The Push Me Pull You Of Ministry

Dr. Doolittle featured this rather improbable animal, aptly named the Push Me Pull You:

Hard to make a lot of progress in that kind of body, isn’t it?

There are seasons of ministry life where I feel like that.

Specifically: many times the church needs me to lead and I feel the pull to pastor.  We’ve got decisions to make, ministries to launch, and calendars to fill.  A lot of those things can’t happen without my input, if not my direct involvement.

But then there are people in grief, people in the hospital, people who simply need a reminder that they matter. Those types of functions are at the heart of what they taught us in seminary about representative ministry: when we clergy visit people in the vulnerable places of their lives, we in a sense Re-Present Jesus in their lives.

Push Me.  Pull You.

I think I’ll stop writing and start trying to figure out today’s answer to the dilemma.