Recovering our pastoral vocation

Every month I send out a list of pastoral vacancies to Ministers seeking settlement and others wondering about their future ministry. Many of us find waiting difficult, not least for guidance. Modern communication undoubtedly makes this even harder as we come to expect instant answers and results. God doesn’t work that way, does He?

Every year, just before Easter, I'm drawn back to a particular passage in Eugene Peterson’s book - `Under the Unpredictable Plant’. It's a way of remembering my own pastoral vocation - something easily lost in the demands of regional ministry!

(All Peterson's books on pastoral ministry are excellent in my view and this one, a reflective study on the book of Jonah, is no exception.)

The passage I’m thinking of relates to “Holy Saturday” – i.e. the time between Good Friday and Easter Day - which Peterson recognised did not feature prominently in his upbringing. For his family, who owned a butcher’s shop, it was busy day – serving all the customers who came in for their Easter joints. And many of the customers also belonged to their church.

“I would have been very surprised, and somewhat unbelieving, to have known that in the very town in which I worked furiously all those unholy Saturdays, there were people [Catholics] who ... were not working at all, and not spending either, but remembering – entering into the emptiness of death by deliberately emptying the self of illusion and indulgence and self-importance. Keeping vigil for Easter. Watching for the dawn.”

Jonah in the belly of the fish. Jesus in the tomb. The seed growing secretly. Ourselves – unable to make things happen or (more accurately) make things happen more quickly by our activity. May God grant us the patience that produces character and the hope that does not disappoint us (Rom. 5.5) as we ponder the time-between-times ... and wait for that new beginning!

Rev'd Keith Judson, Regional Minister & Team Leader