THE ART OF VULNERABILITY
4. Stay focused on your passions in ministry.
In ministry, it is easy to become someone you are not to be on staff at a church. However, it is essential to remember the things you are passionate about in ministry. These “things” center around our desire to serve people, counsel people, speak to and teach people, pray for people, and help people understand what it means to love God, to love others, and to be loved.
We all have a job to do, but it doesn’t need to define who we are. My passion for the ministry and my life’s mission is to help people understand how to love others as they love themselves—the second greatest commandment Jesus pointed out to us in Matthew 22:39. This does define me.
The responsibility of ministry is not to see how many people we can get to a service or how many people we can fit into a room. The burden of ministry is to use the talents, abilities, and passions in our lives to influence people toward the two greatest desires God has for us…to love Him and others as we love ourselves.
Gavin is an example to me in this because he spends his time loving people. Yes, he has a position in the church, but he is staying focused on fulfilling the desires he has to lead people of all ages to understand who God is, what a relationship with God will do for them, and how to exemplify that relation- ship with those around them. He stays focused on what he is passionate about.
5. Never quit learning.
Gavin has an insatiable desire to learn. He reads books, listens to speakers, seeks out wise counsel, and asks questions. He does not portray an attitude that he knows more than someone else or has learned all he needs to learn. He is vulnerable with others in a way that shows them that he is also on this journey of life. He may be further along on the journey with understanding, but he doesn’t lord it over others; instead, he brings them along and helps to guide them. To learn how to navigate some of life’s difficult pathways, he looks to those who may be further down that journey of faith and calls ahead to ask them for counsel.
He has shown me in his life that we are always learning. Once we stop learning, we have died. We will never fully “arrive” at complete knowledge, understanding, or full capacity. And it is through relationships that we learn and grow the fastest.
If we are not vulnerable, it portrays to others that we don’t need them, when in fact we need them more than we know. This kind of friendship, like