This book is an extended reflection on the joy of ministry. Currie reflects upon a time a fellow pastor asked him, "Isn't ministry wonderful?" This caused Currie to reevaluate his view of ministry and no longer think of it in terms of his weariness but "in terms of the gift and the task of pointing to Jesus Christ" (x). Ministry is hard and sometimes discouraging, but it is also filled with many occasions of joy. Remembering the joy elevates ministry from a mere duty to a supreme delight.
Currie argues that "[w]e have grown busy but not joyful" (5). Joy does not refer to fun and relaxation. Instead, it is the Christian answer to life. We need to recapture the joy of Sunday worship. "The joy of Sunday worship comes... not from a commitment on our part to do something, much less to do nothing, but from the gift of the day itself, the way it interrupts our lives with its claims and so in its strangeness recalls us 'to the great interruption of the everyday world by Easter Day'" (13).
God's glory has been revealed to us in Christ: "God's glory is not the glory of some absolute transcendence but the radiance of God's presence as it reaches us in Jesus Christ and renders God knowable to us" (42). We discover that the triune life of God "is radiant, and what it radiates is joy" (44). This is revealed in the incarnated life of the church - a truth we find difficult to embrace: "The church has always been tempted to disbelieve its own glory, indeed, to take its own brokenness or miserable failures glory, indeed, to take its own brokenness or miserable failures more seriously than the glory of its life in the crucified and risen Lord. That is why the church has always found the Gnostic option so appealing. The fleshliness of the church so often appears contemptible, and the prospect of a cleaner, more 'spiritual' or intellectual existence is so compelling that we soon come to despise the smallness and ineffectual nature of congregational life, preaching, study, service, prayer" (46).
The joy of ministry "is not to be found in theories about ministry or in the mastery of professional skills or even in the ethics or theology of ministry" (61). "There is nothing more intellectually challenging, psychologically demanding, physically exhausting, and theologically satisfying than ministry. It is hard. It is full of disappointments and griefs and even failures. It takes courage. And hope. And often simple, stupid persistence. It is relentlessly embarrassing in the incommensurability of our gifts and the task set before us" (100-101).
"Ministry is hard, or perhaps more accurately, ministry is a form of love, the most unsentimentally hard of the Spirit's gifts. It is a commentary on the weakness of our own theology of ministry that we should ever be tempted to think that ministry could be about something else--a strategy, perhaps, or a skill--or that love could ever be thought easy or riskless or even manageable" (104).
Part of the pastoral task is to preach faithfully: Why is the intellectual adventure of preaching, of studying Scripture, of straining to engage the culture with the power of this Word, even of listening to the way the culture has been engaged at other times and places by this Word, why is this not the passion of a lifetime? Who else gets to do this each week? Why does our study of Scripture and the joy of its proclamation not make us dance as joyfully as the Torah does for Jews who have completed the cycle of its readings? (112)
Like good farmers, we pastors perform many of the same repetitive tasks each week. But good ministry does not happen fast. The privilege and task of pointing to Christ as a community takes a long time - and it is a joyful task!
This is an outstanding book for all in ministry! I know it lifted my spirits and give me a fresh perspective.
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