Jason Daye 
Welcome to FrontStage BackStage. This week we have a handpicked highlight that we believe you will find valuable. If you do, we invite you to listen to the full conversation. You can find the link to the complete episode in the description. As always, please like, comment, subscribe, and share, so we can continue to bring you meaningful ministry content, helping you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you flourish in both life and leadership. Are you ready? Let's go. And when we think of this idea of ministry, as we enter into this, many of us really wrap ourselves, I think, around, like you said, the verbs, right? Because we feel called into serving a ministry, and so we're thinking about, okay, well, what does that mean, as far as what are we going to do vocationally, you know, what we gonna step to, what actions are we gonna take, and, and oftentimes when we think of purpose, we have these really idolized versions of what that might look like one day, right, and how God is going to use us, and we're excited about that, but, but oftentimes our lives, our ministries seem to fall short from, you know, these idealized visions of what it could be. So, as pastors and ministry leaders, how can we process our lives and our ministries in healthy ways when things do not go as we may have thought or imagined they would?

Kelly Needham 
Well, I would say, welcome to the club, if that's you, by the way. Even the most successful ministry leaders often have hidden failures that you can't see, things that are not going well, so that I think is normative in a broken world, and just our expectations are usually sky high, and that's a good thing. We should expect big things from a big God, but He does not measure things the same way that we do. And when I think about even what I see again across the pages of scripture, you see him calling John the Baptist the greatest man who ever lived, who is a man who had a very quote short-lived ministry that declined, and then he found himself imprisoned and beheaded, and Jesus would say that's a great man, you see him pull David out of the, you know, the pasture and go that's who I want and everybody's looking around going, what, this doesn't make any sense. So God is clearly using a different type of measuring stick, and what success is, what is impressive, what is praiseworthy, what is magnificent, and I think what you see is that measuring stick, that thing that is, is the thing that is impressive in heaven's eyes, is what is magnifying God. What is glorifying God? I think the glory of God is really the most valuable thing in the world, and therefore the real thing that's going to measure a sense of value for us, and that means that there are people in the world who you and I don't know about who have very small numbers in their ministry, very small impact as far as numerical, measurable, visible growth, but yet the eyes of heaven may look and peek over and look down in that, and go, oh, that is the most impressive thing happening right now. That day laborer in India, who is trusting me day after day with hard things, and sharing the gospel with who they get to walk beside each day, right? Or that parent who is just scraping by, but is trusting me and preaching the gospel to their kids and leaning in, or that person suffering from that illness who's offering it to me. I mean, we just don't know, and that type of.. to get back to your, your question, How do we make it through the ministry expectations we had, and when they're failing, I have found I have to really retrain my imagination, steal it back from the culture a little bit, from social media, what I've maybe seen as impressive and glorious, and go, okay, God doesn't see that way, obviously, He weighs things differently. Who is He impressed with? I'm going to daydream about that a little bit, and then go, I want to find myself in the company of the saints, who are after the glory of God and their own heart and the lives of others. Today, it's okay to long for something impressive. I think there's an ache in all of us for grandeur and greatness, and I think Jesus honors that when people are asking about that. His disciples are asking about that. He gives real answers, but his answers are different, and so I have to retrain my imagination and remember that ultimately he is the valuable one, not me, and so far as my life shines light on that, then my life is exceeding maybe the expectations even that I had for it, even if it's not. Impressive to the world, Instagramable, or if anyone here knows about. This audience will fade away, but there is an audience that will last, not just our Lord, but the heavenly, the watching heavenly realm.

Jason Daye 
Yes, that's good, Kelly, and I appreciate that. I think that's helpful. I do want to press in a bit, because I think, I think one of the things that we wrestle with the ministry is, is attention, and you brought it up there, this idea that you know we, we aspire, you know, and a new that that aspirations of grandeur and those types of things, and not necessarily in a selfish way, right, we step into ministry, we feel called into ministry, and so there's this tension between, like, what we might call, like, kingdom ambition, like, hey, there's an urgency here, you know, people are lost, they're struggling, they're broken, we have, we know who can bring healing and wholeness to their life, you know, like, so there's this kingdom ambition, like, man, I want to make a huge impact, because this is real, right. We also have very important biblical teachings around the idea of contentment, right. And so, so we had this tension, they, and they're like sparring partners, almost, you know, kingdom ambition, and then society of contentment. So, how do we hold those tensions? How do we, you know, work through those senses of urgency and, and, and wanting to share the good news of Jesus, of wanting to see people come to wholeness and healing in their lives, and feeling like, man, the more of that I can do in our minds, you know, we just, we just think, hey, the more of that I can do, the more people that come to Christ, the more people that get to experience that, so we have that on one sided, but then we also have the contentment side of our ministry in our life, and, and we don't want to, you know, burn out, and we don't want to, you know, you know, destroy our families because we're chasing, so there are these two pieces, and sometimes it's hard to discern, sometimes it's hard to navigate, I think very much so in ministry I could tell story after story, personal stories myself, and stories of so many other ministry friends, brothers and sisters serving the kingdom, who have wrestled with that tension. So talk to us a little bit, help us, help us with that tension.

