Is student ministry work a crazy career?

   I have done youth ministry as a paid youth pastor and moreso as a volunteer at various times since 1997.  During that entire time, I have received few compliments, much grief, and poor pay.  Why continue on?  Of course it is a personal affirmation from God to know your calling.  Yet the "evaluations" I get from God which keep me going are measures of success such as is exhibited in the following story.
   Once in a long transition period, I was worshiping on Sunday mornings at the church where I had been the youth pastor about seven years before.  After one routine morning of church, I went to a nearby fast food restaurant to get lunch.  I approached the register and the lady behind the counter said, “Hunter!”  Not recognizing her at first, I looked carefully at her face and then recognized it was a student from our youth group years before.  She was currently working as the manager of that fast food restaurant.  We talked for a bit while no one else was in line, and then she took my order.  After she retrieved the food, she paid for my meal.  Then she walked around the counter to where I was standing and gave me a huge hug.  I was so touched.  That is an example of an "evaluation,” the likes of which have kept me in this seemingly crazy career.  To know there are people out there who were once in rough or disastrous circumstances, yet whom I was able to bless in the love of Jesus is the reason I am grateful to God for my calling.
   I have been searching for ministry employment for over six months, and it has been a downright discouraging process.  If you likewise are searching for ministry employment at this time, I encourage you to persevere this day.  You may end up like me, with plenty of sorrow in this world, yet being in your calling you can still have joy and peace, and you will have treasures in heaven.  In my first youth ministry job in 1997, the head pastor Dr. John Bruington, had a framed quote on his back wall.  It stated: "Ministry work: the pay stinks but the benefits are out of this world."  And there are blessings to people in this world as well, where everything matters so much to God that one day He will judge for everything that people have ever done.  For those in Jesus, they will be righteous in Christ, because of the forgiveness of sins He made available by dying as the atonement on the Cross, and because of the daily sanctification the Holy Spirit works to bring about in the heart of a person who believes in Jesus.
Hunter

Jesus wept

   Jesus wept.  Found in John 11:35, it is the shortest sentence found in any of the sixty-six books of Scripture.  (Linguistics and languages not being my area of expertise at all, I have read that in the original Greek, I Thessalonians 5:16 is the shortest verse, yet verses were designated later on obviously.)  Jesus cried upon reaching the tomb where his friend Lazarus was put after he physically died.  This is not the only Biblical record of Jesus crying.  He cried when approaching Jerusalem before a Passover Feast sparked by His foreknowledge that Jerusalem would be destroyed, as it was in 70 A.D., as is shown in Luke 19:41.
   To think that Jesus, God incarnate, cried, overwhelms me.  God loves people so much He cried.
   My mom told me much about Samoa when I was young, since she had lived there for a time when she was a teenager.  She once told me of how the cultural norm of Samoa in the 1960’s was for the men to cry in public, such as at funerals or when people were leaving.  That was such the opposite of the United States culture, where it was considered an expression of weakness if a man cried in public in the 1960’s, and still is today.  Whatever the cultural norm for the Israelites about two thousand years ago, Jesus cried.
   Physical and spiritual pain and suffering saturate this world.  In response to the sins of all people, Jesus suffered, and Jesus died on the cross as the sacrifice as a substitute for people who deserved spiritual death for wrong doings done against God.  The reason for such suffering by Jesus is that Jesus loves us.  If you believe in Jesus, receiving Jesus as your Savior and Lord, you will be forgiven of your sins because of His substitutionary sacrifice.
   A young friend of mine cried last week.  I look back and realize his crying was appropriate.  There is reason to cry in this world for our own sins and for the sins of others.  We all probably do not cry enough.
   However, the minister in the church where I worshiped with that same friend the next day quoted Revelation 21:4-5 concerning the promise of heaven that all believers in Jesus have, which states: “[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”  Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true” (NIV).
   May we cry now for good reasons while being confident in our hearts that Jesus is going to one day have all of His children in heaven where there will be crying no more.
Hunter Irvine

Journey in the love of Jesus

I long for home in heaven
Where hugs freely flow
Where pain we will not know
Where love will continue to pour out eternally
from Jesus, the Lamb of God,
and will evermore be lived in by all who receive Him.
And on the journey, I am thankful right now for Jesus' true love.
Hunter Irvine

Shalom from Jesus

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you… (John 14:27 NIV).

