Unified Worship

Today a remarkable thing happened. Something that should not have been unusual, but was. Something happened that was beautiful in its simplicity, and exhilarating in its obvious rightness. Today was one of those days where you look at those around you and wonder why it took so long for this to happen.

Today, four area congregations, all with different affiliations, different styles, and different cultures, but who worship the same God, the same Lord and Savior, came together to worship together as one church. 

What a crazy idea...

And it was wonderful!

I kept hearing in the days leading up to this event and even at the service itself, how unusual it was that congregations in the same community would join together for worship on a Sunday morning. Each time I heard it said I found it unsettling. How did we get to this place, where local churches are in competition with one another and refuse to work together, to fellowship together and to worship together? Isn’t it an incredibly sad statement about where we are in the church when it is considered strange to have local congregations join together to do one of the most basic actions of our faith? The more I thought about it, the more astounded I was. But after today, I am also hopeful and I am excited about my hope.

Today the congregations worshipped together and relished the time together. For the first time, for most of us, we joined with Christian neighbors, who just happen to attend services at a different building, and we worshipped with them. When the service was finished, we shared a meal and fellowshipped with them. I have neighbors just six houses away from me, that I saw for the first time in the context of “church.” I have talked with them before and knew of their faith, but in the many years of knowing them, I have never worshipped with them. Doesn’t that seem odd? But that was corrected today and I have no doubt today will not be the last time.

Today was so obviously right. Worshipping with neighbors, with brothers and sisters from other congregations, was an incredible blessing. Seeing our pastors humbly join together was inspirational. Setting aside differences was refreshing. And knowing, beyond any reasonable doubt, that God like what he saw, was satisfying to the soul. It was a touch of how things ought to be. Not that our churches should all merge as one, but that we should welcome opportunities to be together and enjoy our common bond in Christ. 

Today was a greater taste of unity in the church, and I liked it!

Hirelings and Shepherds

Almost as soon as I posted my last blog (The Call to Ministry), I saw this beginning to a different blog, from one of the pastors of a well known mega-church, titled, “It’s Not A Job When It’s Ministry”:

“At the time, I was president of a successful company that was a piece of cake to manage. My life was quiet, comfortable, and easy. I wasn’t looking for a change. Why give up CEO status to be an executive pastor at a church?

For me, the answer was simple (if not easy): God called me out of a job and into ministry.

The difference between job and ministry represents the dividing line between hirelings and shepherds: those who work because they get paid by the church, and those who work because they love the church. A job is a paycheck. Ministry is a calling.”

It was almost immediate affirmation of what I had just posted. The phrase “full-time” is not used, but the associated implication comes through loud and clear - you can’t be in a secular job and do ministry. Even worse, if you are in a secular job you are just an “hireling” and can’t be a shepherd. And, of course, there is the “calling.” Apparently God could not call this man to minister in his secular job, because that is not really possible, so he was called out of his secular job into “ministry,” which of course means he was called to be a pastor (remember in Christian language “minister” and “pastor” are synonymous).

Maybe I am being hypersensitive, but this reeks of holy arrogance. Even the title of the blog post carries the implication that “I am doing something special and really spiritual and if you are not a “minister”, then you’re not.” I am sure that is not the intent, and I would guess that the author of the blog does not even see it because it has become such a commonly accepted way of talking in Christian circles. But I believe words and phrases have subtle ways of shaping the way we think and behave. When we are careless with our words it shapes how people think and respond to us, even when we are not fully aware of it.

I do not deny that some are given special gifts and are called to do special jobs. Ephesians 4:11 says, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers...” But it is important to read on to verse 12 and 13 so we understand why Christ gave some to do those jobs, “...to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” That sounds a lot like doing the work that some would call “ministry.” In fact, it could be, and has been argued, that if pastors are simply doing all the ministry, they are not really doing their job. Their job is not to simply “do ministry,” but to train others to do ministry. In fact I have heard some pastors say that, ideally, they should work themselves out of a job by training those in the congregation to do their job. And that is where the disconnect often comes.

