Learning the "Ministry of Presence"

When our team of students and staff from American colleges arrived in South Africa for a summer mission, we were excited and scared, but eager to see what God would do in us and through us during our time there.

At first, we had so many questions for our hosts at Pretoria Community Ministries (PCM): Where will we live for the next four weeks? What will we be doing? How can we help serve the people of Pretoria? Some of our questions were answered right away. We quickly settled into a manse and traveled each day in pairs to our ministry sites. Some worked at a drop-in site for the homeless; others served at a school or in a home for girls living on the street.

But some of our deeper questions were never answered directly by our hosts at PCM, much to our frustration. Yet that was so good for us because we were forced to struggle directly with Jesus for our answers.

What our team discovered is that, as Americans, we measure our days by what we have done—what we can check off our lists at the end of the day as having completed. But during our summer in Pretoria, as we traveled to our various sites, quite often there just wasn’t that much for us to do. It was easy to feel like we were wasting our time.

We had a lot to learn about simply being. When we asked our hosts to describe what we were to do, they frequently used the phrase, “a ministry of presence.” This was a bit vague for many of us who wanted specific tasks and jobs. We longed for ways to feel important and needed.

But a ministry of presence is what we learned. Not only did we learn how to value slowing down in our daily lives, but we also discovered that when we stopped doing and started simply being, we were able to clearly hear God’s voice!

—Jesse and Liz North are associate area directors in central and northeast Pennsylvania. Jesse loves the 76ers and Liz likes to garden. Both like to travel.