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    Extraordinary Ministry in Ordinary Time: An Invitation to Renewal for Pastors
    Extraordinary Ministry in Ordinary Time: An Invitation to Renewal for Pastors
    Extraordinary Ministry in Ordinary Time: An Invitation to Renewal for Pastors
    Ebook158 pages1 hour

    Extraordinary Ministry in Ordinary Time: An Invitation to Renewal for Pastors

    By James, A. Harnish

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    About this ebook

    What energizes someone in pastoral ministry for the long haul? Holy days like Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost are the exception. Ordinary Time, the longest season of the Christian year, is where pastors spend most of their ministry.

    James Harnish invites pastors and other ministers to see Ordinary Time as a metaphor for the ordinary days of ministry. "Whether we thrive or merely survive depends on what we do with the ordinary days," he writes.

    Harnish encourages ministers to develop spiritual disciplines and personal relationships to nourish their souls for long-term ministry. He highlights the importance of reflection on scripture, spiritual reading, journaling, prayer, and spiritual conversation with trusted friends.

    This 6-week study focuses on themes Harnish found crucial in over four decades of ministry: power, people, places, proclamation, perseverance, and promise. Daily readings help readers develop their own customized practices of spiritual formation to sustain and strengthen their life and ministry

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUpper Room Books
    Release dateFeb 1, 2020
    ISBN9780835819145
    Extraordinary Ministry in Ordinary Time: An Invitation to Renewal for Pastors
    Author

    James, A. Harnish

    I retired after 42 years of pastoral ministry in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. Martha and I are enjoying our 51th year of marriage at home in Longwood, Florida. I keep engaged by writing for the United Methodist Publishing House (http://www.abingdonpress.com/james_a_harnish) and Upper Room Books (https://upperroombooks.com/author/james-a-harnish/). I also serve as a facilitator for the Institute of Preaching and a member of the Board of Visitors at Duke Divinity School. We have two fantastic daughters. Carrie Lynn is married to Andy. They live in Orlando with our grandchildren Julia, Alex and Luke. Deborah Jeanne is married to Dan. They live in Charleston, South Carolina, with our two granddaughters, Mattie, and Molly.

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      Book preview

      Extraordinary Ministry in Ordinary Time - James, A. Harnish

      EXTRAORDINARY MINISTRY IN ORDINARY TIME: An Invitation to Renewal for Pastors

      Copyright © 2019 by James A. Harnish

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. For information, write Upper Room Books®, 1908 Grand Avenue, Nashville, TN 37212.

      Upper Room Books® website: upperroombooks.com

      Upper Room®, Upper Room Books®, and design logos are trademarks owned by The Upper Room®, Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.

      Scripture quotations not otherwise marked are from the Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 Common English Bible. Used by permission.

      Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

      Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

      Scripture passages marked AP are the author’s paraphrase.

      Hymns designated UMH are taken from The United Methodist Hymnal, Copyright © 1989 by The United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, Tennessee.

      Selections designated UMBOW are taken from The United Methodist Book of Worship, Copyright © 1992 by The United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, Tennessee.

      Cover design: Micah Kandros | micahkandrosdesign.com

      Interior design and typesetting: PerfecType | Nashville, TN

      Print ISBN: 978-0-8358-1912-1 | Mobi ISBN: 978-0-8358-1913-8 | Epub ISBN: 978-0-8358-1914-5

      If we are to follow Christ, it must be in our common way of spending every day.

      —William Law (1686–1761)

      With gratitude for the United Methodist congregations in Florida that received me as their pastor and with whom I shared the long and joyful obedience.

      Trinity, DeLand (1972–1975)

      Howe Memorial, Crescent City (1975–1979)

      St. Luke’s, Orlando (1979–1992)

      Hyde Park, Tampa (1992–2014)

      First Church, Orlando (2018)

      I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

      —Philippians 1:3-6, NRSV

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Week 1    Power

      Week 2    People

      Week 3    Place

      Week 4    Proclamation

      Week 5    Perseverance

      Week 6    Promise

      Appendix: Steps Toward Holy Friendship

      A Guide for Small-Group Gatherings

      Notes

      INTRODUCTION

      Ordinary. The adjective reeks with the scent of stale sameness, the bitter whiff of bland boredom, the sour odor of lifeless order. It leaves a faint aroma of unexceptional drudgery in doing the same old things in the same old way without a hint of newness or a trace of creativity.

      Who really wants to be ordinary?