How does the author of this blog train another man, who works in a secular job, to do ministry? Does he encourage him to quit his job? Does he tell him to wait for a calling? Does he tell him to go to Bible school? If he does not do  any of those, how can this pastor tell the man to do “works of service” by staying where he is, when the pastor did not see that as an option for himself?  

In fairness, the blog is really about treating the position of a “minister” like it   is just a job, and it is a warning against a lack of understanding that it is about so much more. But I would contend that the same mindset should be true of any job. Although the passages do not directly talk about our jobs, we are quick to apply 1 Corinthians 10:31 and Colossians 3:17 (and rightly so, I believe) to our jobs and and everything else that we do to give them purpose and meaning:

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17)

The reality is, that if we can’t apply those concepts to our jobs, then we are truly wasting our time by being in those jobs, because nothing else matters. If my actions, if the things that I do, do not bring glory to God, than those actions are worthless. If I am spending 40 hours a week or more doing something that is completely worthless, then I should quit. God’s glory is far too important for me to spend so much time dishonoring God. So, we must believe that our lives can glorify God in our job and we must also believe that we can carry out the great commission in our jobs, otherwise we are tragically wasting our lives. 

It may seem out of place to quote Rob Bell at this point, but whether you love him or hate him, Bell makes some terrific observations that are worthy of our attention. In Velvet Elvis, Bell says this:

“...it is impossible for a Christian to have a secular job. If you follow Jesus and you are doing what you do in his name, then it is no longer secular work: it is sacred. You are there; God is there. The difference is our awareness.”

On this point Rob Bell is right on the mark - for a Christian there should be no secular job. In fact we should all be ministering and evangelizing and acting as God’s ambassadors in our job, regardless of the line of work, as well as in our neighborhood and most importantly in our church. Doing the work of ministry is not reserved solely for pastors and missionaries. Some are paid to do those things more exclusively, but it is the call of every Christian to do those things, wherever they find themselves. And yes it is a calling. It is not a calling that we need to agonize over, spend time fasting and praying about and/or wait for some sign indicating that this is what we should do. All that is required is a little time in scripture. 

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle: be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Ephesians 4:1-6

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”

2 Corinthians 5:17-20

We are all called to be and do many things that fall under the category of “ministry” and it does not require special revelation beyond the scriptures given to us. It is clearly taught to us throughout the New Testament. The idea that we need to be “called” is a topic for another post, but I believe we often use the idea of a “calling” as a way of sounding more spiritual. I do not deny that some have special callings on their lives, but it is a mistake to believe that this is God’s normal way of telling us what to do. A calling is an exception. God communicating to us through the Bible is the norm.

So here is the bottom line to all my ranting and raving. Words and phrases have meaning, both obvious and implied. Words and phrases have subtle and not so subtle ways of influencing the way we believe we should respond and act in given situations. If you don’t believe that, try doing a little study on language and culture. Study linguistics. If you don’t believe there is importance in words and phrases, then stop worrying about the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words in the Bible and variations in different translations. What we say and how we say it, matters, and we should be careful about the messages we send when we use our “Christian” language. If we truly believe that we are all called to serve God in forms of ministry, regardless of our situation in life, then we should stop using language that implies that ministry is only reserved for the chosen few.

The Call to Ministry

I think that when a person becomes a Christian we should encourage them to go to Bible school and study to become a “full-time” minister. If they are a youth and have yet to graduate college we should encourage them to avoid other schools and help them focus solely on going to a Bible school. If they are already in another college, we should encourage them to change schools and change majors, to pursue something better. If a person is older, and already in a career, we should encourage them to quit for the sake of becoming a missionary or a pastor of some sort. If they are retired, we should tell them to go back to school (Bible school) so they can spend their remaining years doing something useful like being a senior’s pastor or a chaplain at a nursing home. I think that’s what we should do, because then we would have more Christians that are really spiritual and we would have more “full-time” workers to advance the kingdom. I think “part-time” ministers are really a drag on the system, so we need to replace them and have more people be “full-time” ministers.

