He Wants That We Should Be Inadequate
Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 2:06PM I've spent a lot of money buying books and attending conferences so that I could learn effective skills for ministry.
Skills and techniques are important. If you don't believe me, you probably haven't suffered under an unskilled pastor. But our emphasis on pastoral skills has to be kept in perspective.
Skills are secondary. Ministry skills are never the main thing. This is my main frustration with a lot of what's out there. You get the idea that the church's main problem is methodology. If we just get our methods right, then the church will finally be healthy.
The biggest problem for the church in North America may be that we have made skills and methods the main thing, while assuming or even ignoring the main thing. I love this quote from Tim Keller:
The key to continual and deeper spiritual renewal and revival is the continual re-discovery of the gospel. A stage of renewal is always the discovery of a new implication or application of the gospel–seeing more of its truth. This is true for either an individual or a church.
We may need better methods, but these won't turn the church around unless we have a better grasp of the gospel. We can't assume this.
Bill Easum wrote a book called A Second Resurrection. "what if the metaphors of decline, stagnation, and loss of health just aren t getting to the problem?" he asks. "What if the situation is much worse than what those ways of describing it imply? What if the congregation is spiritually dead?" If a congregation is spiritually dead, no methodology in the world can help.
Skills can be idolatrous. If idolatry is taking a good thing and making it an ultimate thing, then maybe the North American church is guilty of idolatry. That's certainly what Jack Miller thought. North Americans, according to Miller, need to see that "their reliance on themselves, their technology, and their skills was essentially the same as the Ugandans’ reliance on amulets and incantations."
It's not that skills are bad. They have their place. But they are secondary things and need to be kept in their place.
The church is thriving where skills are de-emphasized. According to Philip Jenkins, the center of Christianity is moving slowly out of Europe and North America to Latin America, Africa and Asia. By the year 2050, only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Caucasian.
No matter how you explain this shift, it's interesting to note that the church is declining in Europe and North America even though our methods are better than ever, while it's thriving in parts of the world that don't seem to have paid as much attention to these issues.
Conclusion: I'm not saying that it's wrong to be pragmatic. I'm just worried that we're relying too much on ourselves and our skills, and not paying enough attention to the gospel and to what only God can do.
If there's a skill we need, maybe it's the skill of remembering that we don't have what it takes. In Christianity, only the inadequate are adequate. As one person put it:
It is not God’s intention that we should in ourselves be adequate for our tasks, rather He wants that we should be inadequate. If we only accept the tasks which we think are adapted to our powers we are not responding to the call of God. The church is always in a crisis and always will be. There will be difficulties, limitations, insolvable problems, lack of people and money, a menacing outlook, endless misunderstandings and misrepresentations. We are not only to do our work despite these things; they are precisely the conditions requisite for the doing of it.
Reader Comments (11)
Great, great Spirit led post, Darryl.Perhaps I misinterpret the word gospel as you intend it to mean but isn't gospel centric theology still another form of idolatry, albeit more sublime?My sense is that a human community of people animated by God the Holy Spirit is the truer objective.
Paul:Good question. I'm referring to the gospel in terms of focusing on what God has accomplished through Christ for our salvation and the redemption of the whole world, which we often assume. As you read through the New Testament epistles, you can hardly read a page that doesn't reference this.I think I know what you're talking about - there was a discussion on this a few weeks ago - but I hope I'm not referring to the emphasis of a subgroup as much as the essence of Biblical Christianity.
So, the bottom line is that we must be willing to be vulnerable, something we spend much energy avoiding ;)Some related thoughts.. this on Newbigin and GOCN http://nextreformation.com/?p=2452 and this on romantic theology http://nextreformation.com/?p=2931
Oh, and this from .. who else.. Jean Vanier.."When a community is born, its founders have to struggle to survive and announce their ideal. So they find themselves confronted with contradictions and sometimes even persecution. These oblige the members of the community to emphasize their commitment; they strengthen motivation and encourage people to go beyond themselves to rely totally on Providence. Sometimes only the direct intervention of God can save them. When they are stripped of all their wealth, of all security and human support, they must depend on God and the people around them to understand the witness of their life. They are obliged to remain faithful to prayer and the glow of their love; it is a question of life or death. Their total dependence guarantees their authenticity; their weakness is their strength."But when a community has enough members to do all the work, when it has enough material goods, it can relax. It has strong structures. It is fairly secure. It is then that there is danger."
Thanks for the clarification, Darryl. Given your understanding I expected the broader implication of a living Gospel, rather than the more legalistic, codified book of rules, definition.Darryl, with regard to the essence of Biblical Christianity, is it the Bible itself that speaks to the right understanding of salvation and redemption, or God the Holy Spirit, as animator.Is the Bible apart from the Holy Spirit in any way able to bring a man to redemption and salvation? Can the Holy Spirit, apart from the Bible accomplish the same means?
Len:Those are some good quotes. I really need to read more Vanier.Paul:I don't want to get too far off the topic of the post, but the Spirit and the Word are closely related, and the Spirit points to Christ, which once again gets us to the core of the gospel.
I got inadequacy and lack of skill down pat. Trouble is - the church recognizes it and knows who to blame for everything. The encouragement in it all? 1 Cor. 3:5-7 (ESV) What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. [6] I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. [7] So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 2 Cor. 4:7 (ESV) But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. You have touched on a major problem in today's church Darryl. Great post. May we all hear and apply.
This is why we have been trying to emphasize the concept of vocation in our community. Our roles (and thus skill sets) will of course be important and active at different times, but they are not defining of our vocation. As His Body, our vocation is to love God and love others for His glory. We each have more specific vocations in that larger vocation, but they cannot be defined by titles, roles or skills. Great post, as usual.Peace, Jamie
I don't think I've ever spent significant time in a church where the pastor was skilled enough to lead the church purely based on his technical abilities. I've attended those churches and left them quickly. My experience has been that a certain baseline of skill is needed, but that assuming the baseline has been reached, the real effectiveness of the pastor has much more to do with his or her relationship to God; acceptance of brokenness, repentance, and forgiveness; assumption of calling, gifting, and pastoral mantle; and understanding of what it is to love and be loved. Skills have always been secondary to anointing.
Isn't Sola Scriptura a triumph of methodology over the tension of living with Gospel (the good news however we would define it) culture (the natural world) and the Holy Spirit of God ( the supernatural world) ?
Great comments, everyone.Paul:The answer to that question may require its own post at some point.