I enjoy contacts with our diverse SoulPreaching.Com readers. Sometimes I hear the deep booming baritone that no doubt is a great gift for preaching. Some readers have family connections. Some are imposing figures of 6″5 or higher which really looks powerful behind a pulpit. Yes some of you seem to have had gifts and opportunities that make it almost certain that at least an initial call from a decent situation would afford itself.
But then there are others. The ones who struggle with their senior pastor just to acknowledge their call. The ones who have very little ministerial opportunity due to gender, lack of connections, or whatever.
I have had many people contact me asking, how can I overcome these impediments for ministry. I hear you. You feel God calling you to preach and yet you wonder when God will open the door to a preaching assignment. You believe that you should be a Pastor and yet your senior pastor won’t even give you a recommendation for the entry level church that has just opened up.
You don’t preach fast, and that is what people are going for. You don’t whoop. You are short. You are female. You don’t know anybody. All of these things I have heard from you. Here is my answer…
1) Recognize that there Are successful preachers just like you.
What is your issue? There are other great preachers with the same one. You say that women don’t have the opportunities that men have. That is true, but look at the great women preachers and realize that God can make a way. You have a high pitched tenor voice…look around…look at others who have turned what might be a drawback into a valuable feature….You are short and fat, as wide….
You ain’t connected…I beg to differ, your daddy owns the cattle on a thousand hills. (Psalm 50:10). Everything that is against you was against someone else. You just go head on and watch God do what God will do.
2) Remember The Job Is Ministry.
If you are trying to get to the front of the line, my brother told me that the line to truly help people is always a short one. If you keep ministry as your focus you will always have people to help. You will always have things to do. You will always have a job that God wants you in. Stop looking for the big job, look for the opportunity to help. And there you will find God’s work for you.
3) Start where you are.
Every great undertaking started “in the beginning.” SoulPreaching.Com started with only myself writing about preaching to the winds hoping that someone else would read. The rebuilding of the temple started with the first bricks being placed on the other bricks.
Don’t look to be great, look to be faithful and obedient. Stand up and start right where you are. Watch God turn that ministry that no one wanted into the centerpiece of what God is doing. Stand up and turn that preaching engagement at the downtown mission into the spot that everyone wants. Stand up and turn that soup kitchen into a great model of ministry. Stand up right where you are and do it, whatever that it is.
4) Be Willing To Follow God’s Direction
Yes, follow God. I know, you can’t see the future. Well God can. I know they told you no, well God has a “yes” somewhere. I know that they are telling you that the door is closed. Perhaps it was closed to them, but you go head on and try the door yourself.
To all my readers, I write this simply to say, hold on. Don’t give up. I know it gets difficult sometimes, but know that God wants you to fulfill a position in ministry. Maybe it isn’t the big high steeple urban church. Maybe it isn’t the high profile ministry that everyone wants, but it is where God wants you. In the final analysis, where else would you want to be?
Go head on and Keep on Preaching…God will use you…and you will be ready!
