Thursday, February 14, 2008
The Glory Of The Ordinary
My friend Russ at Eagle and Child wrote a great piece a while back on celebrating the ordinary. He sets up by looking at grade inflation, and how such reduces achievement to meaninglessness, then opines:
The ideas Russ puts forth here have mighty implications for the church. Virtually every church heaps too much "glory" on its clergy, and in this day and age, "worship leaders," (Funny, when I was on Young Life staff, we just called it "leading songs.") praise bands - you know, all the people collecting a paycheck. For some churches, like Russ and I's PC(USA) we often place the ordained laity somehow above the fray as well, although that is less and less so these days.
The primary implication of Russ' comments for the church is that leadership is just another job, no better or worse than all the other jobs in the church. And frankly, the kind of egalitarian view of impact that Russ calls for demands more of leadership than the job itself. It is up to leadership to perform its job with sufficient humility to encourage the other jobs. It is also up to leadership to show those other jobs their importance.
This also creates a radically different picture of Christian maturity than we often see. In this case, maturity is about being a good person in your circumstance rather than putting yourself into some circumstance that gives you impact. How many churches do you know that are teaching people how, simply, to be good people. People who take their faith seriously seem to end up "feeling a call" to something extraordinary. But real Christian maturity by this model, is felling called to the ordinary.
Have you felt that call lately?
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For this reason, I believe in celebrating the courage of the ordinary. The courage of the ordinary is what George Bailey exhibits in It's a Wonderful Life - he passed up many opportunities for adventure and greatness because he was committed the people in his life. He lived what on the surface appeared to be a quite ordinary life ... he courageously stayed committed to family, friends, and his small place in the world. And then, in the moment of crisis, he was blessed to see what a great impact he indeed had.This is a great blog post, you really should read the whole thing. I'll wait.
[...]
The courage lies in sacrificing the luxury of charting our own course so that we might take care of others. This is different from a mindless conformity; the courage lies in the choice. The courage lies in being faced with the dizzying opportunity to run away with the circus, to abandon commitments, to chuck it all and follow the Grateful Dead, to run off in search of ourselves ... whatever the siren call to extraordinary life might be...and voluntarily and willfully declining.
[...]
I believe that God created each human life as having value. That does not mean that the value is expressed in the same way. Part of the glory that God has placed upon mankind lies in the very expanse of capacities that are given us. The way to honor the varying expressions of God's glory in mankind is not through a one-size-fits-all policy where all children get A's. It is not through diminishing the accomplishments of the great so that the rest of us don't feel bad. The right way is through honoring glory each in it's kind.
The ideas Russ puts forth here have mighty implications for the church. Virtually every church heaps too much "glory" on its clergy, and in this day and age, "worship leaders," (Funny, when I was on Young Life staff, we just called it "leading songs.") praise bands - you know, all the people collecting a paycheck. For some churches, like Russ and I's PC(USA) we often place the ordained laity somehow above the fray as well, although that is less and less so these days.
The primary implication of Russ' comments for the church is that leadership is just another job, no better or worse than all the other jobs in the church. And frankly, the kind of egalitarian view of impact that Russ calls for demands more of leadership than the job itself. It is up to leadership to perform its job with sufficient humility to encourage the other jobs. It is also up to leadership to show those other jobs their importance.
This also creates a radically different picture of Christian maturity than we often see. In this case, maturity is about being a good person in your circumstance rather than putting yourself into some circumstance that gives you impact. How many churches do you know that are teaching people how, simply, to be good people. People who take their faith seriously seem to end up "feeling a call" to something extraordinary. But real Christian maturity by this model, is felling called to the ordinary.
Have you felt that call lately?
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