      According to the Enneagram personality types, I’m a Type 4 Individualist. That means I tend to see myself as being unique or different. It also means that I want the things around me to be distinctive or special. Type 4s are almost genetically resistant to being ordinary. My aversion to the word only strengthened when I learned that in British tradition the noun ordinary refers to a clergyperson who walks with a condemned prisoner on the way to death. Who would want to do the work if that’s what it looks like to be an ordinary pastor?

      And then there is Ordinary Time. It’s the longest season in the liturgical year, beginning on the first Sunday after Pentecost (Trinity Sunday) and ending on Reign of Christ (also called Christ the King) Sunday, the last Sunday before the beginning of the new church year in Advent. The high holy days of Lent and Easter and The Great Fifty Days leading to Pentecost are behind us. Stretching through the dog days of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, most of the Sundays are designated simply in numerical order: The _____ Sunday after Pentecost. Just another ordinary Sunday in Ordinary Time.

      Who wants to be an ordinary pastor living in Ordinary Time? But then the disturbing truth settles upon us. Ordinary Time is where we practice most of our ministry. Every week isn’t Holy Week, and every Sunday isn’t Easter. Sooner or later, every person called into Christian ministry discovers something that lay disciples learn just about every day. High, holy moments alive with spiritual exhilaration are the exception. Most of us invest most of our days in the ordinary stuff of ordinary life. Whether we thrive or merely survive depends on what we do with the ordinary days.

      This book is my invitation to pastors and other people in ministry along with the lay people who serve with them to use what the liturgical calendar calls Ordinary Time as a metaphor for the ordinary days of ministry. It’s an invitation

         for people who are beginning their ministry to develop patterns of spiritual discipline that will sustain them along the way;

         for people who are midway through their career to renew their calling and reenergize their passion;

         for people who are nearing the end of their ministry to reflect on what they have experienced in order to prepare for a new chapter ahead; and

         for lay men and women to grow in their understanding of and support for their pastors by sharing in prayer and reflection with them.

      In an interview shortly after he completed his paraphrase of the New Testament called The Message, Eugene H. Peterson said that while he was doing the hard work of translation, he had a sense that it was harvest time. This is the fruit of everything I’ve been doing already.¹ This book is, in a sense, the harvest of what I’ve been doing across more than four decades of pastoral ministry in United Methodist congregations in Florida. My appointments included a university town, a rural community, a new congregation in a rapidly growing suburb, and a historic church in an urban center. The spiritual soil in which the book grew was tilled and fertilized by clergy and laypersons who mentored, encouraged, challenged, and frustrated me along the way. My soul-level desire is to help people in ministry develop spiritual disciplines and personal relationships that will enable them to experience the joy that I have experienced in the long obedience of pastoral ministry.

      My experience has confirmed that the most effective way to nourish our souls is not to depend on extraordinary moments of spiritual inspiration or dramatic changes in the patterns of our life. Instead, the foundation of spiritual nourishment is practicing the ordinary, time-tested disciplines of reflection on scripture, spiritual reading, prayer combined with what John Wesley called spiritual conversation with trusted friends in Christian community, and self-giving service to others. Our ministries depend upon what we do with our ordinary time in ordinary places.

      Ordinary time can also represent a fallow season in our lives and ministries. I was going through one of those fallow seasons in both my congregation and my own life when a farmer friend taught me that every field needs a fallow season. During such a season, the soil is plowed but left unplanted so the nutrients in the soil can be restored to be more productive in the future. Without a fallow season, the earth will become depleted and no longer able to produce healthy crops. When nothing appears to be happening, the soil actually is being replenished for a growth season ahead.

      My friend challenged me to use my personal fallow season to dig deeper into the soil of my soul so the Spirit of God could prepare me for more productive days ahead. He taught me to use the fallow season in my congregation as a time to pause from our hyperactivity; a space for deeper reflection on our mission, our ministry, and our calling; a time to renew our sense of God’s Spirit at work within us by looking for signs of new life in unexpected places. With the psalmist, I experienced the way the Holy Spirit satisfied the one who was parched with thirst, and he filled up the hungry with good things! (Ps. 107:9).

      This six-week guide focuses on themes I have found critically important for my ministry in the ordinary days and the fallow seasons: power, people, place, proclamation, perseverance, and promise. The daily readings are designed to help us develop our custom-made practices of spiritual formation to sustain and strengthen our lives and ministries in the ordinary times.

      Daily Scripture

      The nonnegotiable witness of the Christian tradition is that genuine transformation is always rooted in living with scripture so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, the written Word becomes a living Word in and through us. In this process we enter into scripture not for information but for participation. We read the Word not in order to extract sermon points or abstract principles but to guide us into life-transforming behaviors.

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