We always want to quantify success by attaching to whatever metric seems the most correlative to our Ideals. The question, however, is “does this choosing of our metric for success provide insight into our heart or is it simply a crowd sourced trap that we fall into that gradually leads our motivations astray?”; Possibly a bit of both. God has called you to the ministry so our first inclination is to minister but our second inclination is to reproduce or scale this idea to minister to more as my end goal, because surely ministering to more is what God really meant. This is not evil thinking but possibly a bit misguided. Jesus could have taken on multitudes of disciples, but would his ministry have been “more effective” had he chosen to have 24 or 48 or 1024 disciples? I see church attendance to the pastor as a human quantification of a spiritual resource that we need for our own pride to be able to measure something that really isn’t measurable. We find ourselves in the same trap as Anninias and Saphira, God didn’t tell them to give all, just to give but they wanted to quantify their commitment by reaching beyond and making themselves look good. The call of God is equally potent if he has called you to shepherd 12 or 12 million. We simply want to bolster our impact and how else do you measure impact than by numbers? I think we have to shake off the notion of measuring at all, I know this is hard and foreign but true obedience to the call of God is freeing because it puts the impact problem squarely in his hands and rips it from ours. If I do everything God asks, then isn’t he capable of making his ministry exactly what he wants it to be? Why can’t we be content to walk with God in the cool of the day without striving for just a little more?

I have wrestled with this in the past as I feel that God has called me to ministry but never felt that was to be a vocational pastor. Because of this I have struggled with what I “thought” that meant. I felt like that was the only path to my calling but God has shown me that He is in control of my calling. A calling isn’t something I own, it is something God owns and has tasked me to take a part. It is God’s calling on my life not my calling. This change of thinking has allowed me to surrender control and know that God will bring this to fruition as long as I actively listen, obey, and am willing to go when He tells me. God hasn’t called me to the ministry of Billy Graham or Charles Stanley, he has called me to whatever He has for me and frankly there is rest in knowing that it won’t come to pass entirely on my own striving.

I think the discipline of rest is imperative to healthy ministry. I say discipline because it isn’t something that happens automatically or something that comes without sacrifice of something else. We must chose to carve out the time to replenish ourselves and seek God selfishly for His work in our lives as it applies to us and not just as a conduit to the things He has entrusted to us. Rest seems counterproductive to our goal oriented society and our own desires to get “more” done for the kingdom of God but we have to also think of the metaphor of the airplane and secure our masks before helping those around us. I would rather have half as much time of someone at their best than twice as much time of someone halfway present. We have to lay down our pride of accomplishment and allow God to help us truly find and embrace rest or we will burn hot then burn not.