You Just Begin
One of my favorite movies is The Martian, which was first a book by the same name by Andy Weir. In the movie, Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) is marooned on Mars and left to fend for himself for over a year until he can be rescued. Living on an uninhabitable planet presents several challenges: oxygen, water, and food, just to name a few. Day after day, he goes to great lengths to care for these basic needs and even farms potatoes (Mark is a botanist) to survive. Consequently, through a hair-raising, Ironman-like rescue attempt (you’ll have to see the movie), Mark is miraculously rescued. After returning home, he starts training future astronauts, and his opening comments to them are something I think every pastor can relate to:
“This is space, it does not cooperate. At some point everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south and you’re going to say, “This is it. This is how I end.” Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math; you solve one problem, then you solve the next one, and then the next. And if you solve enough problems you get to come home.”
Replace the word space with church: “This is church; it does not cooperate. At some point everything is going to go south on you…now you either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin.”
We’ve all had seasons where things seem to be falling apart. Church is hard. People can be difficult. Vision can be lost. Division occurs (pandemic anyone?) Circumstances come, and while you’d like to avoid them, they are part of living in a fallen world. And just like Mark Watney, you have a choice to make. You can be overwhelmed and “hope” it will get better. You can avoid the hard conversations or decisions and ask God to “work it out” (and sometimes He absolutely will). OR you can get to work. Just begin solving one problem, then the next, and the next, and so on.
An obstacle to creating the initiative to start tackling the problem is knowing where to start. While it is cliché, it is true: start with prayer. It might be easy to pray for the problems but lack specific prayer on how to start addressing the problems. As pastors, it can be easy to make matters worse if you don’t start in the right place or with the right people. Prayer aligns your heart, your head, and your steps with His spirit of leadership, as well as opens your mind to the wisdom from His word and others.
While praying, I would encourage you to start with something small and work your way into the larger issues. The small step might be research into that topic or inviting someone else into that area of concern to pray with you and participate in developing a pathway of clarity around the issue. A small step could be simplifying and writing out what the issues are. Many times, we struggle to start tackling a problem because we’ve never spent the time to identify the issues verbally. It could be that, as you write (many pastors are verbal creatures), you’ll be able to identify patterns or commonalities which in turn provide clarity.
Remember, your answer is never to ignore the issues. It’s never to just hope it will get better.
It all starts with an attitude to “begin” to get to work, to start. If you ignore or pretend the issues aren’t there, that’s how you end (think of The Martian – getting home required a commitment to get to work). And, biblically, a good shepherd is strategically involved in mitigating dangers, pitfalls, and shortcuts to protect, serve, and love the sheep. A shepherd would never ignore a prowling lion or a storm overhead. Whether you asked for it or not, you bear a responsibility to your people to slay the lions. So, get to work. Pray. Just begin. I believe the Lord will answer your prayers and honor your desire to serve your people.
If you need an unbiased, objective opinion on identifying the real issues and where to start, I’m happy to join your journey at jason@xppartners.org.