Photo by t. magnum via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Somewhere along the way ministry became a desk jockey job.
When I read the book of Acts and even the pastoral epistles I get the idea that being a pastor was action packed.
- John didn’t kick it in staff meeting for 2-3 hours per week.
- Peter didn’t make edits to the bulletin.
- Matthew didn’t work late to attend the facilities team meeting.
- Phillip didn’t put on a collared shirt and sit in a swivel chair from 8-4.
Even if you go back 50 years the pastoral staff wasn’t all about programs and project managing. They were out in the commnity visiting elderly, the sick, and doing house calls. If the staff had an office it was for study. If the staff met it was for prayer. There was an administrative staff that did admin work and project management. Not pastors. Pastors were out doing, not sitting behind a desk.
But somewhere between there and here all ministry jobs became something else. If we’re honest the ministry job became 75% administrative and 25% ministry on a good day. New people in a church always say the same thing... this isn’t what I thought it would be.
At least once per week someone will ask me if I miss working in the local church. The truth of the matter is that I have the same level of contact with high school students today as I had in nearly a decade of full-time church ministry as a youth pastor. I’m not in a rush to go from actually doing ministry to riding a desk in the office and talking about ministry. If I ever accepted a call to a church again, the role would be radically different… or else I’d go insane.
Life in ministry isn’t meant to be boring
But for many people the jobs that pay are boring.
Too many meetings and not enough ministry. Office hours and office gossip and office meetings and trying to look busy.
The goal is all jacked up. Where does the desk jockey model lead too? More desk jockeys running more complicated programs. We need to rebel against it because we know where this leads. With less than 10% of the population actively engaged in a local church… seriously, we know the current way of doing things doesn’t work!
Stop it.
Radical change is required in the way church staff operates to reverse the trend.
We don’t need a revival. We need full-time ministers to do full-time ministry.
Exceptions: No doubt, there are objectors to my generalization. That’s the nature of hyperbole, isn’t it? But at the same time compare the hours per week that your own church spends in the office vs. the amount of time the New Testament church did. They didn’t even have an office! So it was 0%. The biblical model is 0%. God’s Word is true, right? God is unchanging and unchangeable? Did I miss the memo in my Bible? How can we justify 50%, 75%, or 90% of our hours doing office work?
Church, we have an office problem. (Misappropriation of funds if you ask me.) And if we want to reach more than the 10% we currently reach, we need to change or watch that 10% shrink to 5%. We know where this leads.
Stop what you are doing and think about a new way.
What’s the solution?
Follow the church planters. That’s where the growth happens, right?
Close the church office. Morph your ministry staff into field agents. Tell your team to go out and visit the sick, serve the poor, feed the hungry, teach the Bible “out there,” and minister to the widows and orphans. The pastoral epistles give us a pretty good vision for what to do. The reality is that we don’t want to do the job laid out there.
Remove the office temptation and lease the office space. Pastors who are lazy will just set up offices in coffee shops or their homes. Fire them. If the church is to change, we will need agents of change and not desk jockeys.
Church planters do it every day. It’s funny that they come up with all sorts of fancy statistics as to why they think their new plants stop growing after 12-18 months. Maybe it’s not the movement that slows, missiologically. Maybe it’s the staff that stops trying and starts with office hours?
Photo by Nick Chill via Flickr (Creative Commons)
I love the audacity great faith brings.
It’s idealistic. It’s over-the-top. It’s incomprehensibly arrogant simplicity. It’s stupid fun to be around.
And that’s why I love my church.
This little church in the city truly believes they can be instrumental in seeing a new San Diego rise up to be an amazing place to live.
Right now, we’re in a sermon series on the book of Nehemiah.
As I read the narrative I can’t get past step one.
Step one of rebuilding your city? Chapter 1… lay on your face and be honest in confessing to God.
O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. Nehemiah 1:5-7
What I love about Nehemiah and its message to the church is obvious… it’s not about your church, people. The purpose of the church isn’t to build a little empire. It’s to bring life to a dead and dying city. It’s to see the gospel bring renewal.
When I look out over the landscape of church culture I can’t help but see that we’re missing step one.
We need to deal with our own hearts. And we need to focus on the city and not our fiefdom.
This next passage absolutely wrecked my view of the local church. At the end, when Jesus comes to judge the church, Revelation 2-3 gives us a glimpse of how he judges the church… it should change how you and I do business.
v. 1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write”
v. 8 “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write”
v. 12 “To the angel of the church in Pergamum write”
v. 18 “To the angel of the church in Thyatira write”
3:1 “To the angel of the church in Sardis write”
v. 7 “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write”
v. 14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write”
In case you missed it. Jesus isn’t judging the work of a single, local church. He’s judging the work of His body in each city.
Can I get an Amen?
24 hours into my second trip to Haiti and I started crafting this phrase:
Theology and culture always co-mingle. You just hope that theology and culture never conspire against the goals of the church.
In America: Theology and culture conspire to destroy the church through our belief in the American Dream and pursuit of happiness.
In Haiti: Theology and culture conspire to over-spiritualize everything.
At least that’s my opinion after my second visit. The first go-round, I was doing my best to look past all of that so I could focus on evaluating the needs of the people. But this time, it became clear to me that the desire to blame everything on the spiritual world was seriously hampering rebuilding.