In case you did not pick up on the sarcasm, let me clarify something - I hate the phrase “full-time ministry.” I don’t know where it started and I don’t know why we perpetuate its use, but I find it insulting, subtly deceptive, and borderline arrogant when someone uses it to describe themselves and what they do (I don’t believe it is done intentionally, but that it comes with the phrase itself). At the very heart of the phrase is the implication that if someone is a “full-time” minister, then other people must be “part-time” ministers, or not really ministers at all (maybe “no-time” ministers). If I say, “I am going into full-time ministry,” we (the Christian community that has learned proper language) understand that I am going to become a pastor or missionary of some sort. No one gets the mistaken idea that I am going to study to become an engineer, or an accountant, or a lawyer (that one is really obvious, right?). And no one thinks I am going to start farming, or look for a job as a custodian, or join a fire fighting crew. We understand “full-time” ministry to be synonymous with “pastor” or “missionary.” We don’t talk about other people being “part-time” ministers, but the not so subtle implication is that there is one group of people who do ministry all the time and everyone else does not. 

Of course when pressed on the issue, we will say, “everyone is a full time minister,” but we continue to perpetuate a language and an associated culture that says, “not everyone can be a full-time minister.” Then we wonder why people sit back and want the pastors to do everything. After all, if the pastor is the “full-time” minister and I am not, then the things of ministry must be their job, not mine. To further support this line of thinking is the idea that “full-time” ministers are “called” to the ministry. Pastors and missionaries talk frequently about their calling from God to ministry, but seldom does a “lay" person (maybe there is some subtle meaning in that phrase to) talk about their calling to ministry (unless the call is from the pastor). If the pastor was called and I was not, it follows that the pastor should be doing the ministry work, not me. 

Here, also, is where the unintentional touch of arrogance comes into play. Seldom does someone say, “I am going into full-time ministry,” instead they say, “I have been called into full-time ministry.” Being “called” into full-time ministry sounds so much more spiritual and so much more important. People don’t go around talking about being called to farming. It would have sounded weird if my dad would have talked about his calling to be a furniture salesman. Christians assume that if you are in another job, it wasn’t about a “calling” from God, but rather a lack of calling from God. The implication is, that if you are called by God, you will be called into “full-time” ministry. God wouldn’t waste a cool voice (whether it is a literal voice, or a feeling, or an open door, or a sign, or whatever) to call a bookkeeper, or a mechanic, or a chef, would he? Again, when pressed on the matter, most will say you can be called to those things, but the reality is that not many really give it much credence or thought. In fact some will say that you should not go into “full-time” ministry unless you have received a calling, but they would never say that about most other professions. You would be hard pressed to find someone argue that you should not become a pharmacist unless you have been called by God to be a pharmacist. It is one of those things we don’t talk about, but it is generally understood - a special calling from God is reserved for those in “full-time” ministry.

In my profession as a teacher, there is a definite hierarchy to the education system and people working in offices have all kinds of fancy titles. They will send out emails and give mini-speeches about the importance of teachers in the classroom, but there are subtle and not-so-subtle ways they communicate that teachers are not really quite as important as they are. It is not uncommon to hear a teacher say, “I am just a teacher,” to describe themselves. That is a way of saying, “I have no authority, I have very little power and I am not really that important.” Teachers feel that way despite the praises of those in power above them, because there are ways of communicating the hierarchy of importance without explicitly saying, “I am more important than you.” It is done with decision making, it is done with titles and offices, it is done with specific practices, structures and procedures, and it is done with repeated phrases and language with implied meaning. 

We do similar things in the church. I have already mentioned the language, but there are other things. Have you ever noticed how excited people get when a young man or woman talks about going into “full-time” ministry? How does that excitement compare to the young man or woman talking about going into computer science or into the arts? Do you see the difference? How about church scholarships? How many churches give scholarships to medical students in state universities? How about the way we treat students when they leave and come back? Have you ever heard a young person come back to their home church and report about what God is doing in their job as waiter or waitress? Do we invite college students to talk about how God is revealing Himself through their study of ecology? I haven’t, but I have heard kids talk about Bible school, and about mission trips and about how they hope to be used by God in “full-time” ministry. 

