I once asked a pastor, “If the life of discipleship to Jesus really takes root in a community of people, particularly in a local church, how would you know if it was really beginning to make a difference?” Without hesitation he said, “In committee meetings.” My first response was to chuckle, because I know, from many years on church committees, just how discouraging they can be and how badly people can behave. I was a bit surprised at his answer, though I might have thought he would say, “They would be more engaged in worship,” or “They carry their Bibles everywhere,” or even “They sign up for more community service.” The pastor went on to tell me that the problem in many church committee meetings is that the people walk in with two ways of thinking. Some of the members realize the work being done is for God, for the good of the people, to make the world better, to advance the kingdom of God. But others are more influenced by the values and goals that run the kingdom of this world. I asked him for an example.
“We were having a trustees meeting one evening, and our primary issue was over the new building we were planning on adding to our campus. This was something the people on the committee had very strong feelings about, caused by two concerns. One concern was that we had hit a place where we had not been growing numerically, and it may have been caused by the fact that we simply had no space. We were packed in all of our services, and we really needed more room. The second reason we were not growing, some suspected, was that a church just up the road had recently experienced a lot of growth—which included members from our church who had joined their congregation—and some on the committee felt that it was because they had a better facility than ours.”
Have you ever had to pause and reflect on whether you were participating in the kingdom of God in your answer or actions?
The pastor went on, “The discussion turned to one of the members of the committee, an architect, who had been working on the blueprint for the new building. They asked him questions about what the building would be like, how much it would cost and how many people it would hold. At one point a person, who probably meant well but phrased the question poorly, asked him, ‘What I want to know is this: Can we build a building that will help us compete with the church down the road?’ The architect paused and said, ‘Give me a second,’ and he took a deep breath and went on to say, ‘I needed to think for a minute whether I was going to answer that question from inside or outside of the kingdom of God.’ ”
The fact that he had to pause to think about how to answer revealed that the two ways of thinking, two different narratives, were in the room. One was built upon worldly values, such as competition, success in terms of numbers and self-preservation. The other was rooted in the kingdom of God, a place of cooperation, success in terms of service and self-sacrifice. Those two narratives often clash in church committee meetings, the pastor noted, because the members are shaped by two different stories. When someone begins to tune in to the kingdom-of-God narratives in his or her life, and has been working to apply them, you will see it most clearly in the way they behave in church committee meetings. I told the pastor, “So then, the best argument for helping people grow in their discipleship to Jesus is not just for the sake of their souls but for the improvement of committee meetings.” We both laughed, but in fact we had touched on a deep truth.
False Narrative: Our Needs Matter the Most
The architect in the story was in a position that all apprentices of Jesus find themselves in on a regular basis. Each day we make thousands of decisions, and while many of them have little effect on our souls (“Should I wear brown or black pants today?”), there are many decisions that expose the state of our souls. The question posed to the architect was one of those soul-exposing questions. Behind either answer we give lies a narrative. We have been shaped much by the narratives of this world, and it is difficult to shed them. One of the most dominant narratives is built on self-preservation, personal happiness and making sure our needs are met. This narrative is not only for individuals. It can also be the foundation for a community.
The church committee meeting was composed of people who had one thing in common: they were members of a specific community. The community provides them many things: a home, a common vision and, over time, a history of great memories. People love their communities. We become protective of them and want to see them succeed. The church committee in the opening story consisted of people who are giving their time and energy to help the church do well. There is nothing wrong with loving the community of Christ-followers who have nurtured you and perhaps your family for many years. And there is nothing wrong with wanting things to go well with your church and its ministry. There is nothing wrong, for example, with being concerned about how to make sure the pastor gets paid each month or that the parking lot is sufficient.
The problem comes when the most important consideration, the dominant desire and the main focus of a community is its own success. Just as an individual whose whole life is focused on meeting his or her own needs becomes narcissistic, self-centered, ineffective and ultimately unhappy, so also communities can become so focused on themselves that they lose their souls. When that happens, the larger vision, the one that brought the community into existence, has been eclipsed, and the community no longer exists to fulfill its original mission but simply to stay alive. This is often the first step toward spiritual death and, ultimately, the demise of the community.
