Ministry as Triage

            Last month I had opportunity to visit a hospital ER as a patient (with a deep cut and broken bone in my finger. Not even a good story how it happened.). As I and several other non-urgent (i.e. breathing) patients were sitting in the waiting room, in various stages of discomfort, I was amazed at the various stages of (im)patience around me. Despite a distressing doctor shortage in my local area, I trust the system works the best it can: the most urgent cases will be given priority over the cases that arrived first. I would want a heart attack to be seen by the doctor before my boo-boo finger - and that's exactly what happened.

            Sadly, not everyone in the waiting room was so forgiving of the system, and they took out their frustrations on the triage nurse. The nurse whose job is to assess - and re-assess on a minute-by-minute basis - the urgency and priority of ever-changing situations is the person most likely to receive complaints about that very necessary reality.

            Triage, I realized, is exactly what happens in ministry. More than just compiling a daily or weekly to-do list, what we do for the love of God requires a constant re-consideration of the facts before us. Whatever our ministry is, there might always be a circumstance that demands an immediate re-calculation of the order of things.

            In parish ministry, this is a regular reality: a funeral over-rules a day off, a call to a deathbed takes precedence over a bible study, a pastoral emergency trumps intended sermon preparation time. Things get re-scheduled, balls get dropped, sometimes sermons get left to Saturday night to prepare.

            This does not mean that those things are not important - they are - but it does mean that in the constant ebb and flow of parish life, the clergy are making regular re-assessments of how to best meet the spiritual needs of the congregation. One of the challenges of this is that often times, due to the confidential nature of our work, our only explanation can be "Something came up."

            It is in these times that I am grateful for the grace of the people to whom I minister. People trust me to make those spiritual triage assessments to the best of my ability, and while it can be frustrating to feel less-important, they know that it is not that they are UNimportant - just that their circumstance is not as critical as another. One gorgeously gracious parishioner put it this way (as I canceled a second meeting last minute): "I know that if I ever need you in a hurry, you'll be there. And I know that someone else needs both you AND prayer right now, so I'm off to chat with God."

            Ministry involves triage. As in the medical system, it may be good not to be so desperate as to be at the front of the line. As in the medical system, we can pray for the people who need help more than us, the people who are helping them, and the ones discerning the priorities... and for ourselves, that we might exercise patience as spiritual patients.