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…
1 CommentMonth: April 2012
Text:Â Romans 12:1-8 Series: Sinning Like a Christian: The Seven Deadly Sins – Part 3 Listen: HERE Back in March, a few weeks ago, the advertising…
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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?
Leave a CommentPosted my thoughts on the film Blue Like Jazz on my other blog, joeiovino.com here. It is a great movie. You should see it.
Leave a CommentIf you are tired of a faith that feels disconnected from the world, troubled by the church that calls us out of rather than sends…
Leave a CommentText: Philippians 2:1-13 Series: Sinning Like a Christian: Part 1 Listen to it here On April 8, 1912, a ship set sail for New York…
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I am afraid of heights. To anyone who knows me, this is no revelation. As a child I got “stuck” on the top of my neighbor’s jungle gym, paralyzed with fear. As an adult I had a moment where I thought I might be stuck on my own roof. The roof-to-ladder transition, and ladder-to-roof, is terrifying. The scariest rides in an amusement park for me are the ferris wheel and the sky ride. Sometimes I get a tingling sensation looking over the balcony on the second level of the mall. Yes, I have accepted my wimpy-ness.
Normally, this doesn’t come into play in ministry. Most of my work is done on solid ground. Around holidays though, my fear becomes evident. I hand the Christmas decorations up to the people on the ladders. On Friday, as we prepared the sanctuary for Easter, I helped set up chairs while the lead pastor draped the cross (see picture). And on Saturday I helped move the lift from place to place while others went up in it to maintain projectors and change light bulbs. Twenty foot extension ladders and mechanical lifts are not things I can handle without a great deal of fear. There are others to do those things, so I don’t. Well, most of the time I don’t.
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On Friday night I was reminded of what ministry is all about.
This weekend I had the privilege of officiating the wedding of a young woman I met when she was in eighth grade, and the young man she loves (congrats Lillian and Tristan). Not long ago while cleaning up my contacts I found “Lillian’s the Best” – the contact she entered as a high school student. Lillian and I went through a lot of fun stuff and some difficult times. This weekend I was privileged to participate in the happiest day of her life.
At the wedding I chatted with two other couples whose weddings I had officiated in the past seven years or so. One couple shared about their young child and another on the way. All of this served as a reminder that ministry offers us the privilege to be invited into people’s lives in profound ways.
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