doing our own works but\u00a0the works of our Father in Heaven, doing God\u2019s work, in God\u2019s way, for His sole\u00a0glory. \u201c<\/span><\/sup>Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything\u00a0for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.\u201d (2 Corinthians 3:5)<\/i> There\u00a0are no other jobs where skills, training and experience count for so little andcharacter counts for everything. Robert Murray McCheyne wrote to a new minister:\u00a0\u201cIn great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument,will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great\u00a0likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God\u201d<\/p>\n

When juggling all these different chickens there are three\u00a0pressures upon ministers which most folk do not face. There is the pressure of\u00a0being permanently on call. The doorbell may sound at any time and you have to be\u00a0ready to respond. Nowadays the phone may ring and the minister is expected to\u00a0answer \u201cany time, any place, anywhere,\u201d even on holiday abroad. With the\u00a0never-ending demands of pastoral responsibility, in order to stay sane ministers\u00a0(and their churches) need to learn to accept the fact that when they have doneeverything they were meant to do in a day or a week, there will still be things\u00a0that haven\u2019t got done. Sometimes a minister can add some of those things to thepile of tasks to do tomorrow. Sometimes some things will never get done. Sometimes there will be the predictable complaints about the things which\u00a0haven\u2019t been done. The challenge is to be able to go sleep at night, or spend\u00a0time with the family, or just unwind doing something you enjoy, without feeling\u00a0guilty that you aren\u2019t doing work. The challenge is to be able to put aside some\u00a0of those important things that will consequently never get done and to take time\u00a0for yourself without feeling selfish! Without feeling that you are failing other\u00a0people, failing the church, failing God! To leave all the chickens hanging in\u00a0the air for a while without worrying that they are all about to crash down on\u00a0your head.<\/p>\n

The second pressure is the requirement always to be right.\u00a0Never to make a mistake, because if you say something wrong or do something\u00a0wrong the results could be eternally disastrous. Doctors and nurses face a\u00a0similar pressure. Fire-fighters and soldiers in battle face similar pressures.\u00a0Most jobs don\u2019t! But for a minister, if you give wrong pastoral advice you can\u00a0wreck somebody\u2019s life. Wrong ethical advice and you lead somebody to sin! Choose\u00a0the wrong way forward for the church and the church will lose out! Preach a poor\u00a0sermon, or lead worship badly, and the faith of many people will be diminished.\u00a0Mess up in a major way just the once and you lose your job, and your friends,\u00a0and your home, and your family. And more important than all those things \u2013 you\u00a0bring shame on the church and on the Lord you serve!<\/p>\n

The third pressure comes from the truth that\u00a0even when a minister (or a church, or any Christian) does makes all the right\u00a0choices and does do all the right things, \u201csuccess\u201d however one seeks to define\u00a0it is not guaranteed. Sometimes things do go wrong because we mess up, and\u00a0sometimes things do succeed when we do the right thing. But we must never assume\u00a0that when things do not turn out right it is because we have done something\u00a0wrong. That is \u201cthe fallacy of the excluded middle.\u201d The reality is that things\u00a0can and do go less than perfectly even when we do everything right, sometimes\u00a0because of satanic opposition, sometimes because we live in a fallen world,\u00a0sometimes because the church is made up of fallible human beings, but mostly\u00a0because we follow the Servant King whose victory and glory came through\u00a0submission and suffering and sacrifice and powerlessness. When it comes to\u00a0juggling with chickens, relying on levels of success as a measure of whether we\u00a0are doing the right thing or not is inevitably a recipe for discouragement, depression and disaster!<\/span><\/p>\n

Juggling with chickens: the need to resist\u00a0the tyranny of the urgent, to make sure the important things are not squeezed\u00a0out by the immediate. And at the same time, to expect the unexpected, to make\u00a0sure there is spare capacity for the crises and surprises which are at the heart\u00a0of pastoral ministry. <\/span><\/p>\n

Our family once spent a very happy hour\u00a0watching one of the street entertainers in Covent Garden. He juggled with balls\u00a0and skittles, and then climbed up on a unicycle and cycled around six feet above\u00a0the ground. Then he asked for a volunteer from the audience and to our delight\u00a0he chose our eldest daughter to help with the act. While he cycled juggling two\u00a0skittles, her job was to throw a third skittle up to him. Since she was only\u00a0eight her aim was not very good and unfortunately the juggler dropped the\u00a0skittle once and then fell off his unicycle trying to catch it the second time.\u00a0On the third attempt was successful and he carried on juggling all three\u00a0skittles to wild applause while still unicycling around the stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hardest part of the minister’s juggling act is not\u00a0keeping all his or her different responsibilities in the air at once. Just when\u00a0you feel you are almost succeeding, there are all the balls and skittles and\u00a0flaming torches and live chickens that other people throw your way at the most\u00a0awkward times. “Say Pastor, give me a hand will you. I just can’t cope with this\u00a0ostrich any more. Catch!” And all the time, of course, you have to keep on smiling,<\/p>\n

FURTHER CHAPTERS OF “JUGGLING WITH CHICKENS”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In due course the book will be expanded, and maybe even appear in print. Some of the other chapters will be based on these sermons which are on my blog.<\/p>\n

Remember your leaders Hebrews 13:7 and 17\u00a0 \u00a0http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=345<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lord is their inheritance – Deuteronomy 18\u00a0 \u00a0http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=419<\/a><\/p>\n

Bride of Christ or Bride of Frankenstein – 1 Corinthians 12\u00a0http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=317<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first chapter of a book “Juggling with Chickens – Reflections on Pastoral Ministry Today”, A variation of this article was published by…<\/span><\/p>\n

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