Showing Up
By Mike Glenn, Senior Pastor, Brentwood Baptist Church, Brentwood, Tennessee
Sometimes I ‘m not sure members of our congregations understand how difficult Christmas can be for pastors and staffs of churches. Not only do we have to deal with the holiday craziness in our families (buying presents, dealing with travel logistics, etc.), we usually add more services during the Christmas season. That means we have to be at church a lot more nights than we normally do.
Add to that the unique pressures the holidays bring to the families of our churches – everything from college kids who are coming home to having to see relatives we’ve tried to avoid the rest of the year. That usually means a couple of emergency “counseling sessions” to help our friends get through the holidays without committing a felony while their family is in town.
But there’s another pressure that rarely gets mentioned. Pastors won’t even mention it to their spouses or closest friends. Can you guess what it is? For some reason, the holidays are the time when we evaluate our ministries and lives. Maybe it’s because the winter days get darker faster or maybe the end of the year is just a natural time to think about such things. And honestly, this is a hard process for most of us.
Most of us got into the ministry because we believed God wanted to do something great in our lives. When we look back, even if we’ve had a “successful” year, many of us are disappointed. There’s been no great revival, no magnificent healings, no crowds crowding around the door to hear us preach…we really thought there would be more. In most surveys, pastors confess disappointment in the way their ministries have turned out. To be fair, some of the expectations we pastors carry around aren’t fair. I know that, but most of us still think we signed up for more.
And so it’s to these guys I write today. And yes, a little bit to myself as well. I want to celebrate your success.
What success is that?
You showed up.
Hey, don’t laugh. I’m serious. You showed up. Sunday after Sunday, in good times and bad, through grief, heartache, criticism, and downright rejection, you still showed up.
Woody Allen said 98% of success is simply showing up. The only reason the shepherds are in the Christmas story is they showed up. Sure, the angels came and sang to them, but to their credit, the shepherds got up and went to see the Child. That’s it. That’s all they did. They showed up.
And you showed up. Sunday after Sunday, sermon after sermon, you took your place, opened your Bible and, as best you could, told the people there about the love of Christ. Then, you came back and did it the next Sunday…and the Sunday after that.
In showing up you reminded your people that God hadn’t given up. God is still faithful. Our presence—just showing up—is sometimes a vital and rich message about the faithfulness of God, in and out of season.
In World War II, the Germans launched a surprise attack in the winter of 1944, catching the allies by surprise. The battle that followed changed the war in Europe. We call it the Battle of the Bulge. One historian wrote that the real heroes of the battle will never be known. They are the soldiers, cut off from their units, who found other soldiers in villages and crossroads history has forgotten. They didn’t win the battle and most of them lost their lives – but here’s what they did. They made the Germans slow down and fight. Sometimes it would be an hour or two, sometimes a day or so, but these little skirmishes and battles slowed the German advance long enough for the Allied generals to launch a counter attack.
That’s us.
Every week, we stand up against impossible odds and fight just a little longer. We’re not worried about winning the war. Christ has done that. We just want to hold the line one more Sunday.
It may not matter to anyone else. But it matters to our people. It matters to us. It matters to the Kingdom.
Like the shepherds, we show up and tell our people Christ is here. We’ve seen Him. Remember, Paul didn’t say he had won the good fight, only that he had fought it. He didn’t say he had won the race, only that he had run it and by doing so, he kept the faith.
So, grab your Bible. Open it up. Sunday will be here shortly, and you’ll need to have something to say. Your people will be showing up and Christ will be there too—just as He promised. Be sure to show up. Sometimes, in the wonder of it all, showing up is enough.
Merry Christmas
In addition to serving as the senior pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church, Mike is a frequent speaker and prolific author. His latest book is The Gospel of Yes . You can read his blog at www.MikeGlennOnline.com.
Pastor to Pastor is the Saturday blog series at ThomRainer.com. Pastors and staff, if we can help in any way, contact Steve Drake, our director of pastoral relations, at Steve.Drake@LifeWay.com . We also welcome contacts from laypersons in churches asking questions about pastors, churches, or the pastor search process.
