What Nobody Tells You About Ministry

Jovanni Chua spends his days forming other people. Retreats, recollections, choir rehearsals, one-on-ones with students still figuring out who they are. He walks with people for a living. And then he goes home, and walks with a twelve-year-old asking hard questions about faith, and a seven-year-old who just sings without caring how he sounds.Nobody warns you that the people most likely to run dry are the ones who never stop giving.In this episode of JoshFriends, Jovanni Chua, Assistant Campus Minister at Sacred Heart School, Ateneo de Cebu, reflects on what it actually feels like to lead worship when you're the one who needs it. To teach formation while quietly wondering who's forming you. To stand at a mic, hit every right note, and feel absolutely nothing.Because that's the conversation we don't have enough in ministry circles. Not the crisis moments. The ordinary ones. The Sunday where everything goes well on the outside and something in you is just... tired.It was a song that named it for him. Kind and Merciful by Himig Heswita, rooted in Psalm 130, written by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ. Not because it gave him an answer. But because it gave him permission."Our God forgives our sins and heals our pain. He redeems us all from ruin and from shame."Ruin and shame. Not "areas for growth." Not "spaces for development." The psalm doesn't soften it. And somehow, that's the thing that reached him. The honesty of it. The directness. The reminder that restoration isn't something you earn by getting your act together first.This episode draws from the Fourth Week of Easter, a season about more than an empty tomb. It's about the disciples who were scattered and broken being gathered back. Not because they performed their way back to wholeness. But because that's just who God is.For choir members, worship leaders, campus ministers, and anyone who has ever stood in front of a community and served from a place of emptiness, this one is for you.You are not just the one doing the forming. You are being formed. Even now. Even here. Even tired.Whom you made and deeply know.That's the anchor. And it doesn't let go.🎵 Kind and Merciful by Himig Heswita, available on Spotify, Apple Music, and all major streaming platforms.📄 Music sheet for choirs available at jescom.ph/josh📖 JesCom Exclusives also available at jescom.ph/josh