finding peace in slow progress
Why God doesn’t always call us to operate according to the deadline driven growth that we’re accustomed to seeing in the corporate world
Three and a half years have gone by since this organization was formed. After starting it, gathering my initial email list, and diving in—I disappeared. Absence might appear to be inaction, but nothing could be further from the truth. The past three years have been a learning curve, a spiritual seismic wave, and what can I say? The ministry hasn’t died yet. As I’ve resurfaced from being underwater for three years, one friend verbalized what many people might be thinking. “We haven’t heard from you—I wasn’t sure you were working on this project anymore.”
There are two reasons for silence and lack of communication. Those two reasons are 1) The importance of protecting my family, and 2) Behind-the-scenes things I was working on.
For those who like to skim, key points are in bold ;)
1 Family In Ministry
About ten years ago, I watched a family called into ministry crumble to pieces. There’s so much to their story, but the bottom line is that the pressures of ministry, and the personal strains that accompanied that, left them without a marriage. Consequently they lost their ministry in the process. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d seen this, but this was the closest I’d been to it and the grief of seeing my dear friends’ marriage crumble was a huge lesson to me: Put too much stress on your family for your ministry calling, and you might lose both your family and your ministry. It’s not in any way, shape, or form that I can see the destruction of a family to be part of God’s plan for a ministry. I determined quite literally, it would be better to lose a ministry to keep a family. A few months ago, it was excruciating to surrender this ministry in a willingness to let it go, but then, for some reason, some of the pressures lifted, and we’re still stepping forward.
I have a degree in Education. One of the classes that impacted me the most was Early Childhood Development. In that class I learned the importance of time with children. Time. This simple thing feels so insignificant when you’re doing it; but it’s so critical. Time with children, and I would argue spouses as well, creates foundations of trust, well-being, happiness, and serves to increase positive mental health. Time spent in care and attention safeguards family members from feeling like they need to seek love outside the family unit for the love that they were designed to receive inside the family. The lessons of seeing ministry families fall apart gave me a strong determination never to do that. So I have tried to protect my time with my family; and I hope I’ll be able to keep that perspective.
What this means is that I only have a fraction of the time that I need to do this ministry well. Designs are put out half-baked. The website needs improvements that it may not get. I could be fundraising and applying for grants. But that is absolutely beyond my scope. I work for a business consultant right now, and one of her key phrases of advice is, “functional not fancy.” It’s become my mantra—is ‘functional not fancy’ what I want? No. LOL. I love fancy. Does it work? Sigh, yes it’s fine. I have a list a mile long of things that need to be done for Wisdom of God, and I’ll probably do one or two of them this year. It’s so supremely frustrating. This slowness has taxed my faith to the core. But I hear encouragement in my spirit when I pray. Just take the next little step. Keep pressing forward. Trust. Relax. Let it go—let your expectations go.
And so I will trust. I will trust that this ministry doesn’t need to fly forward until it does. I will put my trust in God’s timing. I will take the next step forward even though I want to take five. This is the lot that I’ve been given, and it would be a defiance of faith to throw it in the trash. So here I go, off and … not running; more like sliding forward in a trail of goo like a snail. Getting nowhere fast. Like maybe if I work really hard, I can make it halfway across the sidewalk. Let’s hope someone doesn’t step on me on the way. Yeah. That’s my vibe exactly!
So this next four years, while my youngest finishes high school, it may well be that the only thing I get done is slowly create the visual curriculum that will serve as the foundation for this ministry in the future. If we get enough supporters to regularly put up one billboard a month; that will be a bonus.
2 What has been done
In the last few years I was able to do get done what I probably could’ve done in about three months at work. I created Version 3 of the website. This version is a culmination of the knowledge accrued from the mistakes of Versions 1 and 2. It does not try to teach everything about God on the first page (lol, who ever thought someone could do that hahahahaha—yeah. I did). It has a defined outcome and goal—to encourage viewers to take a next step of faith. It has less of my agenda and more of a scriptural basis—which is always the goal of this organization. While I would like to see improvements to the design, this website will probably serve as a solid basis for the foundation of Wisdom of God.
