Inadequacy versus gospel

Hey.

So, I've got half a dozen half finished posts on my life and how things have been for the last five months.

They mostly relate to the challenge I've had of finding work, of living on the smell of an oily rag, and on the challenge to be content with all of this, and to trust God in the middle of it.

It's been a hard road, and I'm not expecting it to get easier anytime soon, but I'm learning a lot from it, and I guess that's a good thing. So I'm going to keep on going, while nutting through more big questions than I've ever had to deal with in my life before.

I mean, there's only, like, two or three of them, but that's a 300% increase on big questions I'm wrestling with seriously, so it's keeping me sharp.

This blog post is about one of those questions.

See, one of the challenges I'm having with my life at the moment is, do I consider full-time ministry?

And I've got this big mental list of reasons for and against - it's a list of concerns and hopes and all it has really done is put more questions into my head.

I mean,

I'm concerned that I'm not at the perceived standard I need to be at to consider full-time ministry. I struggle with reading my bible every day. I think the last time I tried to have a gospel conversation with someone was about a year ago. I don't have a whole lot of non-Christian friends, or at least, not a lot that I have regular face-to-face contact with. It's difficult to have a conversation about Jesus and then invite said person to church when they live in Sydney, or on the other side of the world. I'm scared to share the gospel, despite the fact that I know enough to do so. I do what I can with ministry already, but can see my limits in what I have time to do, and the level of responsibility I can handle/am given reflects where I am, which doesn't feel like 'ready to take on an apprenticeship position at church'.

I'm concerned that I'd let the perceived status of the position go to my head. That the childlike equation of 'Church worker therefore competent/zealous/'perfect' Christian' would stay fixed, and I wouldn't be able to dispel it. I'd have to face off against the inside of my head and the challenge of making my relationship with God faith-based and not works-based - which has been a constant challenge in my life, and probably one of the marks of inheritance I received from the denomination my parents used to serve in.

I'm concerned that I'm thinking about full-time ministry because I can't expect to find work anywhere else, and would be hoping to find work in the church, but at the same time, be helping in the small ways that go unnoticed and don't require me to wander too far from my shell. I mean, everyone needs a supply runner, right? I can do admin stuff and not have to be called to task; be called to the hardest and pointiest parts of Gospel work.

These among others are my concerns. They're buds, small things that I can see as problems in my life that could interfere with Gospel work, if left unchecked.

It's a big list of what-ifs and maybes and potential negatives, and I don't really have a list equal in size to balance it. I do have these thoughts though.

When I was doing WAVE this year; when I was part of FORGE last year, I felt the purpose and the urgency of the gospel. I was part of something bigger, and we moved with purpose, and learned with purpose, and I could tell, that if there was something worthwhile in my life that I could do - really, actually worthwhile, then perhaps Ministry would be it.

I felt that if I threw my life at the gospel, then maybe it would be worthwhile. I was finishing my uni degree, realising that it was coming to an end and that once it was finished, I would be unleashed on a world that really didn't give two squats about my work or my life. None of it would really change the world. None of what I could make with my own hands would exist after I was gone, if that.

But what of ministry? What if I could do something that would have an impact beyond the here and now?

It's always been a challenge looking at things and holding eternity next to them, but I didn't have the same sense of uselessness looking at this in that way.

What does that lead me to now?

I'm still thinking through things. I'm quiet, so it's difficult to talk about something this big to any one person, particularly, as you can see, because the concepts I'm dealing with are half-formed; unfinished. I'm dealing with a lot of maybe and not much solid-state stuff. I don't trust my heart, or at least, I'm very cautious about chasing after a perceived notion.

I'm aware that doing an apprenticeship in church ministry would break me from the inside out. I'm aware that it would cause me to feel a lot of pain, and a lot of joy, and a lot of gospel.

But I think I'm prepared for that notion. To have the fairy-tale and the 'oh, they're an MTS-er, they have their Christian walk all together' blown wide open. I don't know if I'm capable of it though. I don't know if anyone would want me for the task.

(That's not passive-aggressive or anything, by the way. I'm genuinely looking at my faults and knowing them, concerned that I'm vastly inadequate for the task and wondering if I should try now or build up some more skills and try later.)

I know that we grow to the tank we're in, and that while I'm inadequate now, I'm hoping that maybe that would change if I went down this path. Maybe I would grow to what was required, if I was willing. Anyway.

It seems hypocritical to say 'I can't talk to any one person about this' and then blog it, but I think it's easier to blog thoughts. I'm taking you through a narrative, where we start with one set of thoughts, and then go through a process, and then end up at a conclusive point. I'm taking you through the inside of my head, on a well-worn path, pointing out the things that are problems and then devoting half a breath to why I'm still thinking though it.

Because in spite of my fears and concerns, I really can't think of anything more worthwhile to do with my life than to throw it at the gospel. That might be in ministry, or it might be in something else. I'm just trying to work that out at the moment.

