A faithful man will be richly blessed, but one eager to get rich will not go unpunished (Proverbs 28:20).

I'm going to level with you:  There's a part of me that would really, really like to be rich and famous.  Well, actually, the rich part is maybe not so important (to me, it comes down to long-term security more than oppulence), but I want to be someone who's widely known and admired.  I want to be a household name.  I don't see this happening so much through big business, sports, politics, acting, making music, or inventing something (i.e. some of the more common ways to establish oneself as a household name these days).  But given my educational and career choices up to this point in my life, my most realistic opportunities for "fame and fortune" are church leadership and writing.  And the fact is that I would be lying if I said that I didn't sometimes dream about becoming a household name as a church leader in the vein of Billy Graham or Rick Warren or Rob Bell -- or as a writer like, say, John Steinbeck or Stephen King or Henri Nouwen.  Or maybe both!  There's something in me that just wishes I could have that notoreity -- that social capital, if you will, so that I could "live forever" in posterity.  So I could feel affirmed that I'm good at what I do, I guess.

But here's the trick:  I'm not a flashy person.  That is, I'm not the kind of person who naturally attracts fame and fortune.  The truth is that I'm hopelessly middle-class, hopelessly Midwestern American, hopelessly ordinary.

I actually take pride in the fact that I did not grow up as a "child of privilege."  It's made me scrappy, practical, and persevering in virtually every element of my existence -- including my church leadership and my writing.  I've come to see that I simply cannot separate my ordinary middle-class self from my ordinary middle-class labor... nor do I want it to.  It may not be glamorous or lucrative -- but I'm coming to terms with the fact that it works for me.  And it ultimately comes down to faithfulness and perseverance.

I came to a similar realization about myself during my sophomore year of high school, when I decided to try out for the school tennis team.  My chemistry teacher, Mr. Terman (who was also the coach for the school tennis team) talked me into it -- and I decided to go for it, even though my tennis skills were rudimentary at best, and I didn't even own a proper tennis racket at the time.   Mr. Terman  sold me one of his son's old, second-hand Prince rackets -- which I had to have professionally re-stringed, at a cost which shocked me -- and I was a part of the tennis team.  My skills with the tennis racket  couldn't hold a candle to the other boys on the team with their state-of-the-art equipment and country-club pedigrees, but my athleticism allowed me to remain competitive and in time I developed a style of my own.

I became a Pusher.

In the vernacular of the Midwestern American high-school tennis-playing subculture (or maybe it's a universal tennis term -- I honestly don't know), a Pusher is a player who wins points by effort, not by style.  He doesn't blow away the competition with high-velocity serves or crushing winners stroked down the sidelines.  He just keeps the ball in play.  He tracks down every ball.  He scurries forward, backward, left, right -- just doing whatever it takes to put the ball back over the net "one more time."  In effect, the Pusher waits for the other player to make a mistake.  His style can be ugly.  It's no fun to watch (and perhaps even less fun to play) a match with a Pusher.  But the style can win points, games, sets, and sometimes even matches.  I'm pretty sure that the label of "Pusher" was originally intended to be derrogatory -- but I learned to take pride in it.

Indeed, I'm settling into the idea that the best way for me to pursue my ambitions in the fields of church leadership and writing is to come at it from the vantage point of a Pusher.

So instead of viewing every ministry decision as an opportunity for break-through and grandeur, I'm trying to focus on the shepherding task that lies directly in front of me on any given day.  Instead of waiting for my "big break" in publishing -- sequestering myself to magically produce that timeless classic for our generation -- I'm just going to try and keep the ball in play.  I'm not going to seek some high-and-lofty niche in the global community; instead, I'm going to explore the ways that the "ordinary" and "middle class" display their own extraordinariness and nobility in their everyday ways and their everyday places.  Even in declaring this, I realize that I am not saying anything new or groundbreaking.  I am, by no means, the first person to consider the vast potential of ordinary, everyday, middle-class labor.  Other church leaders and writers (many of whom are significantly more talented than me) have created -- and will continue to create -- beautiful models for ministry and exquisite works of art inspired by the muse of the middle-class.  But if I am to ever earn a place among the greats, it will be simply because I persevered.  Because I pushed.  Maybe it will never amount to anything... but maybe it will.

At the end of my life, I think I'll feel good about myself even if I never achieve any kind of fame or recognition beyond my own circle of relationships... as long as I know that I kept on pushing.