I’ve always been fascinated by how churches typically deploy people for service. Often the pastor gets up, begs and pleads and says, “We’re going to die if if don’t get some people to keep the nursery, or teach the children, or work with the youth!” There will always be a few people who feel guilty andsay, “Oh, I guess I’ll help,” so they go down and teach the youth, and the church leaves them there for the next 30 years until they’re burned out. That’s typically the way it’s done.
Imagine Church suggests a different way, because we believe we can do better than that. We start by asking a different question. The question is not, “Who can we get to fill this position?” The question is, “What can you do that’s going to change someone’s life?”
Here’s the question you need to be asking of yourself. Where am I needed most? What is the thing that I can do personally that will enable me to say, “I have made a difference in the mission of the church. I have moved the ball down the field personally, so that we’re a yard closer, or ten yards closer, to being what God has called us to be.”
If committees were going to win the world for Christ, we’d have done it a long time ago. Instead, let me ask you to apply your hearts and hands to the place of greatest need, where you can make the greatest contribution. We want to let Christ be revealed in our lives and serve in such a way that we create the kind of church in which the Holy Spirit is free to move and work in the lives of people.
In the name of the One who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
Bruce Jones, Pastor and Co-Creator,
Imagine Church of the Carolinas
