Recently, I was watching a T.V. report about a rescue at sea. A lifeguard was detailing the protocol for saving someone who is in the water, struggling desperately to stay above the surface. He shared a crucial piece of advice for the rescuer:
Don’t get into the water.
The first instinct, he said, was to jump in and swim to the victim and attempt to physically keep them afloat, however, that was often a catastrophic move.
The person in the water, he said, was often so overwhelmed by fear, so overtaken by fatigue and so consumed with living, that they will actually fight the person trying to save them. They will flail and grab and punch, until both he and the rescuer are overtaken and drown.
As this veteran lifeguard shared this dangerous, difficult truth about saving drowning people, I had one thought: Welcome to ministry, dude.
The pastor, minister, youth worker, caregiver, (and of course more than all of these, the parent), understand this truth all too well. Daily, we see people around us struggling to stay above the surface of the waves. We see scared, exhausted, and imperiled lives, and enter into that disorienting tempest to try to pull them out. Often, we get dangerously close, and often we are attacked by those we are trying to help.
The problem for we who minister, is that most of the time, staying out of the water is just not an option. As much as we want to, the safety of the boat will not do. We are wired for the water.
As a result, we often exchange wisdom for passion, and trade slowness for impulsiveness. (Perhaps that’s why so many in ministry end up burnt-out and overcome by the flood of need around us, and why so many exit too early or stay too long).
You see, the lifeguard in the story, went on in his explanation, saying that the wise thing to do, was to throw the person in distress a life-preserver to keep them afloat and calm them down, so that he could then get close to them and get them to safety
I wish that it was that easy when it comes to the teenagers I minister to.
Every day, I have only to visit my newsfeed and there they are right in front of me; hundreds of young people, burdened with destructive thoughts, battling dangerous home lives and enduring the relentless pounding of the culture around them.
In those moments, hesitating feels counterintuitive, and stepping-back seems deadly. Where praying and waiting might be wise, the urgency of the circumstances overtakes me and I often jump right into the water, and often there, in a frantic email exchange or heated Facebook conversation, I find myself being attacked and maligned and criticized; battered by waves of insult and misunderstanding and miscommunication. It is frustrating and energy-draining.
In those moments, drowning is a very real possibility, for both of us.
Frankly, I don’t know if that kind of distance and detachment is even possible when attending to the spiritual needs around us.
And I don’t know what this means for those of us who make it our life’s work to help rescue people. I’m not sure how we balance the space we need to stay healthy, with the real-time distress of those we love and serve.
What I do know, is that the for we who seek to bring compassion and mercy where it is needed, we will always find ourselves dangerously close to those in trouble, and, to the trouble itself.
Jesus is the one who saves, I know.
He sometimes asks us to drink the water.
He sometimes calls us to walk to Him upon the water.
Sometimes, though, He calls us to jump into it.
Keep your head up.
