The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Assignment That Looks Nothing Like the Calling
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Hey there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Today is day four in our unwrapped Christmas series, where we're exploring the messy, hidden, sometimes disruptive parts of the Christmas story that we hardly ever think about, but that actually make it even more beautiful. And today we're going to be sitting with Mary, not just her calling, but what that calling actually looked like. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders of ChemistryStaffing.com, and your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Let's be real, when Mary said yes to God, I doubt she imagined childbirth in a stable. I doubt that she pictured having to flee her country or hearing whispers about her reputation. I doubt that she thought about standing at the foot of a cross 33 years later. She said yes to a calling and stepped into an assignment that looked nothing like what she thought it would. Can you relate? Can you relate? We tend to glamorize Mary's story. We focus on the angel and the song and the joy, but think about her reality. An unmarried teenage girl in a deeply religious culture. She was told she was pregnant with the Son of God, and no one would believe her. Her fiance considered leaving her. Her community likely assumed the worst about her. And we all know what that was. She was physically uncomfortable, she was emotionally overwhelmed. And yet, what did Mary do? She stayed obedient. And that obedience didn't lead to ease. Far from it. It led to chaos and to travel, uncomfortable travel, and to exhaustion, and ultimately to holding the Savior in her arms with no midwife, no crib, no help. So here's the brutal truth. God's calling on your life is real, but the excitement might not look like what you expected. Now, that doesn't mean you heard wrong. It just means that you're human. And this one kind of hits close to home for many of us ministry leaders, especially. You felt called, you felt called to shepherd and to teach and to serve to make a difference. And you said yes, resounding, yes, Jesus, I'm all in. But now you're knee deep in spreadsheets, you're managing volunteers who don't show up, you're putting out those fires, you're wrestling with budgets, you're wrestling with your own burnout, and you're trying to lead with integrity in a place that sometimes feels like it's it just feels like it's pulling you apart. And maybe part of you is quietly thinking, this just isn't what I signed up for. Can I just say that doesn't make you faithless? That makes you honest. And even Mary probably pondered at times, is this really how God works? But here's the thing, she didn't walk away, she stayed, she carried the weight, she gave birth to redemption in the middle of chaos. And so can you. Here's the bottom line for today: a calling is holy, but that doesn't mean that the assignment will always feel glamorous, or that the assignment will always even seem fair. God might be growing something eternal in a situation that you can barely survive. I've talked with so many church staff over the years who feel like they're on the edge of burnout, not because they don't love the calling, but because of what we just described, that day-to-day assignment just feels impossibly heavy. They expected vision and they got spreadsheets. They expected transformation and they got sideways emails from people that don't have a nice thing to say. They expected joy and they got fatigue. But what if the calling hasn't changed? What if the presence of difficulty isn't the absence of calling, but the cost of obedience? And maybe, just maybe, God's doing more in the chaos than you could ever see in the comfort. So here's today's request reflection questions for you. I give you a couple every day here. First one is, where are you feeling disappointed by the gap between your calling and your current assignment? Right? There's a gap there. Where are you feeling disappointed in that gap? And then secondly, what if this is still a part of God's plan? Not a detour, but the actual path. Think about that today. I hope that's been helpful to you as we continue this unwrapped series right here on the podcast again tomorrow. I hope you'll join me. And if I haven't already said so, I hope you and your family have just an incredible Christmas season. Have a good one.
