I ran across an article yesterday in my web-browsing that said that ministers who are doing an effective and meaningful work should experience bouts of depression.
Allusions were made to prophets of old who battled with periods of malaise. I am not a prophet in the sense that I can foresee the future. However, preaching is a prophetic work in that it depends on spiritual insight to spread a message.
I reflected on this quite a bit since I stumbled across the article: am I given to depression? Do I regularly experience occasions where I don’t want to get out of the bed?

Honestly? Yes. There are moments in each week where I think I can’t do this anymore. That the cost of ministry is just too high a cost.

–Every Monday I walk into my office with no idea what I am going to preach on Sunday. I wrestle and struggle all week long with what I am going to say and how it is going to come together. A deadline must be met and sometimes it’s hard. I either don’t know what to say or I don’t fully understand the text. Or maybe I understand it but the truth is too bold to speak.

–Every week I come face-to-face with this amazing disconnect between what I proclaim and what I am. The Christian life is such an high calling that at times it can feel oppressive. To preach holiness and godly living and to be, at times, so unholy and ungodly is sobering. I look at the Ted Haggards and how little grace is given to people in my position who fall and I tremble.

–In addition, the more honest I am with the text and the more I strive to understand what the core message is, the farther I depart from previously held notions. I walk a tightrope between what I now believe and what I am ready to say. I use this blog as an outlet for that and often worry if I say too much.

–There are days where I feel completely alone. There are days where I am tired of being the only minister on staff, the only one who is invested in day-to-day church work in a small congregation. I’ve spent 5 years now as the only minister on staff. It can be lonely.

–There are times where I feel that I can never do enough. I see marriages falling apart, children neglected. I see families striving to get ahead. I am surrounded by abject poverty and hopelessness. We are to be a light in our community and a lot of times I feel that light is hidden by an impenetrable fog. There are unlimited people to visit, pray for and help out financially.

–There are the times when I am misunderstood. Just this week I was told that one member has stopped attending because they were offended that I would say that only members of the Church of Christ are saved. I wasn’t told who it was so I can’t correct it by letting them know that I don’t believe that and I have never said that. Being clear is not always easy.

–There are the times when I feel that my sermon doesn’t penetrate past the edge of the pulpit. Where the truth is missed.

–And then there are Saturdays. I don’t like Saturday’s. All day long I feel a growing sense of dread, or weight, settling on me. The implications of all that I am asked to do on Sundays come crashing down on me. I am expected to proclaim the Good News in a jarring and vital way. And I feel so incapable and unworthy of such a burden.

So, yes, I get depressed. More often than I like to admit. Why don’t I go teach somewhere? I could go back to selling cars. Anything but this never-ending cycle that I encounter week after week.

But this I know: God is ever beside me. It is Him that I encounter as I study. He is the one who is beside me when I don’t know what to say drawing me deeper into His truth.
It is His divine mercy that shows me the message is never-ending love and grace.
He is the one who takes a so-so sermon finished on Thursday and always makes it better by Sunday morning.
He is the one who has led me to this. He is the one who walks with me through the valleys and the shadows.
And He is the One I must proclaim. For He has chosen this introverted, depressive, and unfinished man to share the Good News.

Colossians 1:28–29
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.