Tuesday, April 14, 2009
What's a Christian To Do?
Milt Stanley links to this excellent post at In The Clearing and uses the same pullquote I will here:
That is so appealing to people because, in part, there is so little for the layman to do in the church these days. There are two factors at play. One, people often don't want to put in the time necessary to do bigger jobs, and two the staff needs something to do to justify their salary. Subsequently, people who love the church and therefore want to contribute, are left only the menial and inconsequential. Heck in some churches, staff works really hard to reduce the supposedly consequential (ruling boards of various types) to the time consuming, yet still pretty inconsequential.
Committed Christians want real ministry - they want to be Christ's tools in changing the world. Cooking for a "pitch-in" somehow just does not seem that effectual in the bigger picture. The church needs to learn how to set free that energy (it is after all of the Holy Spirit) rather than try to harness and control it.
We see here one very real consequence of such harnessing and control - sort of a perpetual victim mentality. Christ offered a victorious life. Time the church started offering the same.
Everybody wants to be your comforter. The whole idea of church life, they seem to think, is to find out what's hurting and pray for that. Nothing makes them light up more than to hear that you're feeling down, or you have some back pain, or your job is boring. It gives them something to "intercede" about!Bob is wondering, in essence, why we make mountains our of molehills when it comes to personal problems. "Prayer requests" are pretty much the grease of small groups. He argues, in part, that it is about validation - pulling from yet another post by someone else (you follow the links)
I hope I'm not sounding too awfully cynical here. I certainly do appreciate prayer, but I think we're training ourselves to be perpetual spiritual invalids, rather than forgetting ourselves and getting involved in the mission of God in the world around us.
...but crises are one of the ways we justify our existence. They are the way we give our lives meaning and significance. They somehow make us important, or are a means of soliciting sympathy.I want to look, briefly, at the flip side of the situation - there is also great personal validation for the person receiving the request. Now we find ourselves in a "power" position - now we what "ministry," even if it is just "prayer ministry."
That is so appealing to people because, in part, there is so little for the layman to do in the church these days. There are two factors at play. One, people often don't want to put in the time necessary to do bigger jobs, and two the staff needs something to do to justify their salary. Subsequently, people who love the church and therefore want to contribute, are left only the menial and inconsequential. Heck in some churches, staff works really hard to reduce the supposedly consequential (ruling boards of various types) to the time consuming, yet still pretty inconsequential.
Committed Christians want real ministry - they want to be Christ's tools in changing the world. Cooking for a "pitch-in" somehow just does not seem that effectual in the bigger picture. The church needs to learn how to set free that energy (it is after all of the Holy Spirit) rather than try to harness and control it.
We see here one very real consequence of such harnessing and control - sort of a perpetual victim mentality. Christ offered a victorious life. Time the church started offering the same.
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