Wally Speaks: Being There

The office bore the scars of a neglectful three years. Dimly lit, monochromatically drab with tired furniture that squeaked from old age and piles of forgotten papers, the "pastor's office" housed more artifacts than conversations. It slow-cooked every occasional visitor to help reduce the electric bill, and only a handful of the church's attenders could even tell you where it was. Every Tuesday afternoon for a semester, I traded beads of sweat in that room for the advantage of sitting with the interim pastor, a man worn peaceful over forty years serving others as a pastor and mentor throughout Southern California. He was Wally Norling, and those future pastors he mentored were called "Wally's Boys" (Larry Osborne, for example). Wally passed away in 2010.

I wasn't afforded enough time with Wally to ever warrant the label. But his soft-spoken, confident advice still props up much of what I do and how I do it. The contrast of his seasoned, cool wisdom and that sauna of a tattered room only amplified his gentle words - the church building is merely a prop on a larger stage. More importantly, ministry looks a lot like a mentor and his apprentice sitting together and not at all like a church calendar spilling over with harried activities.

Our paths to these meetings bore no resemblance to one another. He determined to be pastor at age 5, and was a shepherd to his very core all his days. I left behind 15 years of software at age 35 to attend seminary, and was well-versed in all the people skills you'd expect in a computer programmer. I was 40 years his junior, knowing nothing of that which came so effortlessly to him. By the way he answered me, I could usually tell when I accidentally asked a meaningful question. One of my best questions was hatched after my first "pastoral" hospital visit.

A dear, elderly lady had fallen dangerously ill and was only partially responsive, bedridden as she recovered in a rehab facility. Armed with every bit of the bedside manner one gains from coding C++, I fumbled, stuttered, and awkwardly silenced my way through 30 minutes that I later prayed her illness would prevent her from remembering. Happily, she recovered over time ... and never once mentioned that I had visited her. Whether that was illness or grace matters little to me.

In my next meeting with Wally, I managed slightly better verbal skills to mutter a mess of questions asking how to handle such situations - what to say, how to make people feel better, how to help them put illness in great, theological perspective, and so on. In effect, I was asking how to "fix" the situation like I was accustomed to fixing bugs in software.

Wally simply said, "90% of ministry is just being there." A lot like the time he had been spending with me, patiently waiting for one of my questions to be substantive.

Get out a concordance of the Bible. Search for "thou shalt fix." Nothing. No variation, no similar phrase. Search of "one another," and you'll quickly have a long list. Look for how many times the Lord reassures us by simply saying, "I am with you" or "I will be with you" or "I will never leave you." Even the Lord says, "A great deal of My ministry to you is just being with you."

Be there. Put "fixing stuff" way down on the list. Be there when people are sick and non-responsive. Be there when they have gotten fired. Be there when their dog dies. Be there when they are mad at God. Be there when they are drunk, in jail, stranded in the mud of their own creation, or cursing the whole world, including you. Be there when you don't know what to say or what to do. If you can convey that "I'm here to demonstrate that the Lord will never forsake you," you have done 90% of ministry.