Give an example of a time you have seen a community lose its focus. What was the result?
In my early days as the chaplain of Friends University, I was privileged to work with about a hundred college students who participated in the various ministries on campus, from a weekly fellowship gathering to retreats, small groups and mission work. I was the spiritual leader for these young people; they trusted me and often followed my lead. I got a call from a local pastor who asked me to lunch. He told me that his church had held a meeting and wanted to offer several thousand dollars to our campus ministry program. I was elated as I thought about what this money could do for our students. Then the pastor said, “All we are asking is that you teach a Sunday school class for young people.” I agreed, and not long after there were about twenty-five students from the college who came to the class. Everything seemed to be going well.
Then I got a call from the pastor a month later. “Jim,” he said, “we have a problem. Your college students are not attending our worship service. They are coming to your class and then leaving, either going to other churches or just going home.” I was surprised to hear that. I was not aware of this problem as I myself also left to worship at our home church with my family. The pastor went on, “If you are not going to get your kids in worship, then we are not going to fund your ministry any longer.” I asked some of the students in the Sunday school class why they did not want to worship in the church where we met— especially those who had no other church home. They all said the same thing: “It is boring. There is no one under fifty. No one even talks to us. So we stopped going.” I could not force them to go, and soon I stopped teaching and the money was no longer given. Unfortunately, this church was focusing on its needs, not the students’ needs.
True Narrative: Others’ needs Matter the Most
In contrast, the following year I got a call from a layleader at another local church who said, “Jim, our church has been praying a lot, and we feel that we have a lot to offer young people. We are an older congregation, and not very large, but we have a lot of wisdom, and we care about the next generation. We know you work with college students, and we want to ask you to help us find out how to minister to them.” Over the next few months I met with the people at this church. They had no money to offer. They simply wanted to know what college students need in a home church.
I told them that first, they like to eat. They are used to having no money, and the cafeteria in those days was not open on Sundays. The people at the church said, “We are good at food.” Second, the students who are from out of state often miss their families. They could use a warm hug and a sense of being welcomed. The church folks said, “We are good at hugging.” I concluded, “I think that is about it.” Then one older lady said, “Will they like our worship style, Jim? We don’t have any guitars, just an organ, and we sing hymns.” I said, “If you love them and feed them, I don’t think they will mind. They are not as interested in being entertained as people think they are.”
I invited about a half-dozen students to attend the church with me. There was a lot of hugging when we came in the door. The worship service was a traditional one, with hymns and Scripture reading, some liturgy, a sermon and Communion. The pastor had a great heart and offered a solid message. I could tell that the students felt at home. There was nothing hip or cool about it, but they got plenty of hip and cool during the rest of the week. After the service, we went to the fellowship hall. The ladies of the church had made a feast, complete with the mandatory green bean casserole and Jell-O with fruit inside. The students loved it. So did I. In fact, I never left that church. It was such an others-minded congregation that, a few years later, they decided to end the ministry they had in that part of town to form a new congregation, which became Chapel Hill United Methodist Church, where I still attend.
In your community, how have you grappled with these questions of how to improve your church and/or how to serve others?
What was the difference between the two churches? The first church was asking the question, What can we do to improve our church? The second church was asking, How can we serve others? The first church was operating from a narrative of self-focus. The second church was operating from a narrative of focusing on others. The first church cared only about its own image and its own preservation; having college students attend their church was a sign of success. The second church cared only about the well-being of the students; having college students in their midst was an opportunity to serve. When we are steeped in the reality of the kingdom, our focus shifts from our needs to the needs of others. It is only possible when we are caught up in the kingdom of God. Only then, when we are confident and secure, can we shift our focus away from ourselves and onto others.
