Part IV: Person in Ministry
In light of all that you have written in the preceding sections, write a concluding essay in
which you reflect upon yourself as a person in ministry. What strengths and weaknesses
regarding your leadership have come to light for you? How might you build
upon your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses? How do you assess and evaluate
yourself as a ministry leader? How do you seek to learn from your mistakes and to
correct them? How do you imagine you will grow in your leadership capacity during
your first three years under call?
Several of my strengths for ministry have come to light for me, especially during my internship. One important one is my ability to preach and to articulate my theology in a clear and straightforward manner. I see part of the purpose of the sermon to be addressing things that are often unsaid in the community, whether it is a word of comfort or challenge. As I’ve grown more experienced and seen the direct effect that my preaching can have on a situation, I now see how powerful good preaching can be to creating and sustaining a healthy worshipping community. Another strength I have is in connecting one to one with people. I’ve always thought this was a gift of mine and that was reinforced for me this past year. I think that the heart of that kind of connection is to cultivate a feeling of respect for the other person, no matter who they are. A elderly man with Alzheimer’s, a small child, and the congregational president all deserve to be treated with kindness and respect in my opinion, God calls each of us to different ministries according to our gifts so every single person matters. I have found that this attitude changes people, especially those who feel like they are rarely taken seriously, and it empowers them to come together as a community.
One of my strengths is to be able to look critically at myself and see what I need to improve. I have worked on many of my weaknesses and made great progress. The one that I think needs the most attention relates to time and task management. I tend to be a procrastinator by nature and without help I will neglect to do things that I intend to do. I have realized that I probably won’t ever fully overcome this tendency so I need to come up with a “workaround”, i.e. a way to find another solution to the problem that relies on my strengths. The current workaround that I’m using is an organizational system called “Getting Things Done” based on a book by David Allen. I had read the book and implemented the system in my job the year before I started seminary and that was the only time in my life when I can remember feeling totally “on the ball” with everything I needed to do. Unfortunately, the system needs to be modified for the work patterns of a student or a pastor, so I fell out of the habit. About two months ago, I reread the book and started adapting the system to suit my current situation and I’ve found the same dramatic results. I tend to be great at systems level thinking and poor at tracking a lot of details, so this is a way for me to keep up with small details by taking advantage of my strength with systems.
In the parish, I think this system will be very helpful for me in keeping up with the more ad hoc tasks of a pastor, like visitation. I have no trouble remembering to write a sermon or prepare for teaching a class because they have built in deadlines, but I need something to help me keep up with regular visitation. One of my goals in my first call is to visit every member in the congregation who wants a visit. In order to meet a goal like that I’ll need to be consistently making visits so it will help to be organized.
In general, I think that I have great gifts for ministry. I know that I have the capacity but, of course, I still need to develop and grow. I hope that my task management system can become second nature to me, so that it no longer feels like something I have to work at. Although I think I am a good preacher, I’m sure that my ability will grow with experience and with a new ministry context. One of the great developments that happened over my internship year was that I overcame my anxiety about public speaking. I now feel confident and comfortable leading worship and I think I can now focus on improving my speaking style and presence.
If I am a solo pastor in my first call, I think I will quickly learn a lot about how to manage that responsibility. Although internship gave me some exposure to that, I think I will need to actually be a pastor before I fully understand the role. That applies to the business aspect of leadership as much as the interpersonal and community development aspects. I know that there are many areas where I need to develop and I am confident in my ability to learn and grow into the role.
