Jay N Smith's Blog

More than one of my mentors has told me that one issue that I will have to deal with in ministry is that I want to please people.  I have to admit that I like being liked.  I know that can hinder the work of preaching and teaching because sometimes you have say something that you know someone won’t like but it is the truth and it is what they need to hear.

There is another aspect, though, and that is the inevitability of offending people without intending to.  Scripture attests to this:

When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable,
But he who restrains his lips is wise.  (Proverbs 10:19, NASB)

If you lead people – in worship, Bible Study, preaching or whatever – it seems that sooner or later you will cause offense.  Many times this is self-imposed; we say something that we regret later, but there are also times when someone is upset by something we say and we have no idea that it happened.

Looking back on a few times this has happened, it seems that it has happened at a time when I thought things were going well.  At one church, I carefully chose a benediction verse to go with each sermon that I preached; it helped tie up the entire service from my perspective, but because it represented a change from the normal way of doing things, it caused an offense.

Once I was leading the singing during a baptism service and I remember feeling like it was one of the more meaningful services that I had participated in.  I enjoyed leading the congregation during that time and felt that we all experienced the Lord’s presence.  Several days later I found out that an “addition” that I made to one of the songs – repeating a few of the words in between verses – caused an offense.  The irony was that the highlight of the evening for me was a problem for another person.

This week, it was another issue – perhaps I’ll write another blog post on the specifics – but again an aspect of a church service that was the high point for me was a problem for another person.  It struck me that I had inadvertently offended someone and it also occurred to me that in some sense, it shouldn’t bother me as much as it did.  Obviously we don’t want to intentionally cause pain to other people, but given that it seems to be inevitable, it can’t stop us from doing the ministry that God has called us to do.

Perhaps it is an obvious point, but I feel that I am starting to learn that I have to be able to remain faithful to the scriptures even if someone has a problem with some aspect of my ministry.  We need to do everything we can to avoid causing unnecessary offense, but it will occur – and in my experience – when you least expect it.