One of the most godly people to enter our pastoral world was a woman in the church named Helga. She was 20 years our senior but far more our senior in maturity in Christ. I had all the seminary degrees. She knew God and knew herself before God.
For some reason in God's plan she was drawn to encourage my wife and me. And it was a ministry of encouragement, not correction. She did not nitpick. She offered helpful words and a welcoming home and large corrections.
Large corrections are the opposite of nit picking. Nit picking is detailed correction -- tone of voice, choice of words, order of ideas, song selection, typefonts. Yes, I have heard all of those and more over the years. She observed, prayed, observed more -- then offered her observation in a grace filled way. In the years we knew her, she made just two or three corrections. They were all game changers. They recalibrated my compass to North. Those kinds of observations are worth their weight in gold.
I will always remember one in particular.
I rarely preached in that context -- but I gave pastoral oversight to single, adult, and women's ministries. She worked in the women's area and had occasion to sit with me in meetings and discussions.
I was young, energetic, filled with vision and ideas and doctrine. I pressured people with my leading, but I did not know it. I was an idealist. I wanted the church to be all she could be -- and God's people to be all they can be. I was full of promise and destiny too. I looked forward to being a senior pastor. I knew it would be in a big metropolitan area, where people would appreciate my ideas.
One day, as she knew we were considering a call to another church, she offered up one of her large observations. "Mark," she said, "I hope you get to work in a rural church. Life is much slower in rural churches than in metropolitan areas. What you would see in a rural church is that people are slow -- and they change very slowly."
At first I ignored her idea. But I shared it with my wife, who found it intriguing. Then I told a mentor or two about it and they told me I should listen. Apparently I was conveying impatience to people. Apparently I thought I was made of more responsive stuff than most. I thought educated and urban people would be more responsive too.
I did not know myself at all. Helga knew it. But she did not know it in a condescending way. And she made her correction in a way that would reset my compass, adjust my thinking.
God did take me from there to a humble group of folks where I served for over ten years. Many of the bleatings of the sheep came from them (and I will share more of these). But Helga was right -- we change slowly, very slowly, no make that very very slowly.
David Powlison says it is enough to take one bit of truth and apply it to one bit of life. I find that hard to swallow still. But I am grateful for Helga loving me enough to make a patient and large observation.
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