HOLY AMBITION OR WHOLLY AMBITIOUS?
When aspiration and pride mix, the result may yet be ministry.
James D. Berkley
July 1, 1990
Ambition.
The very word conjures conflicting images. Parents want their daughter's fianc‚ to be ambitious enough to support their princess. Yet voters are generally suspicious of candidates they perceive as politically ambitious. No minister wants to be perceived as ambitious in a self-centered way. Yet what pulpit committee would seek a complacent pastor with no discernible ambition?
Pastors wrestle with it: What's good about ambition? How much is necessary, and how much is too much? Is raw ambition ever extracted from holy ambition, leaving only pure ministry motives?
Or, more profanely, will we ever quit worrying about having as many in our Sunday school as that Jubilee Center of Joy across the street?
Spotlight on Ambition
We've all wrestled with ambition, usually grappling with this slippery animal in the dark. The many pastors I talked with recently shed some light on the beast. Most confirmed there is a benevolent side to ambition.
"If personal ambition is defined as getting a good education, trying to keep my appearance pleasant, working to be the best I can be," says Tom Carter, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dinuba, California, "then ambition is not a problem. If it leads to pride, there's a problem. We stumble most often with what we do with ambition."
Michael Walker of White Rock United Methodist Church in Dallas agrees: "Ambition, like anger, can be an appropriate drive when kept in its place. A person without ambition is mentally and emotionally in neutral. The issue is not ambition, itself, but whether that ambition controls us. Does it merely provide input, which we hear, measure, and take into account, or does it dictate our actions?"
Ambition appears to be rooted in who we are. "I took the standard psychological ...
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