The Others-Centered Community
The good and beautiful community of Jesus finds its life and power in Jesus himself, who is not only our teacher but also our source of strength. As Jesus is, so are his followers. Jesus was a servant. He lived for the good of others. In the kingdom of this world, greatness is defined by power. The one who is served is greater than the one who serves. Jesus reversed this notion of greatness: “Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27).
His example becomes our example. Not merely because we want to imitate him and perhaps earn his favor. Being a servant of others is the highest way to live. Wanting and needing to be served by others is not life-producing but soul-destroying. Jesus showed us that by example. Jesus, the Creator of the universe, the King of all things, comes to serve. He washes the feet of the disciples. He lives to serve.
This is because he was and is moved by one thing: love. He told his disciples that the greatest expression of love is to give of yourself for the good of others. In fact, the greatest act of love would be to offer your life in exchange for the well-being of another should you be in a position do so. Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
He not only taught it, he lived it. He gave his life for the good of others, including you and me. We who follow him as teacher are called on to do the same, to shift our focus away from ourselves and onto others.
How can we do this? How was the second church able to do this, whereas the first church was not? The solution is found in the kingdom of God. As noted in chapter two, faith and love spring from the hope that we discover in the gospel proclamation. In that good news we discover, as Julian of Norwich noted, that all is well and all manner of things shall be well. We have confidence in a great future; we know that nothing will happen to us that God, in his wisdom, has not allowed, and that he cannot use for good. We are safe and secure. In that condition, we can move from self-focus to focusing on others.
When we live with Jesus in his kingdom our basic needs are met—even if it takes other Christians to provide them. In the kingdom we are given the material provision we need (even if we do not have shelter, food and clothing, there are organizations that can provide them—they are usually organizations that serve as outposts of the kingdom and are run predominantly by apprentices of Jesus). In the kingdom of God we are safe and secure. Not even death can separate us from the love of God. In the kingdom of God we discover that we are loved, forever, and without condition. In the kingdom of God we also learn that we are valuable and precious, worth dying for. As Eugene Peterson says, we are “splendid, never-to-be-duplicated stories of grace.”
Do you agree with the idea that a church may close its doors, but the kingdom is eternal? Why or why not?
When we appropriate these truths, we are able to turn our attention to others and their needs. The first church, I later discovered, was living in fear. Though they had a lot of money, they were aging quickly, and with no new people coming in to the church, they faced the possibility of closing their doors. They confused the life of their church with the kingdom of God. Churches come and go, but the kingdom is eternal. Their life, power and reason for existence are in the kingdom of God, and it will never falter. The second church knew this in-stinctively. Even though they loved their little church and could wax nostalgic about their history, they were also ready to move on if needed, which in fact they did. Out of the death of that church came new life.
Communities become others-centered when they are steeped in the narrative of the kingdom of God. They know that their community is an outpost of the kingdom of God, a place where grace is spoken and lived for as long as is needed. The value of a church is not in its longevity but in its love. The success of a church is not in its size but in its service to the people and the community. We are a people founded by a person who never established a church or built a building or led a finance campaign to build impressive buildings. Our leader just came and served and then died for the good of others. I suppose that would be a pretty good mission statement for a church, but one I am not likely to see: “We exist to serve others and then die, just like our Founder.”
Treasuring Our Treasures
Paul told the community at Philippi how to live with one another in day to day life: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4 niv). I once taught a class using this verse as the main text, and a woman raised her hand and said, “I don’t think that is very good psychology on Paul’s part—to ‘consider others better than yourselves.’ That is just bad self-esteem.” What she failed to understand, I believe, is that it is possible to have a high regard for others and a proper self-image at the same time. She assumed that to think of others as better meant to think badly of yourself.
