As a young worship leader in college, I started dating a girl who later became my wife. As she and I grew in our relationship, we discovered that we loved serving the Lord together. She helped me with church productions and I served on the drama team that she led. When our relationship became very serious, I grew frightened at the idea of a lifelong commitment, so I broke up with her. After a few months, I realized that my life was empty without her. I knew that we had to spend the rest of our lives together. God meant for us to be together. We needed each other.
Two years after we were married, we went to serve as missionaries in Central Asia. We soon found that our personalities clashed with many of the other Americans there. We felt like we had made a terrible mistake in moving around the world to serve with these people. However, we were still learning the language and we needed their help to survive. They needed teachers for their school and they needed help in planting a church. As difficult as it was for us all, we forced ourselves to get along. For whatever reason, God had us together for that season. We needed each other.
A couple of years later, back in the U.S., I found myself working in a small church with an older pastor. As a young man with lots of energy, I worked hard and tried to implement lots of positive changes to the church’s ministry. I soon discovered, after falling into bed one night in total exhaustion, that my efforts were pointless. The pastor and I were not working together. After some time, we managed to improve our communication and started to involve each other in worship planning, special projects, and ongoing ministry. It took a long time for me to understand that God had placed both of us in the same church and therefore we could accomplish much more if we worked together. Even though we were from different generations, we needed each other.
In all of my formal ministry training, no one ever taught me that I needed other people. My professors taught me about systematic theology, music history, and pragmatic choral procedures, but I never learned that most ministry does not take place on the stage in front of people. Hence, I never realized, until I was serving in ministry, that it’s mostly about people. I thought I had to do all the ministry myself. I thought I had to be a Christian Ministry Superman. But it’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about the Lord. It’s about pleasing Him. And I’ve come to understand that I can’t do it alone. Even if I worked twice as long and twice as hard, I would still need help. There will always be one more service to plan, one more soul to win, one more drummer to be find, one more set to build, one more message to plan, etc… I will never get it all done by myself. You will never get it all done by yourself.
We need each other.
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