Be All That You Can Be!

No this isn't a rerun of an old US Army commercial...

I had some visitors a week or two back from Germany (I am still putting together a rumination on their visit) and I got to reminisce about the Church we were sent out from. I had a conversation with Ingo on my front porch that involved me explaining my thankfulness at having been a part of our sending church for the years that we were there. He asked, "Why was it so special?" This was some of my response:

Church is not supposed to be about putting the best person in the best place to do the best job; creating a perfect product for the consumption of those who show up. There are so many problems with this approach to Church (it creates a clergy/laity dichotomy between those who are and those who are not, it promotes comfort over sacrifice, it promotes a 'discriminating palate' instead of an activist lifestyle, etc.) but I would rather discuss the amazing aspects of a different approach to Church.

If we stop trying to get the best person to come and put on the best show, and instead use the various aspects of Church to be the 'training grounds' for the individuals who perform the various functions, then we are begining to live out the meaning of such passages as Ephesians 4:11-16.

Here are some practical examples:

Why do we want the best worship leader leading worship? Wouldn't we rather have someone step into that position who will be grown and developed by their time in that role? Instead of finding the person who knows how to develop and oversee small groups in a church and paying them to come to your church and do that there, why not let someone who is already in the church yet doesn't know what they are doing give it a shot, in the process they will be developing the very attributes that God wants to produce in them?

There are some fundamental assumptions behind such an approach:

1) The Church's primary role is to represent the person of Jesus to the world in attitude and action, word and deed, both corporately and (more importantly) individually.

2) The role of Church leadership is not ministering to the Church 'laity;' it is equipping, educating, and empowering the 'normal' Christian to minister to the world.

(I have heard it speculated that the Apostle Paul would define the role of baptism in an individual's life the way we today view ordination. In other words, the way most people today think of the role of priests or pastors is the way Paul understood the normal Christian life.)

3) Success in spiritual terms has to do with an individual's connection to God's realm of power, not with the number of people connected to our particular organization.

4) Completing a well-defined task is not the same thing as spiritual growth.

5) Being given the answers to your questions is nowhere near as beneficial as the experience that comes from figuring out the answer.

6) If you are lacking in gifted people in your local community you do not have a resource problem you have a training problem.

Some practical ways that I have seen this walked out at the Church we were sent out from:

Consistently placing less qualified people in positions of responsibility; from the managers of the Coffee Shop to the worship leader, to the pastors, to the small group leaders, to the outreach directors, to the Sunday School leaders, etc. our church viewed a willingness to learn and to serve, and a heartfelt love for Jesus and hatred of their own sin, as the sole prerequisites for accepting responsibility in our community.

"Soft Architecture" - An intentional fuzziness in structure that provided enough room for people to struggle with God. Individuals were forced to seek their own answers, their own job descriptions, their own growth into the task at hand. There was some structure, but mostly there was encouraging relationship with other spiritual sojourners.

A willingness to let people 'mess things up' by learning through doing. Just like a parent does more work in letting their three-year-old 'help' cook dinner (but is providing all sorts of wonderful opportunities for maturing and bonding), so it is more work to let someone learn how to lead a ministry after they start leading it.

All this to say: the Church should be doing everything in its power to help every individual connected to it to come to look like Jesus