How is it that a 32 year old man chooses to spend time with a man twice his age? I remember as a kid what it was like to spend Monday evening work nights with the grown men of our church. I'm sure I wasn't all that much help, but on those Monday evenings, men of integrity were initiating me into a world of life experience that has stood me in good stead an entire lifetime. Most of those men have long ago rested from their labors, but what they built, not only in wood and mortar and brick, but in me, endures.
Some of those same men spent every Tuesday evening with a couple dozen of us boys, leading the Christian Service Brigade, a decidedly Christian version of the Boy Scouts. We learned Bible verses for sure, but we also learned respect, honor, leadership, how to comport ourselves around adults, all while having fun together. And on the occasional weekend, these selfless, godly men took us camping and canoeing, teaching us how to build a fire with one match, or how to dig a hole in a snowbank that would with a decent sleeping bag, keep you warm all night. I haven't slept in a snowbank since then, but I can still light a fire with a single match if I need to.
So today when Linda and I drove to Randolph to spend the day with our friends Cameron, Sheri, and their little son Noah, who were camping out on her family's farm, I got to see the other side of the picture. Cameron is not a young boy, but he is a young pastor who sought me out a couple years ago, asking if I would be somewhat of a mentor to him. Maybe reading some of John Maxwell's writings gave him the idea. Maxwell once said that some pastors who move from one church to another don't have thirty years of experience, but three years of experience ten times over. I'm not always the quickest off the blocks, and I know there is lots of experience I've never had, but being in the same church for 33 years at least eliminates my having those three years ten times over.
Like I said, today I got a glimpse of the other side of the story. Whatever Cameron is able to glean from our friendship pales in comparison to what it means to me to be able to offer myself, not as someone who did all the right things, but as someone who, warts, successes, failures, and all, is accepted and approved simply and solely through the grace of God. Jesus said it years ago, and it is still true today: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Today, in whatever giving we did, Linda and I received, and were blessed by their hospitality, but even more by their friendship. In this business of pastoral ministry, that friendship is often a rare commodity, and today we traded in it with luxurious extravagance.
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