Tuesday, June 19, 2007
What's Wrong With This Picture?
MMI quoting a blog quoting Larry Osbourne on ‘How to Grow a Church and Still Have a Life’ and I could not help but think what this post is titled. How can those two things possibly be mutually exclusive? Why are they in competition?
The underlying post quotes some of Osbourne's points that make the point I want to make.
The "potential" that Osbourne mentions is a worldly vision, it is meeting the metric of success the world establishes.
Which leads me to a thought I have been rummaging for years and I don't think I have ever uttered ouloud. I do not think God calls us to a ministry or profession of any sort. God calls us to be Christ-like. That's it. He calls me to be Christ-like in any and every endeavor I undertake.
That also means our potential, our only potential that matters, is measured in our Christ-likeness. This also means that as Christians we all share the same burden. Pastors have no special burden to bear, simply a different one.
Related Tags: pastor, potential, burden, Christ-likeness
The underlying post quotes some of Osbourne's points that make the point I want to make.
Larry decided to fulfill his calling, not his potential.What a fascinating concept. I would argue that your calling does represent your potential, at least the potential that God sees in you, but then I don't want to get bogged down in semantics. Because the essential point is this, God's vision for us is RADICALLY different than our vision for ourselves.
The "potential" that Osbourne mentions is a worldly vision, it is meeting the metric of success the world establishes.
Which leads me to a thought I have been rummaging for years and I don't think I have ever uttered ouloud. I do not think God calls us to a ministry or profession of any sort. God calls us to be Christ-like. That's it. He calls me to be Christ-like in any and every endeavor I undertake.
That also means our potential, our only potential that matters, is measured in our Christ-likeness. This also means that as Christians we all share the same burden. Pastors have no special burden to bear, simply a different one.
Related Tags: pastor, potential, burden, Christ-likeness
