Ministry mulligans

As you'll see in the link I'm providing below, the title of this post has been borrowed.  As a golfer, I just couldn't think of a better way to frame the message in the post.  For some reason, during the past several months I've spent a lot of time thinking about things in my life I regret.  There have been wonderful opportunities I missed because I didn't see them at the time.  There have been decisions I've made that proved to be huge mistakes that continue to impact me and my family.  We are all confronted with numerous choices in our lives, and the choices we make will always come with consequences.  Sometimes that consequence is immediate; sometimes we're not aware of the consequences until years later.  If we're fortunate we have time to correct poor choices, but not always.  There comes a time in a person's life when one realizes that some doors will always be closed because there isn't time to change a choice we had previously made.  Incidently, sometimes we make the only choice we can due to the circumstances at the time.  Such decisions weren't wrong, they were the only decision we could make at the time, but the long-term impact of those decisions can cause regrets later in life.

It would be great to have a do-over or to get a mulligan, a second chance to make choices that would lead to better results.  Of course, there's no guarantee that we wouldn't make the wrong choices again or even that a different choice would produce better results than we got the first time.  More than once I've taken a mulligan on the golf course and hit a worse shot than the first one!

Still, I thought this article was quite appropriate.  It is an honest self-evaluation of a person who left pastoral ministry after two decades.  I can echo some of his regrets in my own ministry.  Both the article writer and I wish we could go back and get a mulligan in our pastoral ministries.  But, neither of us can.

I want to encourage my readers to read this article slowly and prayerfully.  If you find that you are making the same mistakes the writer made in his pastoral ministry begin to make changes in that area of your ministry now.  Don't blow it off or think that somehow it doesn't apply to you.  Too many ministers make the tragic mistake of thinking that they are somehow different and the rules don't apply to them.  If you make the same poor choices the writer made, you will eventually end up in the same place with a lot of regrets that your ministry, your relationships, and your life wasn't more balanced and healthier.

Here's the article.  http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2011/winter/ministrymulligans.html  After you read it, let me know what you think.