ON TINKERING

The pastoral ministry is an inexact science.  It calls for experimentation.   It calls for artfulness.  It calls for tinkering.

Plan to tinker.

One of my biggest surprises in the pastoral ministry was that there is no clear path on how everything really should be done and how everything really fits together and how everything really works!

After nearly four decades of ministry, there continue to be nights when I come home convinced I have no idea of what I am doing or what I should be doing.

Not that there isn’t a lot of help! 

Those pastors who have had significantly “successful” ministries write books and lead seminars.  Business leaders have articles to read and conferences to attend.  Hopefully, much of what your professors at seminary said still echoes in your head.  You have laypeople who have both strong and helpful advice.  (Some of their strong advice is not helpful, and some of their helpful advice is not strong.)   

How do you put it all together for significance in ministry?

And then there is the situation on the ground.  The real life situation in which you minister often differs from what others are addressing.  They may speak to a different time, from a different theological position, with different constraints, for different ends.

How do you synthesize all that everyone else is saying, doing, teaching with the circumstances, frustrations, opportunities, assets and liabilities that you have.

Plan to tinker.

A ministry based on tinkering allows for four dynamics.

Tinkering necessitates patience.  Picture a granddad out in a garage with some tools, some other gadgets, a couple of whatchamacallits, some wood and wire, a problem to solve and some decent ideas.  He experiments.    It doesn’t work.  He tries something else.  That isn’t quite right either.  He sets it aside until later in the week.  Sleeps on it.  He comes back to the problem off and on for a couple of weeks, and finally, there it is!  It works:  a leaf rake that rakes, piles and bags automatically!  

Don’t try to get everything all figured out at the front end of your ministry.  It doesn’t work that way.  Patience.  Tinker.  Try this.  Try that.  Come back to it later.  Tinkering necessitates and breeds patience!  (Wasn’t your granddad one of the most patient people you knew?)

Patience is a crucial tool for ministry.

Tinkering thrives on playfulness.  Whimsy.   New approaches.  Different connections.  “Hey, what if I put this and that and that other thing together?  I wonder what that would look like?”  “This would never fit with that, but I think I will try it.”  Remember, most of the best things you learned as a child grew out of play time.  For you to tinker, you will need a wry smile, a silly notion, a cockamamie idea.  This is NOT a call for irreverence (see previous article); it is a call for playfulness.

Playfulness is a crucial tool for ministry.

Tinkering provides freedom for a fresh start.  You may tinker with something for months and no matter what you do, you can’t make it work.  So you set it aside.  Put it up on the shelf and leave it until later.  In the meantime you begin to tinker on something else.

Too often in ministry we get locked in to something that, no matter how hard we and others try, just never seems to work.  If you have a “tinker mentality,” you will feel free to set it aside, put it up on the shelf and leave it until later.  In the meantime, you can move on to something else.  Time is too short and resources are too few to get locked into things in ministry that aren’t working.  If you lessen your emotional investment (the word “tinker” connotes limited investment), you will be more likely to move on to the next idea.

Freedom for a fresh start is a crucial tool for ministry.

Tinkering allows for serendipity.  The word “serendipity” comes from a Persian tale of three princes from Serindip who by accident and happenstance determine the nature of a lost camel.  Put enough incongruent things together and no telling what might happen.

You have experienced serendipity.  A movie you watched happened to give you an insight into a counseling situation that made you think of a Bible passage that led you to an insight for a sermon that helped to change a person’s life.  You did not sit down to watch a movie so that you could change a life.  It worked out that way.  It is called serendipity; or in our language, it is called the hand of God.  Serendipity allows room for God!

Serendipity is a crucial tool for ministry.

So don’t get too anxious about what isn’t working.  Don’t get too serious toward any one direction.  Books, conferences, articles, sage advice:  put some of this together with some of that.   

Tinker.

See where God leads.  Pastoral ministry is an inexact science.  The pastor who tinkers is the pastor who is on the path toward significance.