I Hate Plumbing!!!!
Does that make me guilty of murder in my heart, because we know that hatred is the same thing as murder. If so I guess that I am comfortable in my sin. You see I really hate plumbing, or rather I really hate working on plumbing. You might be interested enough to keep reading this article to see how spiritual content comes out of it when it is about something so mundane as plumbing, but ultimately it will work out that way. You see the problems for me with plumbing are many and varied. First, and probably the biggest, is the fact that I am not a small guy. I am over six feet tall and I weigh a comfortable 250 lbs. Most plumbing jobs force me to get into holes my nine year old daughter can't fit into, which in turn hurt me and make me want to scream. Secondly sometimes plumbing is just nasty business with the stuff you have to mess with. There are some pretty foul things involved with a lot of plumbing jobs. What is precipitating all of this? Well mostly it is the fact that yesterday out of a true labor of love I went over and helped my dad put in a new garbage disposal and faucet. Needless to say plumbing is fresh on my mind, but it goes deeper than this.
This past Sunday evening at church I was teaching the second lesson on church planting. We had talked about identifying our target audience the week before and we were discussing that night our main event each week and how we would use other outreach avenues to ultimately funnel folks into the main event and into the life of the church. We had a lot of awesome ideas from everyone and ultimately we shaved down the list to a manageable size by identifying people who might have a heart for certain things on the list. Now it's time to pray!
As we pray I have asked each person to pray about calling to that ministry. You see the thing is ministry is like plumbing sometimes. I can do plumbing, and I can do it well enough that it works, but I hate doing plumbing and if I had to do it long term I would eventually become very frustrated and want to quit. However there are guys out there that love to do plumbing, which makes no sense to me, but when they are using those tools and crawling in those tight spots they really feel at home. It is like a calling on their lives, and sure they have bad days and frustrations, but the love they have and calling they feel to be plumbers keeps them coming back even when it is nasty. It is the same way with our outreach ministries. There are a lot of great ideas and initially we have identified possible leaders for some of them and now those leaders are praying about if God has called them to this. For me an after school children's ministry might be like plumbing. I love the kids, I see the need, but I just don't feel called to that ministry. I could do it short term, and not burn out but over the long haul I would eventually crash and burn. The places it wants to take me are tight and hard for me. But for others they might love it and feel called to it. And that calling from God is what will get them through it when it gets really hard. Calling is critical - what are you called to?
This past Sunday evening at church I was teaching the second lesson on church planting. We had talked about identifying our target audience the week before and we were discussing that night our main event each week and how we would use other outreach avenues to ultimately funnel folks into the main event and into the life of the church. We had a lot of awesome ideas from everyone and ultimately we shaved down the list to a manageable size by identifying people who might have a heart for certain things on the list. Now it's time to pray!
As we pray I have asked each person to pray about calling to that ministry. You see the thing is ministry is like plumbing sometimes. I can do plumbing, and I can do it well enough that it works, but I hate doing plumbing and if I had to do it long term I would eventually become very frustrated and want to quit. However there are guys out there that love to do plumbing, which makes no sense to me, but when they are using those tools and crawling in those tight spots they really feel at home. It is like a calling on their lives, and sure they have bad days and frustrations, but the love they have and calling they feel to be plumbers keeps them coming back even when it is nasty. It is the same way with our outreach ministries. There are a lot of great ideas and initially we have identified possible leaders for some of them and now those leaders are praying about if God has called them to this. For me an after school children's ministry might be like plumbing. I love the kids, I see the need, but I just don't feel called to that ministry. I could do it short term, and not burn out but over the long haul I would eventually crash and burn. The places it wants to take me are tight and hard for me. But for others they might love it and feel called to it. And that calling from God is what will get them through it when it gets really hard. Calling is critical - what are you called to?
posted by Pastor Jerry at
10:10 AM
1 Comments:
Great Post Jer! Calling is critical. The worst thing ever would be to serve in a sewer that I wasn't called too. I am called to this sewer - and it sometimes is smelly and messy - but it's where I am called and couldn't serve anywhere else.
I am with you on plumbing too. I despise it. Not only because if the mess and the smell (I remember having to vacuum gallons of wastewater out from underneath my house because of a broken pipe. I am going to have nightmares now thinking about that again), but because it also required 15 trips to Home Depot because I could never manage to buy the right parts!
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