About seven years ago I was on a youth minister's retreat that I have little recollection of other than one topic that was talked about: looking for effectiveness over success. Ever since then, I've been keen on redefining the matrix through which I thought about let alone evaluated how I was doing in ministry. I'm all for accountability, but I think that the Church has adopted worldly standards for deciding what's working and what isn't, and this has knocked us off course at times, and hurt a great many people.
As I read through the Gospels, I find Jesus who almost encourages us against worldly standards of success, "not for the sake of failing, but because there wasn't anything to win in the first place" (to quote Donald Miller). Instead, a great many churches, a great many pastors, and too many youth pastors are caught up the game of constant competition. What is for our culture one of its great strengths has become for the Church a great weakness. We want to win. We want to have the biggest congregations, the best attended Bible studies, the largest youth groups. But for what?
It seems to me that many of us are so enamored by worldly success, that we don't even see it in the Church. Instead, we have allowed it to taint our understanding of body life. We have traded true grace for a cheap imitation that shows its dross anytime someone (or some ministry) doesn't meet "corporate" performance expectations. We have chosen to accept "success" and fearfully look out for "failure" all at the expense of what is by far more important, faithfulness and calling.
To that end, I would submit that because of this, there are many "ministries" that have attracted lots of people, but are not necessarily accomplishing much for the kingdom. Now, I don't have an axe to grind in writing all of this. Instead, I think most Western (e.g., American) churches suffer from this. We need to understand that the economy of the Kingdom operates by different rules. We are to be patient, not afraid of time, investing ourselves in people, both individually and family (or community), trusting God to multiply our ministry and outreach in ways that will far outpace a corporate American solution to the challenges of ministry because we are merely seeking to be faithful and obedient to Him who called us in the first place. In keeping faithfulness and calling at the forefront of evaluating ministry, we allow for God to show us our "successes" and where we are "failing".
The way the world judges such things is always to say that they are looking for a clear winner. This is not God's ways - for in the Kingdom, all of God's people are winners. He's looking for faithful people, not successful.
What do you think?
Saturday, August 05, 2006
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