In addition to that, the Intro to the Bible Guide has been written. Many people questioned why I needed to reinvent the wheel, when there are plenty of similar guides out there. But having reviewed many Bible guides, there was one key problem. I don’t know what it is, but Christian writers love to weave the threat of hell into every evangelical piece. And honestly, it’s not how God evangelizes new people. Don’t believe me? Read your Bible with a focus on how God evangelizes those who knew nothing of him. There needed to be a Bible Guide that had an absence of threats of hell and promises of heaven—trying to muscle people into belief. Truthfully, the knowledge of the Word of God itself is astronomically more powerful in its ability to save than any persuasive arguments.
Three years. It kills me that it took three years to do these two things. If I had stayed in contact with my supporters and mailing list during this time, it would have taken much longer, since the time it takes to compose emails and communications is not insignificant. I questioned God through this time. Why didn’t he provide a way forward faster? Why weren’t people called into support of this ministry? It actually wasn’t until I finished it that people started to say, “Oh wow, this is a cool project.” It was a long, lonely road. I’m so glad this last three years is behind me. Now I’m ready to move [slowly] into the next era
So what’s next?
I have a laundry list of things that need to be done. Is anyone reading this? Are you still reading this?! Ha ha! If you are tell me. I don’t know if anyone will. But this will be a good reference even for myself as I move forward into the next phase.
Create the Curriculum. Top priority— this is based on prayer, experimentation, and observation over the last twenty years, I know what needs to be built—a six year curriculum that goes through key verses in the whole Bible. The images created in these four years will be somewhat of a rough draft of what the full launch will look like.
Revamp the Website. The current website is on Squarespace. Squarespace, are you listening? Squarespace has been great for creating a full-service website, but it’s expensive, and for it’s cost, its design capabilities are frustratingly clunky. I’m familiar with Wordpress and it’s a much more robust platform. I would love to see the whole website rebuilt on Wordpress with some design improvements, but at this point it feels like a luxury I might not have.
Create Products. One of the things that God convicted me of a couple years into this website is that he didn’t just want the audience of this ministry served with his love, but he wanted the supporters served with his love as well. This is a huge puzzle to me, and these next few years I’ll be actively thinking on this. What do Christians with a heart to see God’s love shared with the public need and want? What would delight them and make them feel seen, heard, and loved? Encouraged forward? Built up? More victorious in their Christian lives? These are products that need to be created and sold to support this organization and support Christians in their lives. One idea is to become sort of a Christian Etsy or Christian bookstore. Because of money and time, we’ll have to start with our own products; but eventually I would like to see artists, musicians, and teachers supported in this space.
Support Myself. Are you familiar with the term tentmaker? Paul and other apostles in the New Testament made tents to support their own ministry. I reflect on the last ten years or so that I’ve been working on this ministry and I was alarmed recently when I realized the amount of financial gain our family has forgone over the years. To show for it, we have floors that need to be refinished, wobbly kitchen cabinets, appliances that need replacing, front and back steps that need rebuilt, medical bills that pile up, medical needs that aren’t being addressed because of limited budget, and let’s not talk about our retirement savings—Hahahaha (laughing instead of crying).
Thank God for my optimistic husband. When I confessed how much we’d sacrificed for this project, his response was, “Don’t even think about it. If this is what God has called you to do, then what else would you have done? We’ll be fine.”
In the next four years one of my main focuses may be (this is still in prayerful consideration) to create a marketing business that will allow me to create more income in less time than my 9-5, and allow me to both support my income and carve out more time to manage this ministry. I have the same qualms about that as I did with my freelancing business—to establish a book of clients that depend on me for their marketing when my loyalties will be clearly divided between them and this ministry—it doesn’t seem fair to them. Or will it be fine—to look at this ministry as simply another client, and structure my business well to serve multiple clients? It’s the only way forward that I can see right now, so for this endeavor, I think of Proverbs 19:21 and wonder how it will actually play out: Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
So we’ll see! I hold all of these things loosely in my hands, fully aware that God could have something completely different in store. And by the grace of God, I will endeavor to proceed carefully, stepping forward into the next small task.
Onward and Upward!
Love,
Jessica