Three weeks from today my tenure as a pastor at the current church that I serve will be over. The decision that was made to announce my resignation over a month before it took place was both strategic and practical. I needed the right amount of time to tie off loose ends and make sure that everything and everyone was up to par with what the needs for the ministry were. I have been incredibly blessed with other adults who have taken this ministry as their own over the years, so there is no worry on my part about the future for these students.
Even though I believe there are more than enough capable adults (and students) to lead this ministry once I'm gone, there is always the temptation to be what they call a lame duck. This means that once someone is on the way out, he or she no longer has to be responsible for what goes on in the area where he or she served. This ministry will no longer be mine, so some may look at my current responsibilities as being unimportant if even necessary at all. You're leaving, why try to do anything new?
I completely reject the notion of being a lame duck. My call has always been to the people that God has called me to serve and that notion will be fully in play until the moment I drive out of that parking lot on May 2. Right now I am working on making sure that our summer mission trips are squared away and that all the necessary information is passed on to those who will be teaming up to do the work. My desire to teach and equip the students hasn't changed and there will no watching of movies, a la the last week of school, during my last few meetings with them. My desire is to finish just as strongly as I started.
Things change over time. A lot of the energy that I was able to give to my students has been supplanted by much of the time and energy that I need to give to my own children. Plus, I'm getting old and I'm not quite as hip as I used to be (some may claim that I was never all that cool in the first place). Add to that my desire to seek other areas of ministry (church planting, preaching, teaching, etc.) and you could easily make the excused for me. It would be so easy for me to just show up and "do my job" until my last day. After all, my time with the students is already limited as it is. But that is not what God has called me or any of us to do.
Colossians 3:23 reminds us that, "Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men." The word "enthusiastically" literally means "do it from the soul." I like that. My role is not to show up, do my job, and then leave. Instead, everything that I do in the ministry God has blessed me with is to be done with all my heart and soul, no matter what timetable I'm working on. This means for me that same thing that it means for you. Whatever you do, you must do it in such a way, from beginning to end, that honors and glorifies God above all. Anything less would be an offense not just to the people who rely on us but also to the God that we serve.
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