Genuine support, but limited understanding...

How do you respond to almost unanimous support and encouragement from people who don't really understand what you are setting out to do, or why you want to do it? For me, I genuinely feel and show grateful thanks, but it is accompanied by sadness and frustration.

I've found it very easy to tell people that I'm leaving TAFE after 18 years to go into full-time Christian Ministry. I tell them it's what I've longed to do for decades, and now at last my time has come. So far not one person has shown even a hint of rejection or animosity. Everyone has wished me well. Perhaps some are just being polite, but most are obviously genuine.

These are people who really care, and are happy for me that I'm "following my dream", and "doing what I love". Several express a desire to follow a similarly altruistic path - to leave TAFE and do what they've always wanted to do, to make a difference somehow - to contribute something meaningful to the world they live in.

What could possibly be sad about that? Surely these are noble intentions?

Indeed they are, but such responses indicate a lack of understanding of what the church is all about. Behind this well-intentioned show of support is a general assumption that the church exists to provide social welfare to a needy world. And if I'm going into full-time ministry, then I must be doing it because I have a caring heart for those less fortunate than ourselves.

I certainly hope that's true of the church, and of me! But that's not the reason the church exists, and it's not the reason I'm going into full-time ministry. The church is a gathering together of people who love Jesus Christ, and who want to see him glorified in all things, especially through people coming to know him and love him just as we do.

But the society we live in has been duped into believing that the church is, at best, a social welfare organisation. Or perhaps they just feel safer - less personally threatened - seeing the church as an organisation that is interested in saving people from physical, temporal desolation. Why do people find it so threatening to be told that the church - and Christians - are here on this earth to show people how they can be saved from being spiritually, eternally lost? Surely one would think people would be much more excited about being rescued for eternity, rather than being rescued only to live for a few more years before dying? But no, people feel much safer talking about temporary, physical rescue. Why?

Perhaps I'll talk more about that in a later blog...