Musings on Spiritual Matters

Some of the best mentors I have had were the most caring and pastoring people.  Bobby Pinckley and Burnice Wesbrooks were some of the best ministers because of the great ability to care for people during the difficult times of life.  I was thinking about this yesterday because I was doing a funeral for the local police chief, and I was thinking about caring for people.  As a minister, you sometimes believe that being a good one is leading a great program or leading the church into the future or preaching great sermons, but this is the measure that preacher’s have.  Most members like a minister to walk with them during these difficult times.  The visit to the hospital is still important, the call to check in with a members is important, and the note to encourage is important.  I believe that the young people coming out of the schools see this sense of caring as a burden.  They want to be in the dirt in real mission.  But this is wrong, real ministry is walking with people during these times.  We talk about priests a lot, mostly in the sense that we are all priests, but there is a the sense that the minister is a priest as well.  I still remember walking into a hospital room with Burnice, you could just tell the family felt better.  He has been with them for all of these times, and Burnice would pray, and the people were so thankful.  I still remember walking into a hospital, a member was going to be taken off of life support, and I was scared.  I never did this before, but there was Bobby, standing there, and yes, it was going to be ok.  He was there for me as much as he was there for the family.  And it was going to be fine because the Bobby has been with the family before and walked with them through these times.  As ministers, we can forget that the most powerful aspect of ministry is being with the people that are hurting or celebrating.  When you are there for those big occasions in life, you are there at the most important times.  As new ideas come and go, never forget the need to just care for the people.

No related posts.

Tags:

This entry was posted by Matthew on Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 11:27 am and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.