Learning on the Run

I've been in my current position as associate pastor for just over a year now. It's been a wild ride so far. There is so much to ministry that you don't learn about, even from great seminary. I'm theologically and biblically on solid ground, but practically, I have a long ways to go. I've grown a lot in the past year, but sometimes, I still feel like I'm running in circles. The past few weeks have afforded me a couple of opportunities to deal with difficult issues in ministry that I will probably face again.

There have been two issues that have been pretty major that I've had to deal with, and while neither of these situations have been particularly pleasant, they have taught me a lot, just in the past month, about some of the things that I never would have learned in seminary. Hopefully these issues are resolved at this point, but the joy of ministry is that you've never seen everything. Something new will come up in the near future, and I'll probably be putting up another post about exciting challenges. The good news is that I'm not alone. Everyone in ministry faces some sort of new challenge on a monthly, or even weekly, basis. The key is knowing that there are other founts of wisdom from which to draw, and that God is always there, just waiting for us to seek Him in the situation.