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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: SNAP (05/28/26)
In fifty years of pastoring, I have been privileged to travel with people through their deepest hurts and their highest hopes. To share God’s grace with confidence in his dependability – and to discover the surprises that he delivers – is a regular reminder that ministry becomes so much easier when we realize that it’s humanly impossible.

Yet this impossibility is an adventure of mutual trust - my fallible trust in him, and his trust in fallible folks to spread his grace and truth into our world.

Pastoring in smaller communities has opened doors to reaching many spiritually homeless people, who would have no idea of which church they most consciously avoid. Yet mixing with them and enjoying their company has been to discover God releasing his grace among them, just as Jesus spent so much of his time with folks who had no religious credentials.

I’ve been blessed to feed the sheep entrusted to me in the churches where I’ve served, and to help those sheep to develop their three-fold provision: of wool – or the warmth of acceptance and reassurance in their wider Monday to Saturday relationships; of meat – to feed folks around them with positive attitudes and actions that reveal God’s love and availability for them; and the third is to have more sheep so the churches may continue to grow in Godly influence as the most creative citizens in whatever communities they are planted.

This dimension of ministry was most consciously birthed in my first year of ministry training, thanks to the late Rev Gordon Stirling, our vice-principal. His focus was on giving us a handle on practical issues of ministry: like preaching, counseling, discipleship, administration, and pastoral care.

In one class, our topic was arranging child and infant dedication for church families, for our denomination practices baptism for adults rather than for infants. Eager to show our grasp of scripture for such occasions, we were confidently throwing in all manner of suggestions. Until Rev Stirling threw in a curveball. “What about a couple with no church connection who come to your door and want “to get their kid done?”

Our confidence went in all directions as we tried to shape what should belong in such an unexpected service, and what kind of service would be best. Until he broke in with a comment that snapped us into clarity, though I’m sure he had not planned to say it: “We aren’t ‘conducting services,’ we are being asked to minister to people at their point of openness to God. That is sacred ground to them and to God, and we dare not push our preferences or our piety into it!”

That unplanned pearl has continued to shape my whole approach to ministry among people who have no church connections, especially in my years of community involvement, and as a chaplain in sports, in industry, and in international travel. What a blessing it has been, as an unexpected, evocative eye-opener.
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This article has been read 66 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
Helen H-S
06/07/26
Thank you for sharing that "snap" moment of clarity! I really liked “We aren’t ‘conducting services,’ we are being asked to minister to people at their point of openness to God. That is sacred ground to them and to God." It's hard to remember that because we often bring our own presuppositions and try to mold situations into our way of thinking. Thank you for your faithful shepherding to the congregations God has called you to serve.
Terry R A Eissfeldt 
06/09/26
That truly was a nugget of Heavenly Wisdom - thank you for sharing. Blessings
Bonnie Bowden 
06/11/26
Dear Noel,

Thank you for your dedicated service to God during the past 50 years. I know your writings in Faithwriters have ministered to me!
Loni Bowden-Horn 
06/14/26
Noel, This story really ministered to me in many ways. When I was a teenager, I attended a church that usually only did infant baptisms by sprinkling, but my dad asked if the pastor was willing to baptism by immersion and he agreed and so I was able to be baptized when I understood what a relationship with Jesus was all about.

I would like to thank you for your dedicated service to God for over 50 years and your words of wisdom in Faithwriters all these many years