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How do we move from our safe place in Christ to where people are? While the following description is directed specifically to
pastors, we can just as easily substitute “those who serve God.”
Andrew Purves:
Effective preaching arises out of a preacher or
pastor, a man or a woman who is embedded with the people and preaches into the context of their pain, preaches into the context of the silence of their cry to God — “Where are you, God?”, and they hear
nothing back.
They preach into these terrible cosmic silences and these ambiguities and these confusions that are the normal part of ongoing
life. So I think there’s that dual embedded-ness.
One other thought that I’ve played with through the years is that I think all ministry has a “from-to”
character.
That is, you move from your place as the pastor, from your life in Christ, from your safe place, to where the people are. That
may be not be a comfortable place.
Although I’m well acquainted (sadly) with hospitals because
of my own cancer, I don’t like hospitals.
I have a daughter-in-law who is a physician. She’s very comfortable in hospitals. I will never be comfortable in
hospitals.
But, you know, hospitals are not my “to” place. And yet as
pastors we have to go into these uncomfortable “to” places.
But we can only do what we do in these, as it were, “to” places because we have a deep grounded-ness in our
“from” place, and that’s our anchor.
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