Look for Berries Instead of Melons - Appreciating Life's Small Harvests - Part One

Look for Berries Instead of Melons – 

Appreciating Life’s Small Harvests

Part One

In a fit of salty discouragement, I incessantly complain to my wife and spiritual advisor about the lack of substantial harvest in my ministry.  My professional work experience divides evenly between secular and ecclesiastical dimensions.  I spent twelve years in educational administration and teaching and twelve years in the pastorate, though I have been an ordained clergyperson for twenty-five years.  As an undergraduate and graduate admission professional, I revitalized a minority scholarship program, successfully recruited each year’s freshmen class and implemented “Total Quality Management” strategies to actualize office and staff efficiency.  In the year I taught middle school Social Studies, Geography and U S History, my students scored two grade levels above their current grade.  The following year, my high school U S History students achieved ninety-nine percent (99%) proficiency, inclusive of fifteen percent (15%) high proficiency, on the state examination required for graduation.  As a pastor of two separate churches, I cannot cite similar numbers relative to the local church setting.  This inexplicable reality deeply saddens me!  I did not work half as hard in secular work as I do in the church.  Yet, I easily recount successes in a work environment outside of my passion.  As I angrily share my frustrations about this irony, my wife encourages me to look for small harvests in ministry; focus upon the berries instead of looking for melons.

Appreciating small harvests necessitates gratitude.  It is a privilege to serve in ordained and pastoral ministry.  It is an honor to gain admission to the inner chambers of congregants’ minds and hearts.  Being a good steward of their private lives and personal challenges, I am unable to quantify “success” and “fruit” in ministry as I would numerical and programmatic goals in a secular context.  As I serve within the complexity of people’s daily lives, reasonably I cannot delineate accomplishments as sterilely as figures on a balance sheet. 

I offer thanksgiving for myriad and multidimensional ways in which I encourage and empower persons toward spiritual progress and personal development.  Startlingly, a friend recently shared with me that our extensive friendship and my personal counsel contributed significantly in preventing her planned suicide.  A congregant heeded my advice and sought psychoanalysis thereby cancelling her previous resolution to commit suicide.  Another congregant found humility to admit personal disappointment as she transgressed her cardinal principles.  Countless other examples abound.  When I consider progressive transformation in these brothers and sisters in the Lord, I am thankful for small harvests in pastoral ministry.

Any hard working farmer who braves wind chill temperatures in February and March to fertilize soil expects a bountiful harvest in early October.  Susceptible to nature’s unpredictable forces, farmers persevere through frost bites, droughts and other contrary conditions.  Meanwhile, they envision the joys of fall when they reap a harvest sufficient to settle their debts.  An average July day finds the farmer drenched in sweat and smelling like manure just before dinner.  He washes off the surface coat of sweat, dirt and grime.  After dinner, he falls fast asleep as he watches a baseball game.  Within hours, his alarm clock rings thereby summoning the farmer to repeat yesterday’s laborious tasks.  At harvest time, should he fail to receive an adequate yield to compensate his tireless efforts, he will not tolerate meaningless clichés.  Likewise, in ministry, we who labor equally industriously to spread the Gospel of Christ and serve His Church greatly desire a bountiful harvest.

Immediately, clergy colleagues and lay leaders exhort you to offer praises to Almighty God until you feel better.  I contend Christian faith and spirituality are more substantive than clichés, emotional worship and collective entertainment.  Offering facile solutions to complex realties often repel many non-believers; they will not settle for a simpleton’s perspective to their dilemmas.  Actually, I agree with them and detest the tendency toward belittling, insulting and absurd optimism in many church circles.  In formal theological terms, how do we juxtapose God’s existence with prevalent and rampant evil?  Many disciples question God’s faithfulness as they experience multiple challenges. 

Daily and persistent practices of spiritual disciplines are means of appreciating small harvests.  Self-evaluation exposes self-centered fears, unrestrained egotism and illusions of grandeur.  It is impossible to be grateful for small successes when you focus on the lack of large ones.  If you serve to earn a national or international reputation, you hardly appreciate an average congregant’s significant spiritual growth.  In prayer, a disciple converses with the Lord.  It is a time of transformation instead of a recitation of personal desires. The Psalter insists a person only knows his heart’s desires as he communes with the Lord (Psalm 37:4).  Affirmation of   the Word of God negates negative thinking.  Meditation upon God’s enduring faithfulness eradicates fears.  Study of the Bible increases a person’s faith; “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”  Retreating to fourth dimensional living and visualizing manifestation of your heart’s desires is another means of growing in faith.  Private devotion and worship are as essential as corporate gatherings on Sundays.