To be or not to be...

When I decided to serve abroad, I had this wild yet fantastic notion that the experience would resemble my previous mission and service trips with a longer time frame. Each day, I would wake up with a feeling of liberation and exuberance to rush forth and to restore the world. My days would be full of warm, fuzzy feelings about I felt God’s constant presence and how my neighbors and I have developed mutual relationships of love and respect. Each night, I would drift to sleep with the satisfaction of a day’s hard work. How reality shatters all preconceived notions!

During my interview with Thomas John Achen—my site director, he asked if I knew what ministry of presence meant because my year was a ministry of presence. Unfortunately, I have the uncanny ability to usually respond to questions—even to ones which I do not know anything about the subject—with some sort of answer that sounds remotely intelligent or that gives the impression of confidence to the listener. (Not always a good thing!) At the time, I replied with some pat answer about how God can use a person’s mere presence to bring change, comfort, or a myriad of other things. From my past experiences with my college UrbanPromise spring break service trips, I had an inkling of an idea what ministry of presence meant, but a few week-long trips do not truly embody the concept of ministry of presence. After being here for two and a half months, I am only beginning to truly understand, to know, to see, and to feel this slippery yet slightly mysterious ministry of presence, which is the essence of my time in India thus far.

Ministry of presence is the confidence of knowing that your entire existence’s value does not lie in tangible results. Ministry of presence will probably not give you statistics that will satisfy donors. Ministry of presence does not care about how many houses that you build, how many people that you feed, the number of churches that you plant, or the amount of social services that you provide. All of those tasks are important and necessary but are not ministry of presence. However, ministry of presence is attempting to learn hundreds of names, many of which you cannot pronounce correctly, in a place where a child is often nameless and is a number. Ministry of presence is inviting your students to celebrate Halloween with you. Ministry of presence is walking down the road to visit the old age home—more delicately known as nursing home or something of that sort in the U.S.—and talking or even simply sitting with those who never have visitors or any family. Ministry of presence is listening to a child’s sorrows and giving her a safe place to cry as you hold her. Ministry of presence is cutting part of your spoken English class in order to greet and to speak with a visiting elderly woman who rarely leaves the house due to illness. Ministry of presence is making a fool out of yourself while directing your fledgling choir in rehearsal because you have to convey your musical thought with a cultural and linguistic barrier. Ministry of presence is sharing a piece of your self with over 100 eleventh and twelfth graders each morning during devotional chapel. Ministry of presence is engaging with a person or a community in his or her or their joys, concerns, and even the mundane activities over a significant period of time. (Note that significant is a relative term here.) Ministry of presence will never solve the world’s problems or bring complete social justice, but instead, it provides hope and demonstrates Christ’s love.

Sometimes, I think that it would be easier to have a more concrete goal, such as vaccinating of people. Each day, I could have a task to do and would not have to figure out how I am going to build relationships with people. My day would have a set objective and routine work. Some sort of statistic could provide a means of accomplishment or could prove my productivity to someone else. And I could reflect at night and say that I worked for social justice for God’s kingdom through the pursuit of public health. But I am not in that position with my volunteer placement.

Perhaps, I am a product of American upbringing because I have been taught to do and told that my value lies in my doing. When I sit alone at night or am with a bunch of students, I struggle because no one has taught me how to be. It does not help that I am an extrovert and even have trouble sitting still. Ministry of presence relates more to being than doing. Having mastered the doing part of life, I am learning how to be. The concept seems simple yet indescribable. How do you explain that to someone? Do you normally ask your friends, “How are you being?” or “What are you being?” The English language does not have a sufficient, common idiom or interrogative for expressing the idea of being. How can I become content with simply be-ing?

Looking back at Jesus’ life, I see that He had no problem with ministry of presence or being. His whole life displayed to humanity that God wanted to be with us, and the gospel of Matthew (and Isaiah 7:14) gave Jesus the name Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.” Jesus understood human grief and wept with Mary and Martha when Lazarus died (John11:33-37). When a woman poured an expensive ointment or perfume on His head, Jesus allowed her to touch him, enjoyed the experience, and defended her gift when the disciples thought it was wasteful and unproductive (Matthew 26:6-13). Jesus knew when He needed to stop doing things and could retreat into solitude with God, but being with people or being alone was not a struggle for Him. I now see that Jesus mastered the balance of both being and doing. From my experience, the church often teaches Christians and people what to do or how to do something but rarely touches the idea of being. How did we overlook this?*

Ministry of presence and being takes more discipline and mental clout than I expected and does not come naturally to me. Each morning after leading the 11th and 12th grade chapel, I have added a centering prayer (i.e. meditating and being still for twenty minutes) to my personal devotional regime because I realized my need to learn how to be. At first, I could barely handle ten minutes of centering prayer but have slowly worked up to twenty. When I have missed a morning chapel for various reasons, my students later ask where I was and said that they missed me, and I suppose that my presence adds something to our school community. At night, I know that I may go to bed without a specific number of people that I have served that day or without something to tangibly display that day’s activities. To my surprise, I am becoming more content with that reality.

*Isn’t obvious that being is important when God tells Moses that God’s name is “I am who I am” in Exodus 3:14? I Am Who I Am stands for Yahweh, the Hebrew divine name of God.