Today is my first proper day back after my holiday. I think matters can be succinctly summed up by this tweet from 2023, which has since become a viral meme:

This, dear friends, is how I start back after every holiday.

As the resumption of duties bears down on me, I review every reason why I am not really cut out to be doing this, every reason why – even if I were cut out to be doing this – I am not sure I want to be doing it, and every reason why I should do just about anything else. Only, I’m not really qualified to do anything else. I’m not even sure I am qualified to do this in another place. I am to all intents and purposes entirely unemployable outside of what I am doing, which I am not convinced I do very well at any rate, but this seems the worst of all possible reasons to stay doing it!

Don’t get me wrong, I love our church. It is (at least partly) that very thing that makes me think they deserve somebody better than me. I also love preaching and teaching the Bible. But that’s the nice bit we all think we’re getting into, and quickly learn it is only a part of the work. But I get riddled with feelings of inadequacy and the dispiriting sense of loss that seems to attend ministry.

A sense of inadequacy can be overcome by a broader sense of purpose and drive. A feeling that we are not up to the job can be offset by a belief that, inadequate as we are, what we are doing has some purpose and value. But when things feel valueless, fruitless and insignificant, it is either because what we are doing is, in point of fact, an actual waste of time or because we are not competent enough to make it valuable. Depending on the day, one or other of those thoughts looms large.

The only defence I have against these things is that I have always felt like this, no matter what I did. I felt like it every time I went back to school, as I went to university, when I started my first (and every subsequent) job, whenever I went on a holiday and came back to any of those jobs, and I feel like it now. That is a long enough track record to see that the job itself is not the problem. I might be right-thinking and be as rubbish, in every job, with equal uselessness, as I feel I am. It’s certainly possible. But I suspect it’s more likely I just feel like this because that is how I am wired to think about myself and whatever I turn my hand to do.

Of course, matters aren’t helped by the series of people who just cut you off. If you are already prone to thinking of yourself this way, those who leave or who blame you for whatever their complaint may be simply feed the belief. They see, say and so act on what is plain. Others either put up with your failures – longsuffering, kindly types who can endure much – or simply cannot see what seems so plain to me. Those who up and leave or who cut you off – even if I cannot quite make head nor tail of their reasons (if they come at all) or hear their story as closer to a work of fiction than any accurate narration of events – nevertheless probably see because, even if their explanation or reasons or logic is confused, fundamentally they are right – it is what I ultimately think myself!

That doesn’t stop those things hurting. I am reminded of the friend (not in my church) who stopped talking to me, not because of anything I did (as far as I know), but because ‘I just can’t deal with pastors right now’. I am reminded of those who simply announced they wouldn’t speak to me by any means despite having no idea what I was meant to have said or done. I am reminded of those who did that and, when I eventually heard why, it bore no relation to any event I could recall ever taking place. I am reminded of those poured into, cared for, loved, served who simply upped and left with na’ry a backwards glance. I am reminded of those who insisted they were not loved well despite receiving a disproportionate amount of support, time and concern. And I am aware of the constant churn of people coming, being served and then leaving – some for reasons beyond their control, some simply due to their own choices. My inadequacies no doubt play their part, but returning to continue on a treadmill of that order is not often thrilling.

My only biblical response to any of this is that almost all the people called by the Lord for particular ministries felt inadequate. It didn’t matter because the Lord wanted them and compelled them to do it. More to the point, the ministry wasn’t theirs to do anyway. The Lord may have his people that he wants in particular places, but the ministry itself is the Lord’s and rests on him. Inadequacy and inability are neither here nor there.

Most these dudes were alone in their ministries too. They were often lone voices who faced real opposition. Most pointedly, this was the nature of Jesus’ own ministry. He spent almost all of his ministry with opposition and, in the end, even his closest followers abandoned him. The churn of disciples following and then not following Jesus in the gospels is striking. He is incredibly popular until he isn’t; he is followed by crowds until various of them drift off or runaway. There is, as Ecclesiastes says, nothing new under the sun.

So, what will get me up and into the work of ministry tomorrow? Not my barely credible abilities. Not a sense that I am on the verge of significant fruitfulness. But simply the fact that, if God puts the people he wants in the places he wants them – and I happen to be the one he has put here for now – then I am the one he wants here at the minute doing this. My abilities are irrelevant because it is his work. He will bring forth the fruit he wants and that isn’t on me. I have work to do that the Lord (and the church) wants doing. The rest is up to him.