the    sides

Jason asked me what I meant by “keeping my prophetic voice” on this post. As I started to hammer out my answer, I realized I was guilty of speaking “expertise.” Every profession does this – engineers, plumbers, pastors, car mechanics. They speak in terms that only those in the inside understand.

So let me first try to define my terms, then you guys can either applaud or tear apart my answer!

As a pastor, my primary focus is helping folks connect with Jesus. That’s the bullseye for every single thing I do. Sometimes that means removing the debris of false doctrine or bad practices. Sometimes that means introducing “new” (at least to them it’s new) theology or new practices to nudge them in the right direction. And in a very few instances the nudge has to be kicked up a notch – like a swift kick in the hind regions. Normally this is only done with highly religious people.

In order to pull this off well, it means I’ve got to stay focused. Which is hard to do (oh look…a squirrel) normally but in church work, it’s worse.

Let me attempt a meager explanation. If I focus on the WHY and HOW of connecting people to Jesus – this is a good thing. The WHY is simply because I love Jesus, Jesus loves people, He’s put this love in me, I love people. The HOW – relationally, make disciples, take others on the journey with me.

Pretty simple, huh? (Again, simple does NOT equate EASY…)

The WHAT question is how we deliver the WHY and the HOW to the people. In other words, WHAT are we going to do to accomplish the WHY and the HOW? As servants of Christ, we’ve got to be careful here. Not all WHATs are created equally. Some will work, some won’t. Some will be more effective in certain contexts but completely ineffective in others.

In other words, the WHATs should be flexible…movable…fluid. We evaluate them constantly and adjust them constantly. Makes sense so far, right?

What makes it dicey in the church context is the emotive/attachment issues we have with some of our WHATs. Stuff like Sunday School, Awanas, student ministry, women’s bible study, life groups, small groups, VBS, compassion ministries, or men’s ministry. The particular way a certain ministry is run, sometimes even a personality can become a WHAT. The problem comes when we confuse the WHAT with the WHY and the HOW.

As a pastor, if I focus on the WHAT – “Sunday School/Small Groups/Fill In The Blank is the ONLY way we can do this…” I’ve lost the plot. It will be increasingly difficult for me to “call forth” the body to action or movement if I’m functioning more as a defense attorney for a particular way of doing things. I’ve lost my voice to critique and discern because now my focus has shifted from the WHY and HOW to the “How do I keep this ministry in this particular form alive?”

By keeping my focus on the WHY and the HOW, it’s easier to evaluate and speak plainly without agendas. I’ll be able to ‘call forth’ the body to movement, speaking as a prophet. To lose this perspective is to become a glorified time-share salesman. You spend your energy, time, and resources defending a product that the masses have already told you they are not buying.

Painful Example: Youth Sunday School.

At a former church, we started evaluating every single aspect of our student ministry using three questions. Is it connecting students to Jesus? Is it reproducing followers of Jesus? Is it serving somebody or something else other than ourselves (outside the church walls)? Some of you who read this blog were part of this journey. We knew what each aspect was SUPPOSED to do. We were trying to measure to see if it was actually doing it.

One arena continued to pop up with ‘no’ answers – Sunday School. We tried dressing it up, giving it a cool name, changing the format, changing the curriculum, changing the teachers – it didn’t matter. It was a glorified day-care service and in fact it was draining to our student leaders and volunteers. Whenever the elephant of Sunday morning Sunday School came up, we (leaders) hated it, knew it was ineffective but we felt like we couldn’t do anything about it.

I first said the words “Let’s kill it” in a student ministry staff gathering. I was faced with two immediate problems. First, there were going to be some folks who upon hearing those words were going to be shocked and offended. They would even question my love for Jesus. I mean, had not Sunday School been God’s chosen vehicle to reach millions of people across the globe? The second problem I had was this – I had no alternative at the time. All of us had been around the block enough to know that if we waltzed in with the idea to kill youth Sunday School one of the first questions we were going to be asked was – so what are you going to do instead?

I was in the same boat as Steve was – I knew the WHY and the HOW, I knew what we were doing wasn’t working AND didn’t fit with the WHY and the HOW. I had no answers as to the WHAT. But that’s why we do life and ministry in community, right? Or at least why we SHOULD do ministry in community. In my context, I had a circle of gift leaders around me and they began to come up with the WHAT. My job was to keep us focused on the WHY and the HOW. The WHAT had to fit with the WHY and the HOW.

In that sense – I kept my prophetic voice. I wasn’t trying to defend a program or a system. I wanted to call us to movement and purpose.