It's not "I can't think of anything better, so I may as well do ministry", it's "I can't think of anything objectively better to do with my life than ministry". I know they read similar, but understand that there's tone required to make the difference between the two, and writing in text can't convey that.

I don't have a lot, but I want Jesus to do something with it.

The story of my Teapot (Epiphany #2)

Honest to goodness, readers, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I just keep remembering to do things and be places and there's half a dozen post drafts on the backburner. But I'll leave excuses for later. This one was a good idea and I'm hoping that I have at least some photos of what I want to talk about on my hard drive, because I don't have a working digital camera.

Ack! Okay. No more excuses.

<composure>

Shortly before I went to the UK (late 2010), Mum and Dad went to a garage sale down the road from our house. There, they found a barbeque that can cook a mean steak, a pair of shoes that I subsequently wore everywhere when I went overseas, and came back and told me about this teapot that Mum had seen.

The next day was Sunday (I think.). The folks were still selling the contents of the garage, so I headed over, and found the teapot also.

Funny thing is, I said exactly the same thing about the teapot that Mum did when she found it.

"It looks like Aladdin's lamp,"

And then we both on the separate occasions, gave it a little rub. It was a tad banged-up, and was in sore need of polishing, but for whatever reasons, we decided to get it. The people whose garage sale we were at told us it had belonged to someone's aunt, and had been in the garage for about ten years.
Or something along those lines. I checked inside for a genie in any case.

Ten bucks later, it came home.

I cannot remember when I started polishing the thing; it must have been before I left in any case. Initially the thing was a brassy colour. I had no idea what it was made from or any kind of information that could tell me what was going on with the teapot. And then I started polishing it. And slowly, over the space of hours at a time, with dehydrated hands and punished fingers, I found a colour and a stamp.

The bottom of the teapot had a stamp on it, partially worn away.

"Saunde s
Sydney
.P.N.S.    AJ
ARD SOLDERED
18"



We plugged the little information into a search engine, curioused by the stamp.

To this day, I'm still not sure on the whole story of the teapot. But I can tell you that it's silver-plated nickel, made by a company called 'Saunders and Sons' and has a similar shape to silverware made in the 30s.

None of this was known to us, or, I suspect, to the previous owners of the teapot. The Aunt, maybe, but I don't think she was around anymore.

Where does this lead to?

I'm still polishing the teapot. A while back I found a sugar bowl with a similar style crafting in an opshop, and added it to the party. The sugar bowl is a lot closer to the bright silver, while the teapot has an odd yellowish tinge. I'm not sure if that's because I still haven't got all the gunk off or what, but it does mean that I keep polishing it.

And that's the thing.

I'm not the kind of person who's used to doing a project little bit by little bit. Having a side project that I come back to every so often and give a little bit more elbow grease to. But I've enjoyed it.
I started out with this thing that had little value, and then I was informed of something closer to its actual value, and making it look better is still a work in progress.

Because that's the other funny thing about the silver. It tarnishes over time. I can leave the teapot to mind its own business for a while, but if I leave it for a few months, it gets less and less shiny and reverts back to the look it had when we picked it up in the first place.

The teapot reminds me to keep working on things. A little bit at a time, and to try and keep moving forward with the project the whole time. That things need this kind of mentality, and it's a good mentality to have, alongside my crazy habit of churning out a cosplay in a week with no sleep.

To quietly work on a little project that makes things brighter. My teapot isn't going to change the world, but it makes me happy because it's really old and still functions really well. I mean, sure, it's made out of metal, so when you fill it with hot water it can burn you when you pick it up, but the pour on it is good and it holds enough liquid. It was made in a time when things were designed to last, not break-so-you-have-to-buy-a-new-one.

And I like the mentality of my teapot.

That's why, if and when I ever end up with a small and impressionable child related to me that needs a good life lesson, I'm going to do this. Take them to an op shop, find them some scrappy-looking silverware, and sit them down with a rag and some silvo and say something like this:

"See this (object)? It's yours. Look after it. It doesn't look like much, but if you give it a little time and a little energy, you can make it much, much brighter than it is now. And when it's bright, you can be happy that it looks so nice. If you make it bright once and leave it, though, it won't stay that way. It'll get dull and look like it does now and nobody will want it. But if you look after it, people will see your shiny (object) and know that you're the kind of person that wants things to be better than they are; than how they look now. We're not big enough to change the whole world, but if you can change this (object) for the better, you'll remember that the little differences count too."

After which the small child will probably be bored and ask to borrow the smartphone I don't have to play jetpack or something.

I mean, I could probably give them a plant too, but shiny things...they're just so...shiny.

And little differences do count. They're a little easier to accomplish than the big ones, and I think, that if you get enough little differences together, they can equal something greater than the sum of the parts.

That's probably enough yammering for now.

P.S.
I still haven't found the genie. Beginning to suspect that if there was one that lived in the teapot, he vacated the premises a long time ago. Or he's still lying low.

P.P.S.
No photos of teapot. Sorry. I think they're back at my folks' house. The photos. Not the teapot.