As a professional
chaplain I am required every five years to do what is called a peer review.
This involves writing and reflecting over my last five years of ministry, my
strengths and my growing edges. Part of the reflecting is done with a group of
my peers. This year I was due, and I just recently completed my review. It is
not always easy to condense five years of ministry into a manageable document. It
is not always a comfortable process, either. However, it is a valuable one. It
is helpful to be able to look back and see how my ministry has grown and been
transformed. In this process I have begun to think a lot about the idea of the
ministry of vulnerability, and how that has been reflected in my own ministry
style.
I should probably pause to say the
last few months since about July have not been the easiest for me. I faced the five-year
anniversary of my second child’s death. I have struggled with my own physical
health issues and had to face the reality that, yes, I do struggle with anxiety,
and found myself in therapy as a result. I have faced many aspects of my own
humanness. And along side this struggle I still had to go to my vocational work
and be a chaplain to those who were also struggling and hurting, and probably
just as broken, or more, than I was. I began to embrace the words of one of my
CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) supervisors. Essentially they go like this:
in the times when you feel you are at your lowest or most broken, that is when
you do some of your greatest ministry.
How true those words became for me. I
remember being at work on the actual anniversary day of Hope’s death. I was
basically very raw and doing well to survive my day without spewing my own
“stuff” all over the place. I visited a patient and don’t even remember the
content of our discussion, but I do remember praying for him at the end of the
visit with my eyes firmly fixed on his. I don’t remember my prayer, but I do
remember the palpable feeling of connection, a connection that could only come
from my personal, very current, and intimate experience of brokenness. It was
truly a holy ground moment. I have never left a room without saying a word of
good-bye until that day. I simply looked in his eyes, squeezed his hand, and
left the room, leaving in the space a gentle and healing presence of the Divine
joined here on earth.
That was the start of months of
ministry encounters that were more of those Holy Ground moments. Times of by the
end of the visit not being quite sure who exactly was doing the ministering and
who was receiving (in actuality, probably a little bit of each for both parties
involved). Times of sharing more of my personal story than I ever do. Thinking I
screwed up the visit, only to find a deeper sharing (in-spite of myself)
allowed for a ministry encounter that was the holy ground of story sharing and
healing. Had any of these visits happened any other time previous to July, I
don’t know that I would have caught the undercurrents that I did. I don’t know
that I would have been as open to the guiding of the Spirit as I was in those
moments.
I struggled to put definition to
what was happening until I talked with my pastor who gave me the framework of the
ministry of vulnerability. My peer review nudged me to continue to contemplate this
and what it means for me. I don’t have it all worked out yet, but some of my initial
thoughts are that it is being willing to accept my humanness, every day in every
encounter. To know the grace that I have been extended in my brokenness and
extend it on to everyone else I meet.
It is being willing to accept that I
am not always going to have the luxury of having all my “stuff” together before
ministry calls. Sometimes I must go anyway, even if I feel that I have nothing
but my own weary, human self to bring to the moment. It is being willing to
fully place myself in the guidance of the Spirit at these times. And to be open
to engage more equally in Holy Ground story sharing when those to whom I
minister ask me for more of my own story.
I want you to hear me as I mention
the following: I am not advocating for a spewing of my faults and foibles for
the whole world to see. Instead I am advocating for the ability to recognize
wounded-ness in oneself that can then begin to inform ministry if one is
willing to embrace it as a whole part of who he or she is. It is being able to
accept and believe that even though one is in a place of brokenness, or simply
does not have all of his/her “stuff” together, there is still the possibility
of being able to provide ministry. It just may not look like it usually does,
and it most certainly will need to have greater recognition of God and Spirit
at work.
Only after this can one begin to
discern the other part of a ministry of vulnerability, the balanced and
appropriate use of story in the appropriate context. This in and of itself is
not easy and takes practice and self-awareness.
At the end of the day, though, what
I have carried away from all of this head-and-heart musing, is a greater since
of the Holy. There is the realization that sometimes the gift and ministry I
have to give in the moment is to allow someone else to minister to me. Whether
it be through wisdom gained that they want to share with me, a prayer given for
me added on the end of my own prayer, a simple “God bless your ministry”, or
more profoundly an “I’m sorry” after hearing part of my story. The ministry of
vulnerability is the realization that it really is a two-way street. I just
need to open my eyes and heart to the journey.
