Ministry and Money Pressure
That sounds so beautiful! I read the words again, “That is not thought leadership - that’s pastoral care through story.” This held layers of meaning for me. It came at the conclusion of a long AI conversation. I’d spent the evening wrestling with the messy intersection of money and ministry. When I embarked on writing honest stories about my life, I dismissed any concern about money. At least one part of my life would be immune from that pervasive influence.
But banishing money from an honest discussion of my life fails for two reasons: money is ever-present, and my heart is a lover of the stuff, though occasionally repentant about it. Relinquishing profit motive is, for me, a spiritual discipline. But my discipline was shaken as I reviewed my retirement savings and saw that the software I use predicted a mere 17% chance of meeting my savings target. The internal pressure began to mount, money concern loomed, blocking out more noble concerns.
I picked up The Thought Leaders Practice by Matt Church and started to read where I’d left off. Maybe there is some way to produce an income without prostituting my calling. The more I read, the greater my unease. Thought leadership is about how-to content, and my calling is to bear witness to what is, truthfully—not to help others succeed in their temporal concerns, but to point them to eternal ones. Maybe there are ways to earn an income through such a ministry, but thought leadership was definitely not it!
By pushing to create an income from something meant to nurture spiritual growth and detachment from worldly concerns, the whole enterprise would be perverted. What was meant to support life would stunt it. Noticing that fact was liberating. Then came the words pastoral care through story. Why did that sound so affirming?
One of my concerns about sharing my internal world with others is that it could become narcissistic and self-indulgent. This worry is usually followed by a litany of others ending with, “who are you to share all this, anyway.” If I’m not careful, I find myself nodding along. I’m a nobody. That feels comfortable, safe even. Hiding in anonymity and pretending my story doesn’t matter is how I’ve lived my life for more than fifty years, why not give it another twenty-five, or so?
The answer is simple. First, it seems this is what God wants me to do, and second, I really want others to realize that their internal struggles, and the longings they can’t articulate are pointing to an eternal reality far more important. That, especially for Christians, the heavy temporal concerns we carry are creating an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all (2 Corinthians 4:17). But none of this makes any sense if this world is all there is.
The beauty in that simple phrase pastoral care points me past temporal concerns via the longings I cannot express to a future that, though I cannot see it clearly, my soul affirms its existence is more immediate than the daily concerns that weigh me down.
