Three years ago I took a sabbatical. Jesus met me in ways I didn’t expect and I came back from that motorcycle trip to Denver seeing my world differently. What up until that time were just fleeting thoughts through the dark recesses of my mind began to seep into my daily routine.
Though Eileen and I love the people in our church family and couldn’t see ourselves doing anything else, I began to be bothered by the fact that the routine of ministry was turning into a grind. Every fall we would start another ministry season and hope that by spring we would see God do “amazing things.” We couldn’t always pinpoint what “amazing things” we wanted God to do, but surely we were “this close” to seeing God do them. We’d throw ourselves into each ministry season, working hard through the fall and winter and hope by spring we’d see the fruit of our labor. For the past several springs, it seemed to end where we had started. It became “wash, rinse, repeat.”
On the back of that Harley I realized that I couldn’t do the “wash, rinse, repeat” anymore. I began to pray. Okay, Jesus, show me what to do. How do we change this?
Things began to change for our church, but I could not have foreseen how. God used the ministry season of 2007/08 to tear down what I thought church should be, or what church was. I learned that a majority of our time, energy and resources went to furthering the organization instead of the Kingdom. Here’s what that looked like for me. I would spend several hours a week planning for a Sunday morning service. Using music, drama, video, multimedia and the spoken word, we spent a ton of time and effort to create an atmosphere where people could connect people to Jesus.
While many people remember the “cool” things we did, very few had their lives really changed by Jesus. It seemed the fruit of our labor was a “hip” expression of a Sunday morning service. Our desire was the fruit of a life deeply impacted by a relationship with Jesus. I fondly remember some of the creative ways we expressed the theme for a particular week, yet I looked at the life impact it had on those who were a part of it and it began to be very frustrating. There was a ton of effort being expended for what seemed to be a small handful of fruit. As a steward of the gifts God has given me, including time, resources and people, I began to wrestle with the uncomfortable question of is the fruit we’re seeing a good use of the resources we’ve been given?
During this time of frustration I began to meet with two men on Saturday morning from 7-9 to have coffee and talk about Jesus in our lives. What I began to realize was this. The 2 hours I spent with these guys had a deeper impact on our walk with Jesus then the 15 -20 hours a week I spent trying to program a Sunday morning service. My epiphany came when I realized that I could “preach” the same sermon on a Saturday morning talking with these guys and then preach on a Sunday morning to 175 people and have more of an eternal Kingdom impact on Saturday morning. So I continued to question, if I spent the time I used to spend on planning a service in one on one communication with people, would we bear more fruit? The conclusion I’ve come to is a resounding yes. I believe Jesus has called me to spend more time in relationship then planning services. To “preach” in the context of relationship. To plan and program in the context of relationship. To do life in relationship furthering growth through relationship and not through planning a program. I’m convinced that my life is better spent in connection then in programming. If Eileen and I can spend one or two hours a week with three or four or five people, crawling into their lives and find out where Jesus is what kind of Kingdom impact would there be?
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