Minister as Counterweight

A fellow minister at another congregation told me that, though his church was filled COVID-19 anxieties, he felt almost completely non-anxious. He wasn’t bragging about this. Frankly, he was surprised by it. He also noticed that his non-anxious presence was shaping many of the conversations among his church leaders.

“It's really helping,” he laughed. “I can’t believe it, but it is.”

A visual came to my mind: a playground teeter-totter. On one side his congregation was weighed down by fears and concerns. He, on the other side, was a counterweight buoying the congregation back into the air.

They are anxious. He is not. Lift off.

But despite what many organizational leadership books suggest, leadership – especially ministry – is much more than just being a non-anxious presence. In fact, sometimes ministers believe their churches are not anxious enough.

Take the recent events in our country as an example. Some ministers are more involved – and more anxious – than their congregations about any number of issues. Their preaching and teaching, as well as organizational recommendations, reflect this. I think about the teeter-totter again. The church is in one place, and the minister acts as a counterweight, bringing the church back into a balance.

So is counterweight an appropriate metaphor for ministry?

I remember a job interview in which I was asked about “my metaphor for ministry.” I laughed, because no minister thinks about her metaphor for ministry before walking into a hospital room, or counseling a broken couple, or even preparing a sermon. She just does it.

But perhaps Paul, in Eph. 4, suggests something akin to a counterweight mode of ministry. Perhaps anchor would be the more appropriate term. So that the church doesn’t get tossed about wildly by our world, God gives the church ministers (4:11-14).

Are ministers called to be agents of anchoring balance? Stabilizing counterweights? If so, someone needs to point out the obvious: counterweights are always oppositional. And oppositional isn’t always sustainable.

So, ministers, how do we do this?

By God’s grace, it seems. My friend was right about that.