My most negative ministry experiences

I don't really know why, but I've had the impression for some time that I should share with you some very negative experiences from my life of ministry. This might seem long, and you might question why I share it at all! But I want to be obedient to share these things with those of you who read my blog.  I got a feeling it might be related to my recent studies of Pauline Theology, because Paul said he gloried and boasted in his weaknesses. (2 Cor. 11:30)

One of my worst was the time in ’88 I was teaching at YWAM (Youth With a Mission) in Bogota, Colombia. It was one of the first discipleship schools I ever taught. I was doing well and enjoying the teaching at the YWAM base. But the leader also scheduled a separate meeting downtown on one of the evenings. The founders of YWAM in South America, Wedge and Shirley Alman, (you can look them up on YouTube) were a dynamic duo who made contacts with all levels of society. As a result of their influence, YWAM often held meetings in hotels for upper class folks. This meeting was a dinner meeting with some high ranking military people and others of a higher level of society. We went there, were introduced and seated, and chatted during the meal. Then I was called up to speak to the group on the topic of evangelism, my main emphasis during those years.

I don’t remember being especially nervous before my speech, though I probably did feel somewhat intimidated by the fact that these people were upper class. I have always thought of myself as blue collar. But whether I was nervous or not before speaking, I do remember that as soon as I began to speak, I felt some sort of resistance “in the air.” Maybe it was my imagination (over the years I’ve learned that sometimes my perception of things can be totally distinct from what others perceive in any situation), or maybe it was some sort of demonic opposition to my message, or maybe the people were just resistant to a message on evangelism, I don’t know. Maybe I just wasn’t confident or properly prepared. I guess I won’t know for sure until eternity. All I know is, I just felt like everyone was against me and what I was saying.

I felt sweat break out on my body and face, and felt my mouth go dry. I had some notes I was using for my teaching, so I just kept going, plowing through what I’d prepared. It seemed every face was either hostile or bored and my words were just falling flat from my mouth to the floor. Finally I was finished and I said let’s pray, not because I really wanted to or felt inspired, but because that was just the traditional way of ending a spiritual talk. Everyone bowed their heads and I began to pray, but it was one of the hardest prayers I’ve ever prayed. It felt like I was just up there babbling to myself. I didn’t feel any connection with God whatsoever and felt like everyone in the room was thinking what a fake I was, or how boring, how without empowerment from God I was as a speaker.

As I was praying, I actually felt humiliated and embarrassed, and wished I could slide down behind the podium and slink out underneath the tables! Then I said amen and took my seat. Almost as soon as I was through and out of the limelight, the terrible feeling of pressure and resistance left me and I gradually began to feel more normal. I was embarrassed to greet people as we were leaving, and if I got any compliments, I don’t remember them and certainly felt they were perfunctory. Nobody said I did a bad job, but I don’t think anyone said I did a good one either. I never got any feedback at all. So to this day I don’t know what happened that night, if I really bombed or if it was all in my head. I just know it was a very difficult experience for me!

A second really bad experience also happened in Latin America, though this time not in Colombia but in Panama. I was again teaching a YWAM discipleship training school down there, and as usual, I was enjoying the daytime teaching experience and interaction with students. However, in addition to my teaching duties, I got invited to speak at two churches on separate nights during the week. If I remember right, I spoke on a Thursday night and a Friday night. That Thursday, I taught all morning and a little of the afternoon, and had lunch with the students in between. All was going well. Then I had to get a haircut, so I traveled by bus to a place the students had recommended.

The haircut cost 25 cents, and I was able to pay with a US quarter! During the cut, I was able to witness to most of the people in that barbershop, and it got me very excited! I was on a spiritual high. If I remember right, as I was waiting for the bus back to the base, I was meditating, and felt that the Lord was inspiring me with what to preach that night. So even though I had little time to prepare that day, when one of the students took me to the church for me to speak, I felt confident.

I remember preaching with a lot of fire and enthusiasm, a lot of confidence and anointing. The interesting thing was that the congregation was almost all black, and preaching in Spanish to an all-black congregation just seemed odd to me! The student who took me that night was very enthusiastic and told me the message was great. We prayed over a lot of people at the end of the message.

The next day I taught the usual number of hours, then had the rest of the afternoon off, so I purposed to spend that time in preparation for the evening’s ministry.  It seemed that again, God had given me inspiration and I had the message He wanted me to share. I’ll never forget that message! It was called, “The Blessing” and was about how God sent Jesus to bless us. As I prepared, I was sensing something unusual for my ministry. I’m mostly a teacher, not a minister of healing or deliverance. But as I was writing up my notes for that message, I felt that I was not just bringing a teaching. I was to expect the power of God to move through me to heal, deliver, save, and otherwise touch people in a tangible and powerful way. I was excited, but it was something new for me.

