I believed that spiritual revival would begin with my ministry. Honestly. This was the spirit in which I entered my first ministry placement. I was hired as a summer youth worker for a small Anglican parish on the tip of Vancouver Island. I was barely 18 years old and brimming with faithful enthusiasm. I saw the summer ahead of me as one filled with abundant blessings and ministerial success.

But the summer was not what I expected. Two days after I arrived, the pastor left for a two-month vacation, effectively leaving me by myself. The car I drove up north broke down 4 times, and the repairs ate away all the money I was saving. I moved from residence to residence, at one point living in the rusted old trailer on the back of a truck for 3 weeks. I launched youth events and parish events that no one ever attended, where I was left alone in the church, staring at an empty parking lot, for 90 minutes.

On almost a weekly basis I would go back to wherever I was staying, weep, and think about packing it all in and driving home.

Have you ever been so deeply disappointed in your ministry that you question the very nature of your calling? I’d love to say that I have a 3-step process to lead us out of such funks, but I don’t. In every ministry position I have held, from youth worker to parish priest, to Cathedral dean, I have wrestled with being so deeply disheartened in ministry that my vocation has felt shaken. The only comfort I can muster stems from knowing that all who step forward in ministry experience such times.  

Paul is my personal favorite. We often see Paul as a symbol of successful ministry, but he was someone who experienced profound discouragement in his ministry. Yes, he established faith communities, but these communities were often mired in controversy, back-biting, and dissention. He often felt the need to defend his credentials, and at one point he had a falling out with his closest colleagues. On top of this Paul experienced arrests, beatings, and imprisonments. The last that we see of him is as an elderly man under house arrest, talking to anyone who would come to visit.

Were there were days when no one came? Were there days when Paul felt that he had been left aside?  Did Paul ever question whether his ministry was divinely forgotten?

It can be easy to believe the success-myth of the world around us. The world conveys the message that bigger always equals better.  Thus, when our endeavors fail to be sufficiently big, we see them as failing to be sufficiently blessed. But faithful ministry isn’t defined by the success we receive or by how many people attend our programs. Instead, the call of ministry, indeed the call for all spiritual life, is to walk the path set before us, no matter what it looks like in the moment. We follow the way of Jesus.

Before we nod our heads in blind-agreement, let’s first recognize what this means: Jesus walks the way of the cross. As we place our feet in his footsteps, we place ourselves along a path where we may encounter stumbling and hardships, and times when we may be tempted to believe that death reigns supreme.

But the good news is that the path to the cross, as hard as it may seem, is the path to life. By embracing the cross we embrace our resurrection. As we walk with Jesus, our times of disheartening can be shared with him. But sharing our disappointments and disillusions with Jesus isn’t just about receiving divine commiseration. Jesus doesn’t just offer us spiritual pats on the pats and gentle “there-there’s”. Jesus points us beyond the frustration, beyond the grave, to the reality of new life, and he gives us his strength to walk in that way. The promise of the cross is that life emerges from places of darkness. That is the story of Jesus, it was the story of Paul, and it is our story as well.

We never know how our ministry will evolve. Nor do we know how this moment will transform us for the next. But we do know, through the testimony of scripture and the example of all who have gone before us, that our ministry is not defeated.