God may have been in the earthquake. But there were certainly human factors at play as well.
Walking around Carrefour, the epicenter of the January 12th quake, is like a scene out of a movie. Not the beginning and fun parts. And not even after the credits roll. It’s like that sense of curiosity you have when you watch a movie like I Am Legend. What would happen if people re-inhabited the set? That’s the feeling you get walking around the effected areas. You are on the set of a movie about the end of the world.
“The world has ended.” These are the words of some church leaders. Most Christians in Haiti seem to believe that January 12th was the beginning of the tribulation. And who can blame them? On a single day half the cities people became homeless. Almost 10% of the cities population was killed. Countless homes, business, churches, and government buildings either collapsed or were severely damaged. If this isn’t tribulation than the real tribulation is truly something unimagineable.
Last week I documented some signs of hope in Haiti. This time I wanted to be fair and share some signs of despair. (And evidence that you need to be involved!)
- Some rebuilding has begun. But with no building codes, horrible materials, and skilled labor lacking… people are just making the same mistakes that lead to so many deaths. It’s easy to blame God, but one major contributor was faulty construction practices.
- Billions of dollars in foreign aid will be distributed mostly to wealthy oppressors. Joel spoke with a Spaniard on his way out of Haiti. He had been in the country for 3 years and is leaving because he can’t handle the corruption anymore. “Want to know where all the aid is going? The Haitians the NGOs are hiring are selling it out of the back door.” Enough money has been given to Haiti to completely level and rebuild Port-au-Prince. Unless people intervene all of that money will be squandered away bit by bit. Sorry if that’s shocking to you.
- While there are thousands of NGOs on the ground, very few have camp managers like Sean Penn. Like it or lump it, each camp needs a foreigner who will go to the various NGOs and leverage social currency selflessly on behalf of people. Spiritual needs are great to meet. But there are still plenty of physical needs unmet too. A camp manager who checks in 1-2 times per week isn’t going to cut it. It takes people who make running the camp their life mission to make things happen.
- The earthquake shook the people, but a culture of dependency is hard to loosen. Americans have a “fix-it” mentality. It’s in our cultural DNA and we exhibit it everywhere we go in the world. As the recipient of generations of this, Haiti (and other places in the world like Haiti) have a “foreigners fix-it” mentality. Our cab driver in Ft. Lauderdale was the perfect example. His wife is a doctor in Haiti and he sends home money to support her. When I asked him when he would move back to his country he told me, “I will move back when I find a white man willing to partner with me on my water and ice business.” When I told him that, in my opinion, the only hope from Haiti was if the Haitian people lead themselves and stopped depending on outsiders… he just laughed. “I wish that same thing, but the Haitian people just like to buy and be given things by white people. It means it is a better gift or business than a Haitian can create.”
- The government of Haiti is dragging its feet. A major problem facing rebuilding efforts are the myriad of 18th century property laws that govern ownership. You need a permit to remove rubble. And if you are renting you need to get the owners permission. The owner might live in another country, and he may only have a share of the ownership with dozens of cousins. And, of course, to prove you own the land you need to go to a government building which collapsed. Round and round you go. Months go by and nothing gets done. Unless you pay a bribe, that is.
Is there hope for Haiti? Obviously. I believe to the core of my being that Jesus brings renewal of the soul and the land. While this is an incredible time of spiritual revival in Haiti it is also the greatest opportunity in our lifetime for Christians to get involved at the grassroots levels and help root out corruption and see the best interests of the people served.
If not you than who? Want to change the world? Think you are crazy enough?
Step one.
Those were the words of my friend and teammate, Mark Helsel.
Our team was overwhelmed today as we joined in the craziness of an orphanage running in the backyard of a doctor turned pastor.
Today we got a glimpse of an amazing ministry here in Carffuer, the Sons of God orphanage.
What is it? Well, it’s nothing and everything at the same time. Upwards of 100 children live in a makeshift orphanage. The conditions are very rough. It’s messy and smelly in the backyard where the kids play. There are chunks of broken concrete and piles of mud. Little boys urinate in a drain next to workers doing laundry.
But this isn’t about the squalor of the conditions. It is about the condition of their spirit. The children all wear huge smiles. They are warm and affectionate. They are clearly loved and safe. And thanks to the efforts of people like Ed Noble (Journey Church, La Mesa) and Doug Paggit (Solomons Porch, Minneapolis) they have plenty of food and supplies.
This is what joy is! It is knowing that you are an orphan and have been brought from life threatening danger to life giving security. That’s why, when the singing begins, so does the dancing. Joy erupts from the very fact that you are loved and taken care of.
Oh, to be a person that opens your home, life, and family to the needs of your community! What satisfaction and honor that must bring to the family in God’s eyes.
Maybe, just maybe, this is what the church ought to be doing?
A refuge in life’s earthquakes.
A family when you have none.
Security when you are left insecure.
A future where there was none.
Sharing to the point of poverty.
I’m now back to the place I was in February. I simply cannot reconcile the world Iive in with the world I know exists here.
That’s why I leave you simply with the challenge.
Haiti: Pray. Give. Go.
