I want to commend an article to you I ran across recently.  It is in the newsletter for Doxology, and is entitled A New Beginning.  Please check it out. Here’s one of the opening paragraphs:

There is a bit of a buzz surrounding the season, we all detect it. Several pastors told me, “Here we go again.” One man reflected with a sigh of resignation, “Sometimes I wonder if I’m just doing the exact same thing for the 14th time in my life.” Another pastor with a large elementary school observed, “Take a deep breath; here it comes.”

This is me.  Well, not literally, but you get the point.  I am inundated with the fall.  School, Sunday School, Bible Class, Adult Instruction (Catechesis, whateveryouwanttocallitthisyear), it all starts in the span of about two weeks.  GOOD GRIEF!  Haven’t we ever heard of pacing, people?

This year, though, overshadowing all of it, is that basic question: is anybody listening? I feel like I am doing the same thing year after year after year, and that nobody is listening.  The excitement, the interest is gone.  I’m not the new pastor with the great ideas to save the Church.  I’m the pastor who has been around here for a while.  I’m predictable.  People know my strengths and weakensses.  They know what to expect.  There is nothing new under the sun.  I think that’s in the Bible somewhere.

So how am I to move forward?

As of this moment, I don’t know.

So my answer for now is, focus on the doing and less on the gradiose strategizing and theories and plans.  I don’t know where this will go, but there can be some satisfaction in worker harder to do a good job, regardless of the measurable outcomes.  St. Paul put it this way:

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
(Galatians 6:9-10 ESV)

Have a blessed day in Christ.

-DMR