A Ministry of Appreciation – why I believe in it.

Going to see a friend today. I first met him in 1971 when he was asked by our denominational Ministerial Recognition Committee to assess my preaching potential and report back. I was of course very young at the time – honest! No kidding – not yet 21!

In those days references were confidential – but afterwards I was phoned by my assessor and told what he was going to say and given the chance to discuss it with him. It was a fair and encouraging report and spoke of gift and potential, and identified obvious advantages in a full course of training. Anything I've learned about balancing honest assessment of gift and ability with personal encouragement, and about the importance of example and demonstrated support as people struggle to discern their calling, I learned from people like him. Ever since then we have been friends, he has stayed in touch as encourager, and as an example of lifelong ministry in our churches. Long since retired, he remains for me a father figure, a sympathetic critic, an interested friend who prays for my ministry, and one who reluctantly but with transparent gratitude, is acknowledging the constraints that his years now put on his activity.

Today we'll talk about a lot of things – books, people, probably a few moans about what's wrong with the church and how we would fix it (aye right!), reminiscences about people who mattered in our churches, and his plans for the next stage of life. And as always I'll come away from him with a good feeling – about the Church we complain about but love, about a Gospel we still have in common though our theological emphases and insights don't neatly coincide, about pastoral ministry as the high calling of God, as undeserved privilege, and as one of the church's essential life support systems.

And I know before I go, I'll come away feeling good about myself in the light of all of this, because this man I've known for forty years, believes in people – he has a ministry of appreciation, who loves without sentimentality but with shrewd appraisal. He is a man whose estimate of you makes you want to live up to it – which is that rare gift of affirmative affection that makes you believe again in yourself as a work in progress, and the work is God's!