Category: Associate Pastor

Churches come up with some creative titles for their staff members. If you click on our About page you will read about my once-held title of…

I didn’t blog last week. A new post did not appear last Monday. I could choose to keep it quiet and hope you didn’t notice, but I want you to know I am sorry. I have this covenanted with you to post every Monday, and I let you down. I cannot promise this will not happen again, but I can assure you it will not happen often.

Mistakes are part of ministry as an associate pastor, lead pastor, or any staff position. We’re human, and as the saying goes, “to err is human.” We cannot expect perfection, so the next best thing is learning how to handle our mistakes.

Maybe you spaced a meeting and someone waited half-an-hour at Starbucks for you, or you promised to write a letter of recommendation but needed a reminder. Maybe you missed a hospital visit, said something stupid during a counseling session, broke a confidence you didn’t know was a confidence, or something else. Has a memory of one of your mistakes created a pit in your stomach yet?

Posted my thoughts on the film Blue Like Jazz on my other blog, joeiovino.com here. It is a great movie. You should see it.

As associates, or other staff members, we grow accustomed to limited time in the limelight. The lead pastor gets the majority of the “up front” duties while we are in the basement with the youth group, in the nursery with the children, at the booth running production, facilitating a meeting of a small group, or doing other work behind the scenes. For those of us who have made staff-ministry a career, we prefer it this way… most of the time. Other times we can fall into the trap of wondering if anyone notices what we do, or if we are toiling in anonymity.

It is not a character flaw to want your efforts to be noticed. We all do. That should not be a driving factor in our efforts though because that is not what ministry is about. Our role as a staff member is to participate in the ministry of the entire congregation as we lead our particular area(s) no matter who is getting the credit at the moment. We are part of a team where every member matters (see more about this in another post, and Paul’s image of the church as the body in 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 et al.). It ought not be about who is getting the credit, other than God.

We see it everywhere – American Idol, The Voice, Survivor, The Apprentice, The Biggest Loser, and more. Every week people give their all only to be told they are not welcome back. They weren’t good enough, weren’t popular enough, were voted off, didn’t make the cut.

As a youth, that happened to me fairly regularly. I would spend a week staying after school to try out for soccer or baseball. Other times I would stay for auditions for a choir or the school play. Then on “cut day” I would slowly approach the list the coach or director posted outside of their office that contained the names of those who “made it.” More often than not, my name was not on the list. I didn’t make the cut. That hurt every time.

Worse, the cold reality that I wasn’t good enough didn’t stay confined to my athletic or vocal abilities. It spilled over into other areas. Rather than feeling I had failed at this specific task, I thought I was a failure. As an insecure adolescent that is understandable. As a professionals that is unacceptable.