In my youth, my main activity was Boy Scouts.  I was not a follower of Jesus, though I did have a private belief there is a God.  My family only went to church on a few rare occasions.  I was in a church building most every week however since Troop 150 met in a church in Annandale, Virginia.  We had a premier troop thanks to two extremely dedicated leaders, and I learned much in Boy Scouts which has benefited me my entire life.  After years of hard work as a Boy Scout, I completed all of the work to gain the rank of Eagle minus an interview with an Eagle Scout review committee, and an interview with a minister.  This was back in the early 1980’s, and I think they discontinued that minister interview requirement soon after.  A meeting was set up between myself a minister of the church where our troop meet every week.

Though meeting a minister was foreign to me, I was not nervous, rather prepared to discuss what a good Boy Scout I had been as I approached the finish line.  I was prepared to talk about my morality, and I had come up with some excuse as to why my family did not go to church, figuring he would ask those questions.  Yet he did not ask any such questions, yet he was extremely reserved, and only asked me some questions about my involvement in Troop 150.  He said nothing about God, and he did not pray with me.  It was a short and rather uninteresting interview.

Before the interview, I had to wait a few minutes for the minister to become available.  I stood in the hallway outside of the main office area.  That area of the church was on the other side of the medium sized church where our Boy Scout troop met every Monday night in the Hughes Fellowship Hall, plus the offices were on the second floor whereas the fellowship hall was on the first floor.  I had only been up by the offices once or twice in passing.  On the north side of the hallway was a long window where you could look down into the church courtyard.  Of all of the times I had been at meetings at the church, I had never closely looked at the courtyard.  I sat staring at it out of the window.  I began thinking of how peaceful it looked.  I considered spending time in that courtyard would bring peace apart from the world which has so much strife.  As a sixteen year old, I considered that having access to such a courtyard would bring peace.  I considered that people who work for churches were blessed with an extra opportunity for peace.

Ironically, after following Jesus for twenty-four years, I have been shocked how much strife there is in some churches I have worshiped in; strife which results from disagreements regarding core beliefs about God among various members of a given church.  Genuine peace seems to be lacking in some churches, even if it is hidden under the surface.

And I came to assume church employees have more peace than anyone in the world back when I was a Boy Scout, yet after serving as a youth pastor, I have learned that pastors who proclaim the Gospel and who adhere to the teachings of Jesus can be subject to much criticism since there are some people in some churches who advocate church or denomination traditions over the teachings of Jesus as accurately preserved in Scripture, or people in a church might have drastically different interpretations of Biblical teachings.

And any disputing aside, most pastors have to deal with so many people, I do not see how pastors get much “peace” at all.  In this electronic day and age, a pastor must have to work even harder to escape to a church courtyard just to get a forty-five minute peaceful lunch.

Seven years after that time of longingly looking into the church courtyard, I gave my heart to Jesus, and I began a journey in this world following Him.  And in these years of journeying, I have learned an important lesson; Peace does not come from a place or a situation, rather Peace comes from a Person: Jesus, the Prince of Peace.  Of course circumstances influence whether you are having a week that is more smooth or more rough.  Circumstances are important, and they can be horrible.  Yet true peace is a state of the heart, and true peace can be known even when things are horrible.

I am a student of the Bible, and I know the reason for suffering in this world is because people have been separated from God and because we all do things counter to the will of God.  But I do not know why God allows so much suffering.  It is humbling.  It is a subject where I must simply trust God.  I do know that being unified with God is possible by believing in Jesus.  And I do know there have been times in my life when I have had a peace from Jesus that likewise surpassed my understanding.  Scripture teaches that in the love of Jesus, there is peace.  And the reason why is that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave.  Though crucified on a cross as an atonement for the sins of anyone, Jesus was resurrected on the third day, and He is alive right now.  In glory in heaven, he is also working through the Holy Spirit in the world.  I do not always sense that, yet that is what the Bible teaches.  Jesus suffered more than we can comprehend because He loves all people.  Jesus Christ loves you.  Turn to Him and you will have strife you would not have had otherwise, yet there is disaster you will be spared, starting with spiritual death, and you will always have peace available in your heart from Jesus.  Shalom.  The peace of Jesus be with you today.

Hunter Irvine