A LESSON MY UNPLEASANT SITUATION HAS TAUGHT ME ABOUT PEOPLE.
As I look around me and I see the plight of so many struggling ministers of the gospel, I respond in compassion by developing various practical teachings that could help them experience success in ministry. I have also however observed that no matter the amount of teachings, seminars and conferences that are given to these people, usually not more than 2% come back with a testimony.
In my own ministry where we have over 1000 pastors and ministers under me, it has always been a burdening thought why so many of my subordinates struggle to build a thousand-member church.
This week, I hope I would be able to nail down at least one of the major reasons I have discovered, is responsible for the ineffectiveness of many of the people in ministry. As I have said there might be various reasons responsible for success or lack of success of various individuals. As true as that is, I still believe that the topic we are going to address this week, affects the success and lack of success of all people no matter their spheres of engagement.
The nature of my work demands that I spend a lot of time with people. In the course of carrying out my duties as a pastor, I spend close to 80% of my day with people. This has enabled me to not only act as an adviser and counselor to many but even more so, I have been able to see myself in the role of an observer of human behavioral patterns.
There is another very favorable factor working in my favor. That is the fact that in the last eight years, I have not been able to travel out of my base in Ukraine due to governmental persecutions I have to endure in the country. As a way of bringing myself into more productivity and effectiveness, I decided to turn my house into a retreat ground, where batches and batches of people of different works of life come to learn and study with me for the weekend. So every weekend, I have the rare privilege of hosting between 60 to100 people in my house week in, week out. We interact, we talk, we joke, we laugh, we study, etc.
This close interaction and engagement with people from all works of life, afforded me the rare privilege of studying how people live their lives on regular basis. It’s a complete departure from my experience as a pastor when I mainly mounted the pulpit to preach, teach or admonish. It is totally different when you have people in your house for four days at a row, eating together, joking together and sleeping together. It is not the same as the hellos and how are you sir? Of what happens after a nice message on a Sunday morning.
It is entirely a different case when you have just seen off a batch of 100 people on Monday morning, knowing that Thursday evening you will welcome another batch. They see the way you live as a minister. This is the real deal friends, because you cannot keep on pretending that you are who you are not all year long. They see you for who you really are. And you see them for who they are at least for those four days.
It is this experience even though it started as something not very pleasant, when you cannot travel out of the country, that God has used to teach me the lesson I want to share with you this week.
To be continued tomorrow…
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHURCH AND NATION
By Pastor Sunday Adelaja.
