Ministry: Whoever Said It Would Be Easy?

There's a lot of talk these days about how hard it is to be a minister. I would not make light of that, but I do think it is probably no more true today than it has ever been. Times change, of course, and the scenery of life. But who that follows Christ's call to ministry has any right to assume that pursuing that call will ever be easy?

If truth be told, we are all, after Christ, sacrifical lambs, and in that role we have to learn to suffer for God's sake and others. His claim on us is sovereign over every circumstance we may encounter along the way. And his call to serve in his name by his Spirit allows no protest on our part and offers no room for complaint.

Many of my colleagues have understood this and modeled it in ways I have not had to endure. Don Krause, a seminary classmate, later to become a much-loved and very effective chaplain in hospitals and retirement homes, and now a fellow member at Salem is only one such. Look at what "the Call" required of him and his family, returning in 1952 from extended internships in Randall and Alexandria, MN to finish his seminary training.

One child. No financiial resources, even to rent a truck or trailer. More furniture than would fit in their old car. Headed for very limited housing space. Hard days ahead, not to mention just the logistical maneuvering now required to get this moving monstrosity to Chicago!

In Don's own words, the extended internship--given among other things only out-house bathroom facilities for 15 months of it-- had been "a test of my dedication to 'the Call.'" No wonder! Yet he trusted the One who had called him, and bears witness now to the fact that "God's grace and many subsequent years of ministry have proven the validity of that Call."

The Krauses, like their Father Abraham, are still traveling on by stages--now through Don's recent surgery following retirement and various other family health issues. From a merely human point of view one might expect more complaint. But that is not in Don's nature. His focus is not on the hardships he and Betty and their family have endured. "Thinking of God's faithful promises," he wrote me recently, "the little Gospel chorus comes to mind: 'He knows the way through the wilderness. All you have to do is follow.'"

That's it, my brothers and sisters in ministry. As D.T. Niles once put it in shaping up a young minister who kept moaning about his people, "Don't complain so much about your church. That's why you're there!" Indeed! After all, it is Christ who called us, and Christ knows what he is doing. All we need to do is follow.

'The Lord Is Your Keeper' (Psalm 121:5)

This "Song of Ascents" is also often called "The Traveler's Psalm," which meshes well both with life itself as a pilgrimage from beginning to end and with every stage along life's way. The promise is that "The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore."

Part of that keeping for me--especially as I get older--lies in realizing that God's promise is communal as well as personal. It extends to family--not only one's individual family but also to God's larger family of people all over the world.

God has kept my own going out and coming in all these years, and now he is keeping the lives of my children and grandchildren--like grandson Matthew Manning in his going out to serve orphans in Ghana this summer and his coming home tomorrow to pursue his education and calling.

Matthew is a wonderful young man, just graduated from high school last spring and soon to be on his way to De Paul University, Chicago, in the fall. He has often spoken of his interest in architecture, which for those who know and love him seems very fitting, given the architecture of his own life. Handsome, talented, and energetic, he could well have become self-centered in the living out of his days until now, as so many teenagers are these days. But the Lord has kept him from all that, nurturing him along the way in the greatest art of all. God has already made him an architect, gathering around him a coterie of family and friends and forming with them a building not made with hands, extending beyond itself to include Ghanian orphans and who knows how many more.

Thank you, Lord, for being Matthew's keeper as well as ours. Thank you, too, for the generous heart you have given him for others. You are teaching us your way through him now even as we have sought to teach him your way through us since childhood. And faithful as you are, we know you will keep all our goings out and comings in from this time on and forvermore. Hallelujah!

Blessed Nap!

Returing home late last night from a hurried trip to Northbrook, IL for the funeral of Bernice Brandel--a lovely trip by car both ways!--we were happy to wake up at Hembygden, our cabin in Wisconsin, this morning.

Through the early hours of the day we were putsing, which we love to do--Alyce in the kitchen preparing for Judy and Bob coming in tomorrow and me fixing the railing on the walkway down to the lake. Then we went grocery shopping in town.

After lunch it was nap time for me, a delicious two-hour siesta on the living room sofa--a blessed waste of time, as a historic Christian saint once spoke of prayer itself. We are forever short of time, it seems, in the living of our lives. And part of the reason may well be that our spirits are slaves to calendars and clocks. So, consequently, are our bodies.

When given time to be free of all that for awhile there is no reason not to nap. With nothing ahead demanding (or inviting?) my attention, why not? It was indeed delicious--and rewarding. I'm already looking forward to another one tomorrow.

Take the hint, friend, whoever and wherever you are. Wasteful or even impossible as you might think it to be, give your brain and body a rest. The world around you not only can wait. It will, too, and you'll feel better when you face it refreshed.

Tribute to Whom Tribute Is Due

Today I am recalling God's faithfulness in the life--and yes, ministry--of a wonderful woman named Bernice Brandel, whose Memorial Service is coming next Monday at Covenant Village in Northbrook, Illinois. Several years ago, in planning her own service, she requested her chaplain to call and ask if I would sing "He the Pearly Gates Will Open"--in Swedish! Ever since Alyce and I have carried the music with us wherever we traveled--to make sure, she being well along in her nineties, that we would be ready whenever the call came. So on Sunday we head to Lake Geneva overnight and on to the Memorial Service Monday afternoon.

Most Covenanters are probably unaware of how much they owe to the spirit and life of this good woman--as well as her late husband Paul--both of them consumate stewards over many years and benefactors especially of all things Covenant. Paul was the driving economic force behind the development of all Covenant Benevolent Institutions, especially the significant network of Covenant Village Retirement Centers all over the United States.

Bernice, originally his secretary and later his wife after both their spouses had died, shared fully Paul's stewardship philosophy, which also embraced our hospitals in Chicago and Turlock, CA and North Park University and Theological Seminay.

They had means, of course. But what most do not realize is that from the beginning Paul, a lawyer and real estate developer, pledged monies he did not have at the time he pledged, having then to leverage his assests at not a little risk to generate the income to pay those pledges in full. Stories abound on how he challenged others of means to do the same.

In later years, Bernice has pursued such generously on her own, with both passion and wisdom. All of us as ministers are indebted to her for the books she gave us each year at Midwinter Conferences, both to encourage our learning and to prosper our spirits and ministries.

The bottom line in their case was not financial, as some might think. It was spiritual. They gave generously of all they had out of faith in and gratitude to God for what he had done for them. And knowing them personally, I feel certain that on meeting him they spent no time parading what they have done in support of his kingdom work here on earth.

Thank God for the rich legacy the Brandels and others like them have left all of us as generous givers not counting the cost, with open hands and hearts ready to bless countless individuals in need and institutions without which the Covenant as we know it today would not have developed as it has.

Peace to their memory! And thanks to God for their spirit and work!