Previous Post -Gardening In Exile
Last night at Little Flowers Community small group we were discussing the kind of community of faith we hoped to become. We started by reflecting on experiences with church in the past that were particularly negative and disappointing. Then we reflected on experiences with church that stood out as positive or even exceptional, asking what was required for those experiences to be possible. Finally we examined what the different examples had in common. In the end, we were able to clearly see, not only what we hoped to become as a community together, but what it would cost each of us to get there. Our answers were calling us to give more time, energy, consistency, priority, sacrifice- things that seemed obvious but were important to be reminded of.
At one point, it came up that people would more involved if we were doing more in the community- outreach of some kind. After all, they said, they had been involved off and on in a number of other ministries in the city that had been great. While they were right to affirm this direction, I found myself sighing with frustration. This was a conversation I seemed destined to repeat over and over again. As positively as I could, I affirmed the suggestion and asked: “So what are you waiting for?”
When push came to shove, the answer came down to this: they were waiting for someone to start the ministry so that they could join in. And this was a problem for me on several levels. First, “someone” almost always referred to myself or my wife. Now, the fact that we are career missionaries with many years of experience gives the expectation some credibility. However, our experience has also been that people also want others to lead so that their involvement could be based on their convenience. In other words, when it wasn’t convenient, the “leaders” would be left to fill in the gap themselves. Our small missionary team (which had planted Little Flowers Community and continues to work full time in the neighbourhood) tried this before and led the group to near-burn out.
Second, and most importantly, this pattern inevitably discipled those some-time volunteers in an experience of missional engagement that was divorced from the nitty-gritty, mundane aspects of ministry. By allowing people too much access to missional context with requiring them to carry the cost creates the illusion of missional living that can proved dangerous to all involved. Of course, I am well aware of how such a pattern has emerged. While some might blame it on influences such as “short term missions” (a claim with some, but less truth than most people might imagine), it has more often been born of desperation and necessity. Let me explain.
The ability to get people to meaningfully and sacrificially engage in lives of missional service is very, very hard. We live in a culture of consumer Christianity where people have to be convinced (sold) on an idea or activity. Even then, their participation and/or support is seen as their exceptional contribution rather than the base-line for required service. However, the need for people to be involved continues to grow, especially in contexts where the needs are so severe and the resources so scarce (such as in our inner city context). Therefore, in order to bring the needed people in, we accommodate or even compromise. One way of doing that is to do all the “behind the scenes”, mundane work so that people can in and participate in the more dynamic aspects of ministry that interest them.
This needs to stop. By doing this we are actively discipling people into a way of Christian service the affirms and entrenches the individualistic, consumer-driven impulses of our culture. Further, it creates an illusion of what it means to be missional people that in the end is little more than a shell of the sacred vocation that God calls us to. Of course God, in His grace, will work through these situations in spite of us. And of course the the unique gifts of some will predispose them to certain roles and not others. However, these points do not mitigate the danger and compromise of the approach that is all too common.
What scares me most about this is the fact that, whenever we resist this impulse, we find ourselves standing quite alone. The Dusty Cover, the ministry that gave birth to Little Flowers Community, had to be closed due to a lack of people willing to consistently and selflessly serve. By requiring even a little more from people, we’ve seen many move on to more accommodating ministries. It is discouraging, disheartening and more than a little disturbing.
I am grateful that the core group of people in Little Flowers Community are beginning to see this. It is particularly difficult for single 20-somethings (who make up the majority of our church) to realize this and adjust to it. However, the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. Has the familiarity with that truth numbed us to the urgency of its message? We need to begin to require more of ourselves and each other. We need to resist compromising and begin to call ourselves back to the radical vocation of being the community of Christ, a community called daily to lives of sacrifice, even unto the cross.
What do you think? Is this a problem for your community? How do we change this?
