IN EVERY CONGREGATION, on any given day, there are people who are suffering and in need of support. This is, realistically, one of the reasons people join congregations in the first place, whether they’re committed to Jesus or not. They want and need a place to belong, to have friends, to know that others care. Hopefully, there are enough folks who actually do care—and show that they care—to make the phrase “church family” more than just a metaphor. Families may squabble and disagree, but they should also be there for one another. They minister to each other in heartfelt and meaningful ways.

In some traditions and congregations, however, the understanding of what counts as “ministry” is narrower. People may volunteer for a variety of tasks that support the ministry, but ministry itself is what the pastoral staff does. I know of congregations in which a member of the church lands in the hospital and wants a visit from the pastor. Any number of people might show up to pray, offer encouragement—maybe even sneak in some contraband food—and these visits may be received well. In that person’s mind, however, if the pastor doesn’t visit, true ministry hasn’t really happened. They may even express that disappointment to others. They could legitimately say, “The pastor didn’t visit.” But how it comes out is, “Nobody from the church came to see me.”

To my mind, what we’ve seen thus far in Luke’s gospel belies that way of thinking. Luke has given us three vignettes of how people have been recruited into God’s work of salvation: Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary, and the shepherds. In each case, an angel appears, and the initial response to the appearance is fear rather than wonder. In each case, the angel delivers a message from God. And in each case, a sign is given to confirm what the angel said. Zechariah is rendered unable to speak; Mary is greeted by Elizabeth with insight from the Spirit; the shepherds find the baby just as the angel foretold, swaddled and lying in a manger. When the sign is complete, the people rejoice and praise God.

But think about it: if God had hired an executive recruiter to fill these positions, would these people have been the ones the headhunter would have put at the top of the list? Imagine the conversation:

Let’s see. I need someone to be the parents of a prophet named John. Any ideas?

Yes, sir. We’ve got just the couple for you. They’re quite old and can’t have children.

Okay, great. I also need someone to be the parents of the Messiah. Who’ve you got?

Well, we’ve got a young girl with a completely blank résumé, and she and her fiancé aren’t married yet. Should be just ones you need.

Perfect. Finally, I need someone to do some PR, you know, spread the news after the baby is born.

Of course. We can give you a whole PR department. They’re dirty, smelly social outcasts. They’ll be great!

By earthly standards, that headhunter would be out of the job. But in the upside-down kingdom, things are different.

Again, to borrow from Mary’s song, God, in his mercy, lifts up the humble. That was the point of our considering the meaning of the word “evangelist” in the previous post. The word carries its own connotations and associations regarding what evangelists do and who’s qualified to be one. But at root, it’s more about the message than the messenger. The messenger can be a heavenly being whose appearance makes people cower in fear. The messenger could be a prophet like John the Baptist.

Or the messenger can be someone completely unexpected, someone who’s typically disregarded and marginalized, like a shepherd. The enthusiasm and joy with which the shepherds proclaimed the good news of what they had been told and then seen with their own eyes filled the people of Bethlehem with wonder. In those moments, I imagine, people stopped seeing them as shepherds. Or, to put it differently, they stopped seeing them at all—because it was the message, the good news itself, that captured everyone’s attention.

I say this because I don’t want us to miss the opportunities to either be blessed or to bless others with good news. I’m not talking about sharing the gospel with the hope of leading someone to believe in Jesus for the first time, though that’s part of it. I’m talking about how we help each other hold onto the faith we already have, to believe what we say we believe when things go sideways.

Reading Luke’s story, I don’t think that what the shepherds said was only for the sake of the residents of Bethlehem. It was for Mary’s sake as well, even though she already believed. It was an encouragement that she treasured in her heart, an additional confirmation that God was at work in surprising ways.

You may or may not occupy some position that people would consider “doing ministry.” And you might not think of yourself or the others around you as “evangelists.” But you may have good news of comfort or joy to share nevertheless. So think about it. Who has been that person for you? It may not have been a person in the pulpit or on the platform; it may have been someone who in other respects seemed quite unremarkable. How did they encourage you? What did you learn?

And then ask yourself this: to whom can you be the bearer of that kind of encouragement?

Who, me? you might ask. Yes, you. Because God lifts up the humble and works in surprising ways.