That's the opening paragraph of an article at Christianity Today I just read that discusses the bigger is better myth that still holds so much weight in the Western Church. Some other quotes from the article:
It seems too many of us have our identities wrapped up in the measurable outcomes of our work rather than in the life-giving love of the Christ we proclaim. Something's wrong.
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Some might say these leaders have failed to nurture their souls sufficiently. We usually want to blame leaders for their own burn out, but when I see the pervasiveness of this problem I wonder if there isn't also a systemic factor. Could contemporary church ministry itself be the problem?
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Consider a chapter titled "Bigger is Better" from a popular ministry book. The authors write, "A church should always be bigger than it was. It should be constantly growing." Talk about pressure. The problem is this standard doesn’t hold water when applied to Jesus himself. John 6 describes the scene where "many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him."
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Unlike contemporary business, ministry involves the baffling interplay of the human and the divine, the spiritual and the material. There is a mystery to what we are called to do. Embracing this mystery and releasing the outcomes of our work to God is what we must do if our lives, and not just our ministries, are to be filled with his grace.
I encourage you to read it for yourself. I know this is nothing new for some of you, but I also know there are a lot of voices still shouting for growth and numbers and performance and results, and those voices will go out of their way to silence anyone who doesn't repeat their words. I hope this is an encouragement for those left in the dust of a fast moving "ministry". May you instead walk in the dust of your rabbi.
2 comments:
I like your last line... very Hebrew.
Something that was continually drilled into me by one of my theo profs was how church is not a business. Studying business admin, I do see organizational tendencies which are similar in business as in church, but that does not make the two the same. A higher level of thinking is needed to determine which aspects are the same and where church varies drastically. Good post.
Yeah, I completely stole that line from Rob Bell! :) But I feel somewhat justified because I thought it was a good visual contrast to being left in the dust, and only after writing it remembered that Rob always talks about being "covered in the dust of your rabbi"...
It would be sweet to hear some of the similarities and differences you have noticed between business and church. I have no mind for business and tend to equate business with consumerism, top-down hierarchies, and human value based on production. I'm sure that's not very fair, and I know the right response it not to throw out all order, authority, and production but to find the right place for those things.
Unfortunately I'm not very good at balance in those areas yet. So, maybe sometime you (and others?) can offer some ideas on what that might look like.
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