February 7, 2023

A blessing for those who minister

By Jessica Richie

Executive director, Everything Happens Initiative

Jessica Richie is a producer and writer. She serves as the executive director of the Everything Happens Initiative at Duke University and the executive producer of the “Everything Happens” podcast, which hosts conversations between Kate Bowler and guests about lives that don’t always work out.

Bowler and Richie co-wrote a book of spiritual reflections called “Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection” and the forthcoming book “The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days.”

Richie received her M.Div. from Duke Divinity School and lives with her family in Wilmington, Delaware.

By Kate Bowler

Associate professor, author, podcast host

Kate Bowler is an associate professor of American religious history at Duke Divinity School. Bowler has written widely in scholarly journals such as Religion and American Culture and popular venues such as CNN, The Huffington Post, and The Globe and Mail.

She detailed her experience with Stage IV cancer in the bestselling memoir, "Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I've Loved)” and “No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear).” She co-wrote, with Jessica Richie, a book of spiritual reflections called “Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection.” They have a forthcoming book, “The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days,” which will be published in February 2023.

Bowler hosts the popular podcast “Everything Happens,” and was a guest on the Faith & Leadership podcast, “Can These Bones.”

Her book, “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel,” traced the rise of Christian belief in divine promises of health, wealth and happiness. She also wrote "The Preacher’s Wife: Women and Power in American Megaministry," about celebrity Christian women in American evangelicalism.

Photo courtesy of the Everything Happens Initiative

In a culture of effortless perfection, Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie are determined to tell the truth: life is beautiful and hard. In their new book, “The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days,” they offer blessings for joys and struggles and plain, ordinary days. And because Christian leaders are human too, they share here a special blessing for those who minister.

We live in a culture of #blessed, not of blessing. Social media is riddled with #blessed, pointing to everything from new cars to beach vacations. Blessing, culture seems to explain, is for those who have it all together. The shiny. The most put-together.

Even leaders can fall into a sand trap of #blessed. Often, leaders are told, “You should be succeeding! Every difficulty should be a ladder, with you on your way up! Look at everyone else doing so well.” #Blessed leaves little room for our actual lives, our actual problems, our actual days.

But there is a long, rich Judeo-Christian tradition of blessing from which we can draw instead. Old Testament scholar Stephen Chapman calls blessing a kind of spiritual “placement.” This definition reminds me of a sort of divine interior decorating. “Oh look, this should go over here. Let’s try that against this wall.”

It is a way we can start to shuffle around the furniture of our lives into an order. Blessing is a way of telling the story of God’s work and purposes and our place in it all — not just when we have it all figured out but precisely at the moment when everything feels chaotic.

When we take up the language of blessing, we are being invited into a way of looking again at the often invisible ways God is appearing in the everyday work of community building, vision casting, trying and failing. Even the very average Tuesdays.

This fresh way of looking means having the eyes to see blessing even during those late nights sorting receipts, wondering how this will all add up. Or during those weekend hospital visits. Or during all the thankless work we do behind the scenes to make everything happen. But we can resist a false bright-siding or an inauthentic victoriousness when we say, “God, this is my best and my worst. Bless it all.”

Our hope is that our new book of blessings, “The Lives We Actually Have,” offers a language of acknowledgment for the full range of our days — our good days, our bad days, the sublime and the mundane. Blessings for the lives we actually have, not just the ones we hope for.

So here is a blessing for those who minister (… and might be tired, worn out and needing an infusion of grace for themselves too).

Oh God, we are surrounded by so many to love.

They need you. And we need you to carry them.

And us too, if we’re being honest.

Let love bear up the weight of us all.

Bless all the kids and grandkids.

Children here and those gone.

Bless the people who quicken our hearts,

now and in years past.

Bless our parents and grandparents;

strengthen our roots and our branches.

Bless our pets and your creation,

and the comfort they bring.

Bless our friends and chosen families,

all the bonds that hold us.

Bless our good, good work

that brings us purpose (or at least it used to

— and we long to discover it again).

God, I will openly admit

that my plan was to rescue us all.

Pry this out of my hands.

Absolve my guilt.

Calm my spirit.

Let me allow you to do the impossible

and bear up the weight of the world

I am determined to carry alone.

Give me enough for today.

And then some for tomorrow too.

As I share myself, my loves, my burdens

with you, oh God.

Thank you for this love,

this absurd and wonderful love.

“Whoever brings blessing

will be enriched,

and those who water

will themselves be watered.”

— Proverbs 11:25 (ESV alt.)

Introduction adapted from “The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days,” by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie (Convergent, 2023). Used with permission.

Faith & Leadership

This was first published in Faith & Leadership, the online learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.

The Thriving in Ministry Coordination Program is a service of Leadership Education, which designs educational offerings, develops intellectual resources and facilitates networks of institutions.