Trevor Archer is leading our evening ministry, and encouraging us from 1 Thessalonians 2 about the motives, method and message of our ministry.
He started by quoting from Steve Farrar's book Finishing Strong, which makes the shocking suggestion that 9 out of 10 people who start in ministry will end up crashing out, through moral failure, liberal theology, doubt or discouragement. I can believe it's true.
Farrar's book is quoting the US experience of a previous generation, and while there are many examples of this happening in my own experience (Trevor quoted three horrendous cases just from this last year), the figure seems to high. So are we doing something better?
Maybe it's that we are better at working in teams, or in taking accountability seriously. Or maybe we are just better at spotting things earlier or helping our brothers and sisters in ministry to be more real about things. But there is a job of work to do at this conference to help those here to deal with things that are lurking unresolved in their lives. And to paint a realistic picture of the realities of ministry, so that the chances of disappointment are lower. Feel free to comment on what we can do together that will reduce the chances of this awful fallout in ministry
No comments:
Post a Comment