There is only today

I meet weekly with our interns to talk about ministry and what we're learning together, and to support each other and pray together. The interns at the church are really remarkable ministers of the Gospel and they will be making a difference for the Kingdom for a long time. I'm privileged to work with them.

Today, we were talking about how some people think about youth ministry as a stepping stone to pastoral ministry. We talked about how important it is that really gifted people see any type of ministry as a life long calling.

That prompted a conversation about the impact interns make. I asked them if they remembered all the interns who had worked in their youth groups and children's ministries when they were growing up. Of course they did. I remember the young people I grew up with, too. I remember my dear friend David Farley who taught me so much about music ministry and the joy of arts and creativity in ministry. I remember my dear friend Robert Brown who taught me so much about pastoral care and what kind of a person a ministry ought to be. Both of those guys impacted my life deeply and shaped the kind of Christian and the kind of minister I am. There were lots of others, many of them volunteers or college kids.

So, even if you're an intern and even if you are a volunteer, and even if you are a teenager helping out with Bible School: Your ministry is not something that happens someday in the future. Someone is being shaped by your ministry right now. And lots of people will remember you and what you invested in their lives forever.

This is important, and I think we all need to keep it in mind. So many times, especially when we are young and starting out, we get the idea that we are really just learning and helping out and preparing for the real thing that comes later. It's just not true--whatever you do matters more than you know and someone will remember it forever. The danger in this thinking is that we might never shake it. We might get to thinking that the church we serve while we are in seminary is just a student appointment, or think that we're getting ready to "get our own church" when we work as an associate pastor, or suppose that our time as a pastor in a small church is preparing us for when we get to the big church.

It's true that each thing we do teaches us things that help us later on. But that doesn't diminish anything in the meantime. Whatever we are doing is the now of our call, and God uses it for eternity. There is only today.