Because the goals of Christian ministry are so aspirational, because the example of Jesus, the Apostles and the highpoints of revival history show us the amazing potential of Gospel ministry it is easy to look on every ministerial engagement as some kind of failure. Revival didn’t come. The church changed but wasn’t transformed. Such and such a venture didn’t spark or continue or bring the growth anticipated. But do those measures mean you failed?

Looking back on my own experience in various ministry positions I can see that each setting came with its own divine assignment. Even with an outcome short of community transformation those instructions give me a grid by which to look back and say, “I delivered what was asked of me. Maybe not perfectly. Definitely not perfectly. But I did serve my appointed purpose.”

That perspective helps me be more intentional in seeking to follow the Holy Spirit’s specific instructions for today, and today’s setting.

I was talking the other day with my friend “Drew” – a senior pastor who was weighing up the question of how long he might stay at his current post. What he did not want to do was repeat the experience of a friend of his, who I’ll call Phil.

Phil had worked his behind off trying to get a staid, elderly congregation to allow some innovations onto the church’s menu in order to help it reach new generations and lay the foundations for a viable future. Sadly, Phil was really kicking against the goads, not assisted by the presence in the congregation of the former pastor who remained as a kind of unofficial gatekeeper, unambiguously grading his successor’s performance, and frequently vetoing his successor’s best efforts. It was an unwinnable war with the former pastor still in situ. Before long, the stress began to tell on Phil until he suffered a stroke and hospitalized.

After significant time off work, Phil’s financial needs forced him to return to his pastorate and work part-time, despite now limited mobility and very low energy. The politics in his church had not eased in the least. Phil worked as hard as he was able until he died of a heart attack in his mid forties. Did Phil’s congregation deserve that from him? If they didn’t want what Phil was offering, shouldn’t Phil have felt free to move on?

Unfortunately, in times past ministers did not feel free to do that because the only paradigm was “Stay until your seniors tell you that you can move. And in the meantime do what it says in the book!”

I believe that poor Phil suffered unnecessarily – in part – because of that paradigm.

By contrast, my perspective is that we make our best and most fruitful choices around more specific purposes than that. I hope and believe that my millennial brothers and sisters lean more in that direction.

Knowing Phil’s story, my friend Drew did not want to feel he needed to keep “banging his head on a brick wall” on an indefinite basis. So I encouraged him to consider the nature of his specific assignment at his current  church. It could be:

i) A Timeframe: Use your gifts. Make your offering for a set time frame. Four of my church assignments have been time-framed by my employer.

ii) An Outcome: Use your gifts. Make your offering until a particular outcome has eventuated.

iii) A Process: Lead the church in a specific way through specific transitions.

iv) A Task: In my first church assignment my task was simple – create a student congregation. In my fourth church assignment it was equally simple – do whatever the senior pastor needs and asks of you.

v) A Placement: This where you seek to follow the Spirit along the lines of, “Do whatever I instruct you, in this place, until further notice!”

It is uniquely empowering to know which kind of assignment you’re on. It will determine the intensity and focus of your work. And it can make your work less burdensome by clarifying its limits. It can be reassuring because then, whatever your level of “success” (since outcomes are almost always corporately generated) you can put an end on it and move on with the assurance that you have done what you were sent you do.

This is important. It is not a luxury. In a line of work where failure can appear to be the unavoidable measure, because possibilities are infinite, it is vital to eat of the food that fueled Jesus when he said to his disciples: “My food and drink is to what God put me here to do – and do it until it’s done.” (John 4:34)

That is a deep satisfaction – one I aspire to, and one I wish for everyone I coach, and all my sisters and brothers in ministry.

Patrick Laughing, by Charlie Mackesy