I get the opportunity to preach on occasion, often about once or twice a month. It’s a familiar activity to me, and it’s one that I’ve trained for my entire adult life. I love it. I really do, but it’s an additional experience and not the primary one of my current vocational life. Still, preaching is what I’ve been called to do, even if not in one congregation, exclusively.
Most often when the service is over, I try to greet as many people as possible, expressing my gratitude for worshiping alongside them. They usually invite me to be their pastor, which I consider honorable, yet I always tell them about my ministry in the marketplace as a brewer. Recently when I shared this with someone, they smiled and said, ‘That sounds like a fun little side gig.’
Actually preaching is my ‘side’ gig, though I definitely don’t diminish the role of preaching to today’s understanding of ‘side hustle’ culture as additionally means of income. It’s just that preaching, at least on a Sunday morning to an established congregation, is something I do in addition to my ministry in work week. In doing so, I find that the sermons I prepare have another level of curation to them, considering that I work a 40-hour job in the secular world and then turn around and preach to mostly those who do the same. Previously, as a full time pastor, I would spend hours preparing a sermon without these aspect in mind.
Now the sermons I prepared were good, I’m sure parts, if not all of it, often went over the heads of my people because I was speaking a language that was unfamiliar. Now, in preparing sermons, I’m re-considering how Jesus preached, traveling in the region, ministering to those in their work week, speaking of economic values that often touched the hearts of those to whom he preached. He spoke in parables about the pearl of great price, the fishing net, and the woman who lost her coin. All of these parables – though in teaching form – undoubtedly spoke to those in a familiar language.
My ‘full time’ gig is a brewer, and in addition to brewing beer, I spend time getting to know my co-workers, regular and visiting customers, and the downtown area folk in Meridian. I hope my way of life ‘preaches’ to them in a language that they understand, and one of the verses that grounds me in this practice is Psalm 37:3-4. It’s the part that says, ‘dwell in the land…feed on His faithfulness…and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ For me, along with a few my closest friends, this scripture is the impetus of understanding what it means to find worth in our work.
One of my favorite authors describes this intersection of worth and work as dedication referencing the 18th century English poet/writer, William Blake, saying that Blake called his faithfulness to work a ‘firm persuasion.’ This author, David Whyte, then says, ‘To have a firm persuasion in our work – to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at the exactly right time – is one of the great triumphs of human experience.’ [David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001), 4.]
Like William Blake, I am firmly persuaded that my work and worth intersect at this point in my life, and it’s because I committed to ‘dwelling in the land…feeding on God’s faithfulness.’ (Psalm 37:3-4) As a result, there is a life that has resurrected in me, one that I thought had died, and it’s one that gives new meaning to life as I brew beer and community mostly and preach occasionally. My ‘firm persuasion’ is that my ministry to the public throughout the work week feeds the sermons I preach on Sundays, and I am grateful and happy.
I pray and hope your work is just as meaningful in whatever vocation you employ.
Cheers.
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