Kelly Needham 
Yeah, well, I think the desire to want to make a difference is a good desire. So I think it's good to start there, and, and say the fact that we want our lives to count and matter for something is good. We were made pre-fall in the garden before Satan has entered in chapter three. Adam, even given work to do, work that mattered. So, like, having work to do that matters and is making a difference is, I think, built into who we are, so I think that is good, but then you have this other tension post-fall, right after sin enters, that we really can't do anything at all on our own. So Jesus will say this in John 15, right, apart from me you can do nothing. So again, we have kind of some bad news we have to deal with there, of what does it mean that Jesus would look at human doing and say, unless it's done through me, it's nothing? I mean, to just think about that, think about the human achievements in the world that are done apart from Christ, people that are not believers, that Jesus is looking at, saying it's nothing, which is a little scary for me, and it's actually been a good thing to meditate on, to go, okay, so there are things that I can do that are visible, impact other lives, leave some ripple effects, and in the final analysis, in the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus could look at it and say it's nothing. Ooh, that's like not how I define nothing. I define nothing as like sitting at home doing a, but right here you see in John 15, him saying, "Abide, abide in me, and you'll bear fruit. To just be with him, to stay with him, to remain with him. He's saying fruits going to come whether you try or not, but if you get away from me, no matter how hard you work, it's going to be nothing. Apart from me, you can do nothing, which tells me the only real doer in the world making a difference is Jesus. That he really is the active agent here. He does not need us, but he has built us to be a part of it and wants us. So it is right to want to make a difference, but just again, his definitions are so different in what is actually making a difference, what is actually valuable, and what's actually lasting, and that's helped give me a category for knowing God is productive, knowing God being still in his presence is not a forsaking of impact on the world for the sake of Christ, because he's told me my first job is to essentially be a recipient, to be a receiver, to receive from him, to be with him, to abide with him, to make my main goal to just stay close to him and. As I do, he's promised that fruit will come in my life, because that's really what we want in ministry, right? We want fruitfulness, real kingdom fruitfulness, right? But fruitfulness comes from being plugged in, and so as soon as my ministry endeavors, and I know pastors feel this, I'm married to a pastor, soon as, like, I have a book to write, and an article to write, and an interview to do, and all of that is stealing me away from time abiding with Jesus. There should be a caution flag waving for me to go. You can keep doing those things, and they may look lovely, and they may be postable on Instagram, and other people may look at it and applaud it, but am I really? Is the fruit there, in the way that I would want it to be, in the way it's going to last, in the final analysis, as Paul talks about, right, Corinthians, that it's all going to be tested by fire. I want my work to stand, and that starts with abiding, that starts with receiving from Him and loving Him. That means I have permission to do that, an obligation to do that, and know that that urgency I feel has to go through that channel, it cannot bypass that. The urgency is real, but I am not God. I still have to start as a recipient of His grace and His ministering to me to even have a chance at making an impact, it has to start with plugging in first.

Jason Daye
FrontStage BackStage is a ministry of PastorServe. Here at PastorServe, we love walking alongside of pastors and ministry leaders. If you'd like to learn details on how you might qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. Now, FrontStage BackStage is more than just another podcast. In fact, we create an entire toolkit that complements every single conversation. You can find this toolkit at PastorServe.org/network for this episode, and for every episode in the toolkit, you'll find a number of resources, including our ministry leaders' growth guide. In the growth guide, you'll find both questions and insights that are pulled from the conversation that you and the leaders at your local church or ministry can process together to consider how this content relates to your particular ministry context. Again, you can find the toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. Now we hope that you are finding this content valuable, and if so, we'd love for you to share, comment, like, follow, subscribe. That engagement is incredibly important, and also, please take a moment to give us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your engagement and your reviews help other pastors and ministry leaders help find this valuable content. I'm Jason Daye, and encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. Thank you, and God Bless.