Who Am I Becoming?

“What’s been your secret to such a long and fruitful ministry?” I asked Chap over a cup of gumbo. With a grin on his face, he said, “I’ve just had a lot of fun over the years”. This was part of a conversation I had with a dear saint in the faith earlier this week. Chap has been faithfully following and serving Jesus longer than I have been alive. His obedience to Jesus has taken him around the world into situations that seem like they were written for the silver screen.

Chap and I had attended a pastor’s conference a few weeks earlier and we were now getting together to debrief what we had each taken away from the event. A large part of the conference was focused on the burnout that has been sweeping across the pastoral office since Covid arrived on the scene. We heard from various presenters about the changing landscape of our culture and how the church is fighting an uphill battle. Much of what had been presented had a doomsday vibe to it.

As I was processing all this with Chap, he voiced his compassion for the guys who are still in the trenches, but he said he viewed everything through a different lens. He started talking about how he thought all the shifts that are happening in culture are actually an opportunity to have fun and to try new crazy things.

There was that word again, fun.

The cynical side of me thought yeah, this is a lot of fun. And then suddenly the Holy Spirit convicted me of my inner default voice of cynicism. I don’t know Chap super well but one thing I have never sensed in him is cynicism. He has chosen to view the world through a lens of hope and sees challenges as opportunities to play and have fun, even if the situation is difficult and not seemingly fun.

Our conversation got me thinking about how I view the challenges in my life. Not just the challenges of being a pastor in a secular age, but how I show up to be a husband, father, friend, and neighbor. Am I going to lead with cynicism, or chose to see how God is inviting me to join him in an adventure? I can choose to have fun even if the situation seems anything but fun.

I pray that when I am Chap’s age, I can sit across the table from a young man and say, “I’ve just had a lot of fun over the years”. Here is the thing. I am not going to passively become that kind of person. Actually, everything in me fights against becoming that kind of person. And maybe that is true for you too. The challenge I feel God inviting me into, and maybe you are sensing this invitation too, is what small choices can I start making today, that when practiced over a lifetime, slowly but surely, form me into the kind of person, who at the end of my life can look back and say, “I’ve just had a lot of fun over the years”?

Grace and peace ‘til we rise in glory