Forty Years of Ministry - An Appreciation

On Saturday evening past, Suzanne the family and I had the great joy of being present at a retirement function for Suzanne's dad as he retired from pastoral ministry. Gareth had served for exactly forty years and had most recently served in the Stranmillis congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a denomination to which I owe my own training for the ministry. I first met Gareth when I had applied for the post of student worker within the Stranmillis Congregation, having met and married his daughter (a risky strategy ill admit) I have got to know him better over the past number of years. As I reflected on his ministry I have much to be thankful to him for,  Paul instructed the believers in Corinth to be imitators of him as he was of God and over the course of my ministry I have tried my best to imitate Gareth in so many ways as he was a faithful, caring shepherd of the congregations that he served as their under shepherd.

1. His love for the LORD, most of all what impressed me about Gareth was his love for the LORD, in the forty years of gospel ministry Gareth kept his love for the LORD fresh, to hear him pray was to listen to someone whose relationship with God was fresh. The danger for pastors is the professionalisation of ministry, being a minister becomes something we are, something that defines us and our relationship with the LORD. For me listening to Gareth that never felt like the case, he loved the God who saved him, he served the God who saved him faithfully and it never felt to me like his passion and love for the LORD waned.

2. His love for God's word, Gareth loved preaching, he loved teaching people God's word, he loved showing people how the truth of God's word shaped and moulded them. He would think nothing of jumping in the car, driving for two hours to go and share God's word with a group of young people, with a group of older people anyone who asked him to come and share God's word if Gareth could do it he would. His application of God's word to society was also very refreshing, his wider minister on Radio Ulster's thought for the day and his monthly column in the Belfast Telegraph showed that society at large valued what Gareth had to say and his application of the bible to society.

3. His love for God's people, there is a running joke in our house that whenever the phone rings, or there is a difficult pastoral situation to deal with we ask ourselves the question WWGNBD, what would Gareth Norman Burke do? Invariably what Gareth would do would be the caring compassionate thing. To spend time with people, to listen, to try and help. I can't think of a single pastoral situation that I have faced where trying to think what would Gareth do has led to poorer outcomes. His love for God's people is what I have tried to copy most. Gareth thought nothing of spending time with people investing in people but in all that trying to lead them down the road of righteousness.

4. His love for the mission of the church, Gareth has a passion for the worldwide ministry of the church, heading to Kenya, to South Sudan, to Nigeria in an attempt to train pastors, in support of missionaries and to see the church of God expand. Ministers are so busy these days that it can be hard to lift our eyes beyond our immediate parish. For Gareth the parish of Stranmillis was never the be all and end all his vision was for the world wide church.

5. His durability Gareth served for forty years and he had in that time two Sunday's off sick, I have been involved in ministry in one shape or another now for 17 years, in that time I have been blessed by God with relative good health. However there have been times when I have been tempted to give in, to give up, to stop doing ministry to go and do something else. Its at those times that the internal sense of call sustains you but Gareth served faithfully for forty years, he stuck at it, he plugged away and he did what the LORD called him to do.

I know its uncommon for son in laws to speak well of their father in law but I hope I am a better minister today for meeting Gareth, for seeing how he works up close. Every minister I have worked with or under I have tried to learn something from them, to take their good points to imitate them as they imitated God. These are just some of the ways that Gareth has impressed me over the years, he is an encourager, a source of wisdom but most of all a faithful servant who is worthy of imitation as he modelled God to his congregation.

The Man He Sees In Me

I stumbled across this song after a podcast by Shane Todd in which he talked about the album "Fathers and Sons" by Luke Combs. I have to confess that I had heard about Luke Combs somewhere in the ether but I never really got him, until I listened to this song and it nearly broke me. I have to confess that whilst listening to it I did have a little cry.

The basic premise of the song, as I understood it anyway, is trying to be the man that your son sees in you, the man who scares the monsters out of the closet in his room, the man who hung the moon but there is a sense of sadness in it because of the realisation that we will never be the man he sees in me.

As the father of five boys this is the question that sometimes crosses my mind, who is the man they see in me? Sometimes the man they see in me is kind, generous, loving, caring but more often than I would care to admit the man they see in me is proud, arrogant, angry, selfish and lives for my own comfort and good.

The bible talks about "the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge" and there are times in my life when I like the taste of sour grapes, times in my life when sin reigns and the consequence of that can easily be passed on to my children, thats the man that they see in me, the sinner, the lover of self.

Yet in isolation this would drive us to despair wouldn't it? If the salvation of our children depended on my example as a father then all would be lost because I could never cope with that pressure and I could never set an example that would save them. Rather what I hope for my boys (and girl) is that they learn to look beyond their earthly father, look beyond his flaws and instead they look to their heavenly father.

Their heavenly father who will never let them down, their heavenly father who sent his only son to die for their sin, their heavenly father who loves them and cares for them. The song finishes with the author looking at his grandson riding on his sons knee and his prayer that his son would be the man he saw in him for all those years. I don't want my children to grow up to be like me, I want them to be better, to be more Godly, I don't want them to grow up to be the man they see in me I want them to grow up to be the man they see in Jesus.

You can listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNRW8en2pp8