For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:5-7
“Ministers are those who can make their search for authenticity possible, not by standing on the side as neutral screens or impartial observers, but as articulate witnesses of Christ, who put their own search at the disposal of others. This hospitality requires that ministers not only know where they stand and whom they stand for, it also requires that they allow others to enter into their lives, to come close to them, and to ask how their lives are connected with one another.
Nobody can predict where this will lead us, because every time hosts allow themselves to be influenced by their guests they take the risk of not knowing how their lives will be affected. But it is exactly in common searches and shared risks that new ideas are born, that new visions reveal themselves, and that new roads become visible.
We do not know where we will be two, ten, or twenty years from now. What we can know, however, is that humans suffer and that a sharing of this suffering can help us move forward. Ministers are called to make this forward thrust credible to their many guests, so that they do not stay still, but have a growing desire to move on in the conviction that the full liberation of humankind is still to come.”
Henri Nouwen in The Wounded Healer: Ministry in a Contemporary Society (New York: Image, 1972) 105-106. This is a solid book. Reply if you want the PDF.
The role of ministers is to welcome others into their journey, to share their search, so that others may be aided, helped, and served. This shapes everyone in the process. It also impacts everyone involved in untold ways as we share both our risks and our suffering.
As I serve a global community of stewards in my role at GTP, I am exposed to challenges in Africa that I could not have imagined, touched by challenges in Asia I never dreamed, stretched by difficulties in Latin America to which I have not related.
It’s both complicated and transforming. Whether you work with people all over the world or from around your neighborhood, your lives shape each other. It’s impossible to chart where this will take you. But I am confident it is similar to what the Apostle Paul described linked to the Corinthians.
Today’s Scripture elaborates on the interconnectedness of suffering, comfort, and hope that we have both with Christ and with each other. This level of sharing has risks, that is, it’s messy, and rewards, it’s uplifting! Nouwen merely spells out what this looks like for us.
Generous ministers care about the searches of others and realize that in helping them, they too are helped.