When evening came, the student came to take me to this church. I think we again rode in a bus. I began to feel nervous, but didn’t know why. When we got to the church, I was taken to the pastor’s office to meet him and get ready for the service. It was a fairly large church of several hundred. The previous one was smaller, with a congregation of maybe 200. I met the pastor and he escorted me to a table and chair in his office, and said if I wanted to go over the message, he had to do a few things and I could feel free.

I sat down and began going over my notes. I really don’t know what happened, but I began to feel really nervous. My mouth was dry, my hands were sweaty, and I just felt very uncomfortable, insecure, and afraid. I remembered what another preacher friend had once confided to me. He’d recounted one of his first preaching experiences and said as the time drew near for him to preach, he just wished he could be anywhere but where he was! That was how I felt. I just wished I could go anywhere else and get out of that obligation! I was not confident.

I’ve had that happen before, but usually, once I begin to speak, it goes away. This wasn’t the case that night. During the worship time, I never felt the presence of God’s Spirit at all, and never gained any confidence. Then I was introduced and came to the pulpit to preach. As I began, my mouth began to go dry and it seemed really difficult for me to speak. I felt like everyone could see my fear and lack of confidence, and that made me feel worse. It seemed that fear was radiating from my face! But I didn’t know what to do about it. I had my message and my written notes, and the only thing I could do was plow ahead, hoping “God would come through” somehow. But I never felt His presence at all!

As I was nearing the end of my message, the fear got worse, because I knew where the sermon was leading. I was going to tell these people that I hadn’t come with mere words. I had come with a demonstration of God’s power. He wanted to bless His people, and I wanted them to believe that, whatever they needed, if they’d believe, He could and would give it to them that very night.

The only problem was that by this time, I didn’t believe this myself! I didn’t think God was going to do anything at all, judging by how I felt. So I wanted to not follow through on what I’d planned, and what I’d felt so confident about so many hours before, but there was nowhere else to go! That was my message and it was leading to a time of ministry, and no matter how I felt, I really didn’t know anything else to say but what I’d planned.

So I told the people to stand, and called the worship team up to play. And then I began to call the people to come forward if they had any needs, if they were sick, demonized, or had any sort of breakthrough they needed. I was pretty sure nobody at all was going to come, and if they hadn’t, I would’ve been totally and publicly humiliated! Can you imagine? You give an altar call after such a message, and nobody at all responds?! Well, as I remember it, there was a lag time when no one came at all, and I really began to stress and sweat. But I kept going through the motions of inviting people and telling them God was going to bless them, and after a while, some came forward. The way I remember it, but the time we were through, most of the congregation, several hundred, had come forward and were at the altar.

I went down and began laying hands on people and praying, but I felt no faith whatsoever! I was panicked, and just desperately hoping no one would look to see if anything was happening. Some deacons and the pastor came to help me pray, and gradually, so many were up there that I felt less conspicuous. Finally, I was out of the limelight. As soon as I could, I eased out of there and let others continue praying. I was completely drained! It was getting late, so my student friend said we had to go, and he led me to say goodbye to the pastor and we were out the door. He took me to his own parents’ home where I spent the night. Not much was said.

The next day, he took me to the airport to fly home. His only comment was something to the effect of, you weren’t the same last night as you were the night before. I thought to myself, boy, is that ever true! But I was too embarrassed to go into any discussion with him about it. He said goodbye, and I flew home to Florida. I felt really humiliated and beat down as I seldom have in my life, and I never knew why. I didn’t figure anything out then or later, and I never have. When I got home to Florida and told my wife and family about it on the way home, I actually broke down at one point and cried. It was one of my most devastating experiences ever, and all I tried to do was what I’d thought God had led me to do!

I’ll share one more “terrible” experience of ministry. It happened when I went with a team from a church Lynn and I attended in Lakeland Florida to Cambodia. That entire experience was life-changing. I found myself weeping uncontrollably off and on for four days before we left. It seemed to me the Holy Spirit was preparing me for something, saying, “You don’t know what awaits you. This trip will not be like any you have taken before.” Our travel consisted of 32 hours of flying and layovers, and was just grueling!

The first day, we were taken by our host to the so-called “Killing Fields,” because he never let a team minister there until they had at least some understanding of the horror his people had gone through in the 70’s under the communist dictator Pol Pot. We saw the trenches the people had to dig which turned out to be their own graves. We saw a tree where babies’ brains were dashed out right in front of their mothers. We saw a prison where some 20,000 people entered, and only 7 ever came out alive. The rest were tortured horribly and murdered. We saw a monument filled with skulls of people who’d been executed by the insanely paranoid dictator because he suspected everyone of treason against him. And we saw beggars everywhere, their legs or arms blown off by landmines, their hands outstretched as if in prayer in the Buddhist gesture recognizing the divine in the person being greeted. To us it seemed they were just pleading desperately for us or anybody to help them. I found myself weeping over and over again the whole time we were there.

Overall, the ministry trip was a positive experience for me, and I’m glad I went. I learned some phrases in the local language, Khmer, and ate with many of the pastors and leaders we tried to minister to. But at the same time, I had a really bad experience in Cambodia as well. (The natives call their country Kampuchea, by the way.)

