Churches and church techies everywhere like to talk about "excellence." We see ourselves competing with society's overflowing candy dish of media and arts.
Churches and church techies everywhere like to talk about "excellence." We see ourselves competing with society's overflowing candy dish of media and arts. We go head to head with that dish for the time, attention, and emotion of those who we are targeting with our ministries. After all, if we can't get someone's attention, how can we deliver the Word? If we can't affect them emotionally, how will we get them to turn off "Big Bang" and listen to what we want to tell them? Excellence in execution, in technology, and in the arts has become a tremendous battleground where we are constantly engaged to increase the efficacy of our outreach.
Feeding the crowd, John 6:1-13
In reflection though, let me offer this question: Have we left room for the fish? Here is what I mean. Most all of us are likely familiar with the feeding of the 5,000 where Christ used a boy's meager lunch to feed a crowd of 5,000 people [John 6:1-13]. Let's do a quick recap and cast it in the light of today's church nerds. Here we have lots of hungry people, no quick marts to be found, and Jesus asks Philip where they can buy food to feed the group. Philip, thinking like a technical director, dutifully points out that they don't have the budget for such a production. Right off the bat, I have to feel anxiety for him in trying to figure out how to answer that question. However, Andrew, being a team player, and one of the disciples, doesn't want to say "no" without providing alternatives. He offers up what he thinks is a lesser option consisting of five barley loaves and two fishes. From their perspective, not only was this more affordable, it was already on campus. And from this meager resource, one of the most well-known miracles in the entire Bible occurs. Jesus takes those loaves and those fishes and he feeds a multitude, in the middle of nowhere, and ends up with orders of magnitude more than what they started with.
Jesus takes those loaves and those fishes and he feeds a multitude, in the middle of nowhere, and ends up with orders of magnitude more than what they started with.
Excellence redefined
What I want to point out is what the disciples offered to Jesus was not excellence. It wasn't a five-star meal. It likely wasn't even served on a plate. But it is what they could humanly provide at that time. At some other time, they may have been able to provide excellence. In some other place, they may have been able to provide excellence. With some other circumstances, they may have been able to provide excellence. But at that time and at that place, the best they could do fell short of what they thought was required. And in that moment, Jesus blows all of us away by demonstrating that excellence is defined on His terms and not ours. In this one miracle Jesus reminds us that His ability and His power can take whatever we bring Him and not only elevate it to excellence, but do so in a way that impacts people on scales that we would not have imagined beforehand.
... they may have been able to provide excellence. But at that time and at that place, the best they could do fell short of what they thought was required. And in that moment, Jesus blows all of us away by demonstrating that excellence is defined on His terms and not ours.
God smacked me in the face with a reminder of this not so long ago during a meeting with our worship arts pastor. In reviewing the previous months of ministry, we were reading through some relevant comments submitted by attendees during that period. In the group was a heartfelt thanks that painted a beautiful picture of how a worship set had brought this person to a place of intimacy with God that they were in desperate need of. I was a bit dumbfounded. I remembered that set because I mixed it and I left disappointed in how it turned out. The idea that it gave someone such an experience was brutally humbling. Here was God showing me firsthand that His definition of excellence, not mine, is what matters. He is free to take whatever we bring in service and elevate it to meet His purpose.
The corollary is that in many ways, our perception of the effectiveness of our ministry is too easily skewed by our evaluations of personal performance. I sometimes find that to be hard to wrestle with. Sure, I can use my expertise to evaluate what technically went wrong this weekend. I know my gain structure wasn't completely dialed in. I also know that I didn't get the EQ right on some of the strips. I even know where in the flow I made those mistakes. However, nowhere in my knowledge or expertise can I find the tools that allow me to clearly understand all of the ways that our ministry effects the lives of the people who are touched by it.
We give our best at the time and the place where we give it then we let God use it for His purpose.
In Isaiah 55:8-11, Scripture reminds us that not only are God's ways not our ways, it tells us that God's word will not return to Him void, but rather it will accomplish what He pleases. This is unqualified. It doesn't say God's word delivered in excellence will not return void. It says God's word, period. I think that should be freeing to us. Yes, we strive to do the best that we can. Yes, we lay expectations upon ourselves and our ability to execute. However, nowhere does God set the expectation that we should do His job while we are at it. We give our best at the time and the place where we give it then we let God use it for His purpose.
Ultimately, I don't think we are able to gauge or know the true bounds of our effectiveness, and I don't think we should spend time attempting to. What I do know is that we need to bring our best for a given time and place and freely hand that over for service. Sometimes we will bring excellence and sometimes we will bring fish. Either way, God will feed His multitudes with it as He deems, and that is something in which we should rest comfortably.
