Jean,

I think you unhelpfully set up some of those options to be exclusively either/or prosepects.

So for example, I am moving to the city in 2012 (God willing) to study at Bible College, is it therefore wrong for me to consider how that I might both serve others but also how God might shape me through the church I attend (therefore choosing a church based on my supposedly bad Ministry Plans)?

Is it wrong for me to consider how I might use the gifts God has deliberately given me, through his grace and for the service of his people, and at same time, serve in any area when opportunity arises? Because I teach both myself and others to do exactly that because I think that is what the Bible teaches.

I worry about my Ministry: how many people are receiving it, whether it’s growing, what its future will be, and how I’ll cope if things fall apart.

Is it wrong for me to consider how I might make best use of my opportunties to serve, how to ensure a good opportunity doesn’t become dependent on a personality or if any one is actually benefitted from my opportunties? Because the history of every local church is littered with examples of people blindly pouring their energies into exercises of insular, exclusive holy-huddles, covered with the excuse of ‘faithfulness’.

In the interest of being fair, I don’t want to portray me as being the right one exclusively and you totally wrong (as that would make me a hypocrite). Unfortunately, in the evangelical scene, articles like this come about regularly, decrying the same things - being ‘focused on numbers’, like that having actual people be actually impacted by the work of the gospel in meaningful numbers is a bad thing; that actually considering the actual gifts God has given his people is a terrible exercise in navel gazing, because having churches filled with people who actually feel like God has given them specific opportunities to excel at under his grace is going to be a bad thing.

I know a polemic is designed to provoke discussion and the like but seriously, can we have a polemic that isn’t a rehash of the same old, lame excuses for ‘faithful ministry’ that achieves nothing because we’re never brave enough to ask tough questions about the work we pour ourselves into.

Thanks, Jean, this is excellent. My friends and I will benefit much from thinking through the careful distinctions you’ve made.

<blockquote>Unfortunately, in the evangelical scene, articles like this come about regularly, decrying the same things - being ‘focused on numbers’, like that having actual people be actually impacted by the work of the gospel in meaningful numbers is a bad thing; that actually considering the actual gifts God has given his people is a terrible exercise in navel gazing, because having churches filled with people who actually feel like God has given them specific opportunities to excel at under his grace is going to be a bad thing.<blockquote>

Lee, I don’t think that Jean is decrying any of those things. What she is concerned about (as I read it) is the tendency of many of us to have a messianic complex about Our Ministry.

Lee, perhaps your West Coast experience has been a bit different.  I’ve certainly seen people who are precious about their Gifts/Ministry.  They aren’t pew-warmers, but they won’t do the washing-up because that’s Not Their Gift.  They know they ought to serve: they just limit how they serve to what they feel comfortable with, and to what serves their self-esteem. Pew-warmers, IME, have not *realised* that they are meant to serve the church.
And when you are running your church, I would like it if you have an ambition to further *that church’s* ministry, by looking at the gifts of the congregation and its gospel opportunities and seeing where there’s a fit.  I don’t know that this kind of strategic thinking is terribly common!