What Does a Christian Look Like?

At church we just wrapped up a series on faith in the workplace. It was really interesting, and above all else, we came up with the realization that how one can only define the expression of one's faith at work. There is no cookie cutter all encompassing model for how faith can be exemplified in all work situations, mainly because one's workplace is so unique. It was exciting for me as a pastor to hear the others at church brainstorm how their understandings of being Christian in the workplace. This past week we even had guest speakers come in and share about living out their faith in their chosen field of modeling and entertainment! I think it does a lot to empower people when they have the freedom to discover this themselves, rather than having their behavior mandated onto them... often by someone who has little or no understanding of what its like to have their job/ work at their workplace.

With that being said, I've been thinking a lot about what qualities are/ should be distinctives for people in ministry. The one that I keep coming back to is humility.

Honestly, it may have been because I was so humbled from my recent mission trip to Oaxaca that I described in my last post. It was humbling being sick for the majority of the trip, humbling with the realization that even my health and well being was not up to me. My health is really in God's hands. The ability to communicate with the people we were ministering to/ with, er, more like the inability to communicate, was humbling for me as well. Not feeling well physically while not being able to communicate led me to a lot of introspection about how much of my ministry I felt was in my own hands, in my own control. In Nouwen's words, we in ministry are truly "wounded healers," broken vessels that God chooses to use to reconcile people to Him and introduce them to His Kingdom.

I don't know what it is about ministry, but it sure seems like humility is a quality rarely seen in the profession. And that's unfortunate. I don't know if its pride in having things seemingly figured out, to a competitiveness rooted in feeling the need to appear more successful than the church down the street, or maybe it is rooted in the misconception that we as ministers are "closer" to God or "speak" for God. The unfortunate thing about my last mission trip was that I even noticed in amongst the pastors in Mexico. It may even be more difficult to work together as churches in Mexico than in the States; and we know how hard it is in the States. One of the experiences that stuck out in my mind was when we were building a house for this woman who was getting evicted from her house. As we were taking a break for lunch and driving to the house where we were to eat, we drove past the Baptist pastor whose "territory" the house laid in. The pastor would not even acknowledge us; we were told later that he was not that pleased that we were invading his turf. BLECH.

But it was interesting, the same pastor who experienced that blatant lack of comraderie expresses the same sort of jealousy/ dysfunction regarding another ministry partner of Dave because of who knows what reasons. He would not even greet this other minister when he came to the house to drop off Dave and Chelle. SERIOUSLY???

I guess at the end of the day, I can only be responsible for myself. It was funny, after coming back from Mexico I was back on my usual schedule where on Tuesdays I volunteer at an afterschool program for kids on Skid Row. I was cleaning the bathrooms (which is the best way to assist the staff there with the multitude of responsibilties they have), and another volunteer commented on how humbling it must be. And it was funny, the entire time I was cleaning, I felt humbled because I knew that I wasn't even good at cleaning the bathrooms! (It's true, there's no way I could clean bathrooms and get paid. I'm sure they only tolerate my shoddy job because I'm volunteering to do it).

To close on a sad note, even though humility is such an honorable and essential character trait I believe for people in ministry, I too rarely do a good job of exemplifying it myself. Let's hope that I get better at it over time, because I really have a long way to go to being a minister that I would respect, haha!