One of the things we did there was hold a three-day seminar for some of the church people our host had called together. Most were cell group leaders, and the reason we’d been invited was because the church I was in at that time was a “cell church,” that believed small groups should be the main structure and strategy of the church. It wasn’t really my emphasis, but I went along because I was invited. At the first day of the seminar, I was introduced as kind of a main speaker, because of all those in our church team, I was the one with the most missions experience. Our pastor was there, but I’d been to a lot more countries than he and was more of a preacher/teacher. His emphasis was more on relationships and pastoral care.

I got up to launch the seminar with the first teaching, and the host, a dynamic man who’d raised up some 30,000 believers in the country, was to be my interpreter. I had prepared a teaching on the biblical basis of “body ministry,” how all believers have gifts and God wants to use us all to minister to one another and the world. I’d taught this sort of thing before and was confident of my material and my ability to present it with God’s anointing.

Well, as I proceeded with what I believed was the foundational teaching for all we were going to share afterward, suddenly my translator stopped, called out to someone in the audience, and this person came up. He then told me he was leaving, and this person would take over translating. It was rather unsettling because he was so abrupt. But he walked off the stage and just left me there, so I continued on with the teaching. The people seemed bored and distracted, and it was hard for me to continue. As I remember it, I wasn’t able to even finish my teaching. But I figured the event was three days long, so I’d be back up later and would eventually get through it.

However, at lunch our host talked with the team and sort of rearranged things. I wasn’t given another opportunity to speak that day. The other members of our team had never preached or taught before, but they took all the “slots” for ministry the rest of the day. That night, we met on the roof of our hotel with some of the host’s main leaders. We sat on the flat concrete roof, and he asked them to give feedback on the day. He translated as each spoke.

The sum of their feedback was that none of them had understood a word I’d said, but they liked the other speakers just fine! I was dumbfounded! My teaching had been, in my opinion, very basic and totally biblical. Nevertheless, these people all agreed that it made no sense at all. Needless to say, I felt pretty low at that point. Then the host told me in a very direct way that he wanted the others to speak for the rest of the seminar, not me.

What could I say? I could only nod and say that was fine, he was in charge, whatever he wanted was what I would do. The rest of the seminar, I don’t think I got to speak again. The other members of the team, the “non-professionals,” did all the talking. I just sat in the audience, ate with the people, and tried to practice my Khmer phrases. My birthday happened one of the days of the seminar, and my team was able to get a cake and sing for me in our hotel. That was a nice surprise.

The night after that terrible experience, I hardly slept at all. I was in a room with one other brother from our team, and he was fast asleep, but I just tossed and turned, reliving everything that had happened over and over again. Several times I sat bolt upright, sweating, alarmed and worried. Then I’d lie back down and try to sleep. Finally, morning came and I went out to the lobby to get some coffee. My pastor came out there and spoke with me. He was very compassionate and understood how hard the experience had been for me. He said he was worried about me and was praying.

I enjoyed the people there, and after the seminar, we went to the famous Angkor Watt ruins, a world-renowned Hindu and later Buddhist shrine. We had iced-coffee on the Mekong River and traveled in one of those long, narrow river boats. I was glad for the opportunity to go there. But that experience really deflated my soul to some extent. I was an experienced missionary traveler, preacher, and teacher. But my work was discounted entirely and I was shot down.

Once again, I must say that I don’t know what happened there. I don’t know if my translator just didn’t like me or what I was sharing for some reason, maybe was of a different persuasion in some way, and so he didn’t translate me accurately or fully, and that’s why nobody understood me. I don’t know if the people were just really of a lower level of education and understanding so my teaching was way too complicated for them. I still remember that teaching, and am convinced it is solid biblical material. In my opinion, it just wasn’t complicated at all! All I said was, we are one body in Christ with different gifts, and each of us has something to contribute. What’s so complicated about that? Maybe the point of all these experiences was just to humble me in some way? Maybe God just wanted to test my resolve? I really don’t know.

I’ve also had many wonderful and very fulfilling ministry experiences, and when I have time, I’ll share some of those with you as well, Lord willing. I guess what I would want you all to know by this blog is that ministry is not always a positive experience. Sometimes everything just seems to go south. Sometimes you “fail” spectacularly, if I can say such a thing.

In the end, what will count before God is faithfulness, whether or not we got back up when we seemed to fall down. Whether or not we continued to do our best to carry out God’s will and fulfill the ministry we believe God has entrusted to us. I’m thankful that somehow, God has always picked me back up when I’ve had these bad experiences. The real joy isn’t ministry anyway; it’s knowing God! He doesn’t love me more if I do well and less if I do poorly or don’t see many results. So whether I’m a brilliant “success” or a dismal “failure,” the results are in God’s hands. I just hope to stay faithful. On the other side, I guess I’ll find out why things happened as they did.