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lessons about ministry – from Sarah

A blog written by Sarah Swartz!

So our trip is about two-thirds of the way through. Some things have been what I have expected; some things have been very different from what I was expecting. I came on this trip trying to not have expectations, but I think that is humanly impossible. The thing that most is different from what I was anticipating is actually ministry itself.

How I have seen God move in the US and the type of ministry that happens there is so very different from what goes down here in India. First of all conversion to Christianity is illegal. That makes street evangelism like I am used to very dangerous and impractical, not to mention there is that whole language barrier thing. We have to begin with simply building relationship, at the slums, at the leper colony, at the markets, at coffee shops, in our neighborhood.
 
The biggest difference between ministry here and ministry in the US is the immediacy of “results.”  Even with the ministry we do at Asha House, the ministry where we have the most freedom, we still do not see immediate results. We can freely tell the kids about Jesus and can freely show them love but I don’t think any of us will be able to see and measure exactly how we impacted these little ones. Even if we return to India someday and return to Asha House there is a huge possibility that many of the kids we have encountered in these three months will not longer be there. Sometimes kids have to be sent back to their families, if they have them.

For a while I was frustrated with our ministry options. I wanted to get out there on the streets and speak bold truth. I wanted to provide for beggars and the poor, but instead we get to sit in the houses of lepers and a struggling pastor and drink chai and eat biscuits. It felt like the opposite of what I came here to do, but then I had to remember that  I really came here to do God’s will. If that is sitting with lepers and drinking chai and playing with their children, if that is praying for the beggars that come up to our car windows as we drive through Delhi instead of handing them some coins, if that is teaching children addition and the alphabet, I am going to say, “Yes God.”

I have started to figure out that I don’t have to have any answers for all of the brokenness I encounter. All that I need is a God who hears me, who speaks to me, who is sovereign, and who is supremely good. 

This is a poem I wrote about my wrestling with this issue:

Yours and Mine

Like the Universe
My understanding of you
Is ever expanding.
You need neither our words
Nor our clever tracts
Nor our knowledge
Nor our talents.
We are worthless dust
That is only good
When the breath of God
Is breathed into us.
Our truth is nothing
Our joy is nothing
Our hope is nothing
Our love is nothing
Our life is nothing
Without you replacing
Ours with yours.