Lifting people up or loading people down?
We had an interesting conversation on the golf course yesterday about ministry. It fed something in me that I’ve been thinking about for several years now. I keep going back to the Gospels and seeing how Jesus ripped apart the religious leaders for the burdens they were putting on people. At one point in Luke, as an example, Jesus said to the religious leaders, "Woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them." Being a ministry leader myself, warnings like that catch my attention.
One of the volunteer leaders yesterday was pretty much admitting, I’m burnt out. I’m tired. I need time to myself. I need a break. Obviously, when I hear that, I’m not only concerned for the individual involved, but as a ministry leader, it sends up a red flag. I wonder, "Am I really helping people take their next step toward Christ, or am I just loading people down with burdens?"
This may be the ultimate challenge I face in ministry. On the one hand, I want to "prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up" but on the other hand I want people to have a life-transforming relationship with Jesus who said:
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
This raises conflict in my mind because it feels like the Church (local church in general) needs to create opportunities for people to experience Bible teaching, Bible study, serving opportunities, relational connections with fellow Christ-followers, corporate worship, etc. so that people can jump on a discipleship track and take steps in their faith journey. But, on the other hand, every time we ask people to take another step, we may also be doing the following:
- Adding to the already overwhelming pace of people’s lives.
- Increasing the demand on volunteer ministry leaders who are also investing their precious time to serve others.
- Encouraging people to rely on church programming to take spiritual steps rather than equipping them to grow in their own faith journey.
- Adding burdens to people’s lives when Jesus said we were supposed to be helping people experience joy, peace and rest.
- Communicating that busy is better.
- Creating a works-based religion rather than offering a grace-filled relationship.
- Encouraging people to be transformed into my likeness rather than encouraging people to become more like Christ and more of who God has created them to be. (Most times, thankfully, that will look very different than who God created me to be.)
OK, I thought I’d just admit one of the big challenges/questions I face in my ministry. Is anyone else experiencing that tension? I want more and more people to enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ, but I also want people to experience the freedom and joy and peace found in Christ. I want them to know the God that said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." Am I alone?
I’ve heard that there are some pastors out there who model a sane life for their staff – and ask their staff to follow them in working no more than 45 hours a week. I think this is a good idea, so I try to model sanity for my people.
At the same time, I’m challenged to help people not only step into a relationship with Jesus, but also to take a step of faith to join in his kingdom activity. Needless to say, sometimes this activity matches up with church activity, but quite often not. So the kingdom action to which we draw them is more of a lifestyle than a list of activities. As a leader I value this but I also chafe at it, recognizing that I still need to get certain tasks done, and need people who will commit do doing them.
We also work with many folks whose schedules are completely overloaded before they even walk in our doors. So while we model sanity and obedience, we also need to teach discernment, so our people can learn to prune their activities – cutting out the stuff they don’t need and adding in the new stuff.
We wrestle with this. Some of our initial efforts (a midweek service, regular seminars) worked for a percentage of our people, perhaps those who would have been at church anytime we opened the doors…but we found that our staff and key leaders started feeling the stress and strain. Sometimes our approach/methods lead to fatigue instead of Christ being formed in our lives. Andy Stanley offers this question worth asking; “What am I having to manufacture energy for?” Whatever I put on that list is something I may need to stop doing or at least reconsider and redesign.
Umbrella of mercy here-I also believe that as we mature in Christ we don’t need to be at and do everything. Jesus didn’t heal and preach to everyone-he equipped his disciples to assist with that task.
The tension for me comes when I read the account of the Acts 2 believers meeting together everyday…granted their culture was different than ours as were their meetings. Information download is great but it rarely turns into a transformed life. Relational connections around the Bible with the focus of sharing, caring and challenging seem to breathe fresh life into groups of people. Our struggle has been creating easy steps for people to take from large and medium size groups to smaller ones.
In my own journey at our church it has taken 2 years to identify people with whom we want to do life.
Maybe none of the above even applies-perhaps it is an issue of structure, scheduling, life issues or something I haven’t even thought of. It could be that in some cases the best response of a leader is to simply give a key volunteer permission to rest.
John Ortberg said something like this; “Am I living a life that I would want to invite others to live?”
PURPOSE: When I hear Rick Warren teach, I think the fact of life not being about us is what gets us not to be so tired and worn out. Meaning and a transcendent cause truly energize us as humans and allows us as Christians to focus on where it counts. So, I would say that it is not about the church program but about what people are meant to be.
CHOICES: Our iPod-stripmall-1000-choices ministry approach that is there to relate to our culture of choice is what is exhausting us. Keeping it simple no longer works in a mass-customized framework. So, part of this is also just who we are as Americans and our expectations of life itself.
SIMPLICITY: There is no easy answer to this all, in other words. We just have to learn from the journey on this one and keep it as simple as we can when we have the luxury of keeping it simple.
Maybe the model you are using, is the issue. How about looking at the life of people. Where do they spend most of their time – home or work. How about helping them at those places for discipleship purposes. Looking at Jesus, he addressed their issues they faced in the marketplace. He did not work with them in the synagogue, but out where they lived and worked.
People need help to overcome the Sunday to Monday gap. Focus on helping in that way and you will lift their burdens.
Tony,
Way to lift up a key issue! I just posted some of our struggles….VERY similar to what you are grappling with…in fact Grainger’s recent “Focus on Five” is part of where we are wrestling as well…here’s the link the that post if you want to offer some help!
http://pastorpreneur.typepad.com/pastorpreneur/2006/08/dna_and_persona.html
When we put so much emphasis on programs, large gatherings, and high-quality productions, it will add “to the already overwhelming pace of people’s lives,” especially when those people are volunteers. One inevitably leads to the other.
One of the reasons why I’m enjoying my transition from presentational worship into house church is that is simply removes all of that. When I lead worship for house church, I do spend some time preparing. But it’s an entirely different level of preparation. I’m not coordinating multiple musicians, sound and video engineers, setting my equipment up, getting the stage cleaned up, etc.
The main difference is that instead of hoping to utilize a high quality production to impress and attract people to the gospel, you rely on the gospel itself, manifested through the love we show to one another as well as our compassion on unbelievers. So the pressure to perform is completely removed.