Joe Iovino Posts

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I entered the workforce as the world’s worst paperboy – honestly, I was better at the video game. After that I pumped gas, made fries at Burger King, unloaded and loaded trucks for a commercial dairy distributor, and for a couple of years drove a limousine (which is not as cool as it sounds. I mostly drove station wagons to and from Newark Airport). Sometime during the dairy or limousine years, I began to notice a pattern of negativity.

At each job I worked, the employees thought we knew how to do the bosses job. We, the mostly high school aged employees of the King, talked on breaks about all the things the managers did “wrong.” We dock-workers, moving milk around the dairy, convinced one another over lunch we knew how to run the business more smoothly. We chauffeurs would sometimes bump into each other at the airport waiting for a flight, where the conversation would quickly turn toward ways we could improve the company. Those not running the organization seemed convinced we knew better, and were eager to share. Like a black hole drawing everything into itself, the negativity claimed the majority of the workforce at each of those jobs.

As an associate, I would like to put my best foot forward in ministry. Unfortunately though, that doesn’t always happen. Don’t get me wrong, I try, but time constraints sometimes cause me to scramble. I’ve preached sermons for which I wish there were several more days to study. I have led meetings where the agenda was loose. I have stood before the youth group with a lesson that really could have used a better game to kick it off. I have even published a blog or two that could have used another editing pass.

I’m not advocating sloppiness. I firmly believe that we are called to give our best in ministry every day. Unfortunately though, there are times when despite our best efforts, we aren’t as prepared as we would like to be. Yet somehow, God uses even our less-than-stellar efforts to do amazing things.

“Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, “Thus far the Lord has helped…