My friend reflected on his childhood years growing up as part of a missionary family in a post-communist country. His parents were sent as church planters of sorts, but they faced a community of people still adapting to freedoms they had never experienced.
Building trust meant overcoming some difficult barriers, but the missionary family persevered and eventually were welcomed into the community.
They made lifelong friends and infused Christ into the everyday happenings of this once closed-off segment of society.
How did they do it?
They loved each other and the people around them well.
George Bullard shares in his article: “When congregations continually look for ways to make their context and its people groups more Christ-like and loving, they will avoid developing traditions that stagnate the progress of their congregation.”
Certainly, we need to maintain familiar and soul-filling styles of worship and church life activities that meet the needs of the current congregation while also providing a place for those fresh on the scene.
But what takes place during the various services and activities at any given church is only one aspect of our purpose as a church family.
Loving people well and learning to consistently become more Christ-like means personally, deeply and genuinely investing in the community around us.
If those called to serve on a church staff spend all their time, energy and resources managing the day-to-day operations and perfecting the specifics of the next service, then how can they be expected to feel the pulse
of those outside the church walls?
And if the expectation on church members becomes a continually escalating motivation to serve in various roles during service times to keep all the balls in the air, then how easy would it be to count that as their ministry service for the week?
The opportunity to volunteer and the gift of us being willing to volunteer is a crucial part of our world as Christians.
At the same time, it’s important to remember what church members are attempting to juggle in life with their personal responsibilities and other ways they may be ministering.
It’s also vital to check our hearts when we find ourselves pushing hard for people to step up and participate, possibly even resorting to guilt.
Is it possible that if we have to work extremely hard to find volunteers to staff a specific effort, then maybe it’s not what God has in mind for us to be doing at the moment?
Please know, I’m a proponent of working hard and striving for excellence in all that we do. We can find our call to excellence in Scripture as well.
However, striving for excellence in the eyes of the Lord might look different than what we sometimes find ourselves doing.
Looking beyond ourselves
Developing a beautiful church building and caring for it with a protective spirit as if it were our own possession is one way to be excellent in our effort, but if we take the possessive spirit too far, then we might shift from using the building as God intended.
We could easily find ourselves shutting people out rather than welcoming the community in to share it with us.
Offering lots of complex programs and activities and pouring large amounts of time into organizing those efforts also provides opportunities to be excellent, but if we only stick with what we prefer rather than what’s truly needed, then we turn the focus back to ourselves.
We could easily wear ourselves out working hard and still totally miss where God is working and inviting us to join Him.
We also know many of you are not missing it at all. Share with us how your church family is loving well. Email us at news@thebaptistpaper.org or reach out to me personally at jrash@thebaptistpaper.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Jennifer Davis Rash, president and editor-in-chief of TAB Media Group. This editorial will appear in the May 8 edition of The Baptist Paper. Click here to subscribe.
