Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Attitudes Toward Service

On our way back from the Carey conference, I told my husband about a potential area of service in our church that's been on my mind for awhile. Over the past few years, I've been dropping ministries. I stopped teaching Sunday school after 24 years. I dropped the Treasurer position after five years. We're dropping the Youth group after 25 years (we've been leading Youth since we were dating). And now we're dropping the Carey Conference finance and admin. after 5 years. I've been thinking that our church had a group that has been missed; the College and Career age group. I also knew that I wouldn't be able to do it myself, as teaching of adults is involved. When I brought it up, my husband agreed right away, which confirmed it for me.
Most of the C&C age people are professed believers so the focus can be both on ministering to them, and mentoring them to find ways to minister.
I know that when it comes to service, sometimes it's not about what you feel like doing, but rather what needs to be done. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might." That was the case with my teaching Sunday School. I never felt called to teach, but they needed a teacher, so I did it for 24 years. Yet I still felt like a quitter when I stepped down.
The same thing happened when they needed a Treasurer at church. I protested vehemently that I was the wrong person for the job. When we were first married, I didn't even know how to balance a chequebook. I hated filling out government forms, etc. But my husband believed I could do it, no one else volunteered, and so I did it, reluctantly. While I'll never admit to loving it, I did learn a lot, and I think I'm enough of a details person to handle it. My husband referred to me as a bean counter. When a banker became a member, I handed the job off to him.
For the Carey Conference ministry, I admit I went into it kicking and screaming, and I didn't have a great attitude for much of the time (something I wasn't pleased to find out about myself), and yet it was a good learning and growing experience as well.
I say all this to say that the idea of leading the C&C group with my husband feels like something that I don't feel forced into. It's a burden and concern on my heart that I feel God has placed there, and because of that in itself, I feel excited about it in a way that I haven't felt about any other ministry. The others always felt like my husband's ministries that I tagged along with by virtue of being hitched to his wagon. I like that distinction this time. I feel energized by it and can't wait to see if the leadership at church agrees.

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