My Cup Runneth Over

I wonder if you have noticed a theme, a common thread, in the blogs by Angela, Mairi, Fiona, Josh, and Corrin over these past weeks?

Ok, no prizes for saying “a day in the life of someone who works at QPBC”. The common thread I have noticed is that there is no such thing as a typical day, and that is very true of my role.

My official title is Pastor of Community and Mission. In QPBC language, ‘Community’ means QPBC Community and this includes discipleship, pastoral care, small groups, School of Leadership etc. Mission hopefully is self-explanatory.

The photo above tries to capture some of what I may get up to in any given day or week. There is also much which is not in the photo as it would be inappropriate to photograph many of the things a pastor does.

There are lots of other people in most of these photos. “The job” after all, is about people. What these photos don’t capture is the emails, phone calls, meetings, typing up notes from meetings, WhatsApps, Teams messages, face-to-face conversations, having a meeting about the meeting we had, editing videos, searching for resources, disappearing down rabbit holes, praying and thinking, reading, bouncing ideas off people, sermon prep, working on the run sheet for Sunday, putting together the speakers rota for The Gathering, editing the rota for The Gathering, meetings with ministry leaders, writing the blog, which allows the stuff people see to happen!

What’s missing from this list is …cups of tea (not coffee – coffee makes me ill!). So, the photo above includes an image a pastor in New York posted on Unsplashed of a cup with my cup runneth over embossed on it. This can of course be taken two ways i.e. My cup runneth over = I’ve got too much to do to fit into any given day, week, month, year, or, My Cup runneth over = I am so blessed to do what I do. One need not exclude the other!

One of the reasons my cup runneth over is all of this activity happens in the context of teams: the staff team, the Gathering Team, the Pastoral Visiting Team, the SLT, the Community Sector, the Missions Sector, the School of Leadership Team …the list goes on.

Teams remind me of my godly limitations. God has not called any of us to do everything. He has placed us in local expressions of the body of Christ, the church, given us different gifts and abilities, fitted us together as living stones to build each other up in the Lord. Vitally, crucially, he has empowered us by His Spirit. I have a part to play, and you also have a part to play, in God building His church.

Oftentimes, this can lead to busyness, but busyness is not a good metric of “success” or “flourishing” or “blessing”. If the list above communicates busyness, then that’s not my intention. My days and weeks are full, but as we’ve been learning in the Emotionally Healthy courses, our doing needs to flow from a place of being with God. That is a continual “work-on”, but spending time with God means – on the whole – my cup is full, it runneth over.

I am blessed and privileged to serve as one of your pastors. I’m blessed to call QPBC my home and you my brothers and sisters in Christ. My cup runneth over …surely goodness and hesed shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord (whether you are employing me or not!) my whole life long.

Grace and peace.

Brodie