Yesterday I attended our fall Minister's Council retreat with Tony Campolo as the featured speaker. I regularly listen to his podcasts and have now heard him in person twice. As always, Tony was entertaining, challenging, direct, and controversial. There were times when I found myself in complete agreement with what he was saying and thankful that he was bold enough to make such statements. At other times I wasn't sure I agreed with him but needed a little more time to process his words, and there were times when I completely disagreed with him.
One of the things I appreciated most about his presentation yesterday was his response to the question about how to address the discouragement so many Christian leaders feel today. Very quickly, he told several stories of amazing things that occurred because of faithful ministry in smaller churches. (One thing about Tony is he does have a LOT of interesting stories!) He talked about a church that closed its doors because of a declining membership. He noted that in one of the final entries in the church records it stated the number of church members who had left the church and that only three had joined that year, and it concluded that those three were only children. It turned out that one of those three later became President of a seminary, the second became an important denominational leader, and the third one was Tony Campolo. Those three children the church clerk seemed to not consider very important grew up to become significant leaders in their denominations.
He told another story of how a news story about a pastor in a small, poor church related to his church and the impact that story made on a child of the news reporter who brought the story. The point he made in these, and other stories, is that we should not be discouraged because we do not know the impact our ministries is having on people. Sometimes it does seem that nothing we are doing makes any difference to anyone, but we really do not know the impact our ministries may be having on people. The fact is that we may never know, but that's OK. God knows. We are called to be faithful where he has called us and leave the results to God. A chance comment, a loving act that we do and quickly forget about, a story we might tell in a sermon can all be used by God to touch a person in a life-changing way years after the fact.
It is so easy to become discouraged when leading a small church. We are always aware of the resources we don't have and the things we can't do. It can seem that we are forever stuck and unable to move forward. We work hard to prepare a message we believe will change people's lives only to have the smallest attendance of the year on the Sunday we deliver that message. After weeks of planning a youth event only two young people show up. We marry couples only to see them always leave our church to attend the one the person they married attended. As many of you know, I pastored the same small church for twenty years, and I encountered all of these more than once. I know how discouraging it can be.
But, Tony was right. If we are serving where God has called us to serve we do not need to become discouraged. If we will be faithful God will be faithful. He will use our efforts to help change people's lives.
One of the things I tried to do when I found discouragement trying to overwhelm me is to begin to thank God again for entrusting this ministry to me. Out of the millions of people he could have called to serve that church, he called me. He knew me before he ever called me. He knew my weaknesses and the many times I would fail him, but he called me to that work anyway. I always found that genuine gratitude for the ministry he gave me helped me fight any discouragement that came my way. I think you will, too.
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