Let’s be honest. Much too often “making things happen” is a fruit of nascent pride. The proud in spirit feel they must force a quick fix when faced with prolonged circumstantial ambiguity. They are compulsive and cannot trust God with what they do not understand about His timing. Too self-interested to wait, they attempt to supplant His unhurried work. However, God honors those who wait patiently upon Him. Humility accompanies the learning of this lesson. Ultimately, a pastor does not control his ministry circumstances. And our best efforts to eliminate their ambiguity may well make things worse.

Talking with a fellow pastor I know and trust, I recently asked a question. “What’s one quality you believe is indispensable for an effective pastor?” After a moment’s thought, the answer came: patience.
If you aspire to pastoral ministry, you likely envision yourself preaching the Word and rightly administering the sacraments. Perhaps you also envision counseling sessions, praying with those who hurt, and leading the ministries of the church. All good things, no doubt. But have you taken time to consider the kind of patience these things actually require? Have you envisioned yourself learning the hard lesson of being patient and moving slowly? If you would rather not, then one of two things will eventually happen after you enter ministry: you will be crushed or you will change.
When I was in my twenties and aspiring to the pastorate, I gave little to no serious consideration to my need for patience. And on certain days, I find that I can still be this way. Pastors, like most people, struggle with impatience concerning life’s circumstantial ambiguities, those unresolved things we are chagrined to live with. Ministry is so filled with such ambiguities that a pastor must learn what do to with them. As much as I may not like it, pastoring is slow, steady work. It is “tortoise work,” not “hare work.”
Of course, a temptation every pastor faces is that of “making things happen.” According to Zack Eswine, our tendency is to do “large things in famous ways as fast and as efficiently as [we] can.” I’ve found that this very thing is widely incentivized, often marketed to me as the model of ministry success. After all, pastors who are thought to “make stuff happen” are the ones who get book deals and amass high follower counts on social media. Is this the kind of pastor I must be? Experience enough ministry setbacks, though, and that question answers itself. It doesn’t take long for the hoped-for glitz and glamor of pastoring to fade. And you’re left with the reality that much of your pastoral success is measured by something you didn’t expect: capacity for patience amidst the crises, criticisms, controversies, and conflicts that beset congregational life.
As a young man, aspiring to the noble task of pastoring, do you recognize your need to learn patience? Do you see in yourself a tendency to idolize immediacy?
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Yes, our God and Father has destined us for sonship and nothing can change that. It was done “in love,” which means, though we’ve sinned in more ways than we can count, He won’t banish us to eke out the Christian life in the servant’s quarters until we can get our act together. No, we always have a place at the family dinner table. Ours is the seat in between our doting Father (Ps. 18:19) and Jesus our loving elder Brother (Heb. 2:11-12). God’s predestining love has guaranteed that seat for us now and forever.

In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.  (Ephesians 1:4-5)
The Not-So-Whole Story
We’re all familiar with the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). It’s the one Jesus told about the fellow who couldn’t wait to get out on his own. So he decides to ask his father for an advance on his inheritance, which is basically another way of saying, “Listen, Dad, I can’t sit around forever and wait for you to die so I can get what’s coming to me. I want it now.” Despite the unthinkably dishonoring nature of this request, the father grants it. And the son takes off, putting as much distance between himself and his father as he possibly can.
With moneybags in tow, the son wanders to a faraway city to live out his own version of the good life. He arrives ready to spend his inheritance on any and every decadent activity he can think of. But the thing is, such a lifestyle can only last for so long. Eventually, the money runs out.
With nothing in the bank and nowhere left to turn, the son gets the only job he can find: taking care of pigs. In the minds of the first-century Jewish audience to which this story was being told, the very idea of a Hebrew taking care of pigs would have been offensive. After all, swine were unclean according to the law (Lev. 11:7). But remember, the offensiveness of this detail had a very specific purpose. Jesus was wanting to convey just how far this son had fallen. In fact, He includes one more detail to make matters even worse: the son is so poor and so hungry that he seriously begins to consider eating pig slop. Pig slop! This would have been more than enough to get any self-respecting Israelite thinking, “Okay, now this guy is officially scum.”
But here’s where the parable takes a turn. As the son entertains the thought of taking a bite of the slop, a lightbulb suddenly comes on. He gets to thinking, “Hey, I’ll go back home and see if Dad will hire me. I mean, his servants eat pretty well and have a decent place to live. Surely, he won’t want me for his son anymore, but maybe he’ll give me a job.”
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