So here is the real blow to the gut - in all those actions, the implied communication is that we really don’t expect God to be at work in our youth (or adults) unless they are in Bible school (or at least a “Christian” school) and they are pursuing “full-time” ministry. We hope and pray for God’s protection while they are in “the world” pursuing “worldly” things, but we really don’t expect God to do much with their pursuit. We hope that when they start their career, they will get connected to a "good" church where they can be involved in part-time in ministry while they do their other job. In fact our prayers for them tend to be defensive, whereas our prayers for Bible school students tend to be offensive, that is we tend to pray more for protection for those outside of Bible school and pray for power for those in Bible school. The same thing happens as adults settle into their jobs and careers. We talk occasionally about ministering in the work place, but overall we don’t really act like we expect much to happen there, because they are not really ministers anyway. Instead we talk more about doing our work with integrity and to honor God through our diligence and our example to others and we try to get them into "ministry" when they are at the church building.

So here is the thing... If we really believe that every Christian is truly called to a life of ministry - full-time ministry (whether paid or not) - shouldn’t we act and talk like that is what we expect. Shouldn’t we be just as excited for the student who wants to serve God in the world of medicine as we are for the student who wants to serve God in a church (it could even be argued that we should be more excited). We have young people from our church, who were a part of our youth group, who are away at school pursuing careers outside the realm of “full-time” ministry. Their explicit intent is to serve God with all their might in those careers and to make a difference for the sake of the kingdom through their work, and yet we seldom hear about them. We do, however, hear much about those away at Bible school (and I am not saying that we shouldn’t). What do you suppose will be the reaction when each of those young men and women get a job? Who will generate more enthusiasm - the “full-time” minister or the nurse?

So, who is called to "full-time" ministry? The correct answer, of course, is that we all are. Whose ministry is most important? The obvious correct answer is that they are all equally important. So we know the right answers, now we just need to back it up with how we act and how we talk.

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has a placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” and the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

1 Corinthians 12: 4-6, 12-27

Soul Refreshing

Shortly after we left for our vacation, I received a text from a good friend:

“Hope you guys have an awesome time! May it be refreshing to your souls. May your time with God during this trip be sweeter, richer, more vibrant. May that be the thing that stands out when the trip is all over.”

It was a wonderful blessing and a great reminder of what a vacation should be. What greater purpose for a vacation than to enrich my time with God? What better result could there be than to come home from vacation and feel closer to God than when I left? It is a great perspective on vacation - one that I don’t always have when I leave. Too often my focus is just on escape - escape the daily grind, escape the worries of the job, even escape the burdens of church leadership. But my friend reminded me of a much better focus.

When I was in high school I worked for a farmer moving irrigation sprinklers. In some fields I would move 30 to 50 sections of 12 foot pipe, trying to connect and lay them in a straight line. As I attached each section it was important to keep the whole line the same distance from its previous location. If the sections varied too much, especially at the end of the line, the water from the sprinklers would not overlap properly. The longer the line, the harder it was to keep it straight, but the farmer gave me one valuable piece of advice - “Keep your sights on where you are going, not on where you have been.” At the opposite end of the field was usually a bright orange jug hanging from the fence that was the target. After each section was laid down I would look down the line of pipe to make sure it was headed for the jug. Of course I didn’t always remember the advice and sometimes I would catch myself looking back at my line, trying to straighten what I had done. It was amazing how that never worked. Invariably I made things worse when I tried to straighten the line behind me. I might make sections of the pipes straighter, but my line would be pointing in the wrong direction, off line from the jug. When I kept my focus on the jug at the other end, the line of pipe might not be perfectly straight, but it always ended up where it needed to be. 

It is a life lesson that I need to be reminded of often, even on vacation. I have a tendency to look at what I am trying to leave behind, instead of what I am trying to move towards. My line my not always be perfectly straight when I keep looking ahead, but at least I end up in the right place. It is such a simple idea, but one that seems so easy to forget. So, on this vacation, I am trying to set my sights on drawing closer to God, because it is always better to focus on who you want to move towards rather than on what are trying to leave behind. 

Thank you, friend, for the reminder!