The problem arises because we are not used to thinking of someone as “better” than ourselves. Notice also that in the second verse Paul encourages them to “look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (v. 4). He knows that we are naturally going to look to our own interests, and he does not say that is bad. He is just asking us to look out for the interests of others as well. The best way for me to grasp what Paul is saying, and to live it out, came to me a couple of years ago while I was writing a sermon I was going to give for a wedding. I thought about what has helped my own marriage. I thought about how amazing and wonderful my wife, Meghan, is, and I scribbled down the world treasure. To me, she is a precious treasure. Then a thought came to me: Treasure your treasure.
When you think of “treasuring your treasure,” what people come to mind?
My wife is a great gift to me, a person of sacred worth. When I set my mind and heart on that reality, it is easy for me to treasure her, to love her, to look out for her well-being and to sacrifice my own desires at times in order to care for hers. My children are also sacred and wonderful treasures. Sometimes I forget that and find caring for them a chore. Then I remember, and suddenly caring for them is less a duty and more of a privilege. It is a matter of seeing, seeing the beauty and worth of a person, that increases our desire to serve. “O God, help me believe the truth about myself—no matter how beautiful it is,” wrote Macrina Wiederkehr. While there is certainly truth in her prayer, I like to change the wording: “O God, help me see the truth about those I meet today—no matter how beautiful they are.”
Others-Minded Even When it Hurts
The core narrative we choose to live by will determine our behavior—my needs first or your needs first. A friend told me about something that happened to her recently. She runs in social circles with a non-Christian woman with whom she has tried to establish a friendship. She has invited this woman to lunch on several occasions, but the woman has always had an excuse for being unable to meet with her. She tried several times to invite her by calling the woman’s secretary. The secretary, feeling badly, finally said, “I may be out of line, but the last time I wrote a note to her with your lunch request on it, she took it, wadded it up and said, ‘That is never gonna happen,’ as she tossed it in the trash. You are a nice person, and I don’t want you to keep getting treated this way.”
My friend said she was hurt by this story, as we all would be. But she lives deeply in the kingdom and turned the matter over to God in prayer. About a week later she happened to be in a restaurant, and the woman came in with a friend. She told her waiter, “I would like to pay for their check when they are done.” She was busy completing some paperwork she had brought with her but looked up to see the woman standing in front of her.
“I just wanted to say thank you for buying our lunch. That was very kind,” the woman said. “I know you have been persistent in trying to meet with me. I am sorry. I want you to know that.”
My friend explained her action to me this way. She said, “You know, I don’t expect that we will get together any time soon, but that was not why I did it. I bought her lunch because I have been praying for her, and I had a chance to do something nice for her. I think God gave me that opportunity. Whether or not we become friends and God uses me to reach her, I don’t know. All I know is that I had a chance to do something for someone else, and it felt good to be able to do it.” She is living by a new, strong, true narrative: “Your needs are what matters most.” She is peculiar indeed.
Now there’s one caveat to all this: Though many of us, myself included, do not run the risk of overserving or being too concerned with the needs of others to the neglect of our own, there are many people who are—and those kinds of people are also likely to read a book like this one. We need to have balance when it comes to the issue of serving others and taking care of ourselves. I have many Christian friends who are so focused on serving others that they neglect their own needs, and sometimes the needs of their families. One woman confessed that she had burned out and left the church when she was younger because she had been told that serving others was our constant duty as Christ-followers. So she did and found herself worn-out and discouraged. Another man shared that for many years his own family “only got my leftovers,” because “I spent all of my energy caring for people in need and neglected them.”
I encourage balance when it comes to serving others. We need to be aware of the condition of our own souls and bodies, and to take care of that first, without feeling any guilt about it. We can only give when we are grounded and rested. We also need to be mindful that some of the people who need us the most are those we seldom give our time to, which is often our families and friends. They may not be in a condition of great need, but they need our time, energy and love. Again, we need to find balance. It is possible to spend too much time caring for our own needs, and it is common to see people spending too much time caring for the needs of others. I believe we can strike the right balance if we listen to the leading of the Spirit and are open to the discernment of others who can see things we may not see.
The Most Important Job
I was once with Dallas Willard, speaking at a conference in California. I opened the evening session with a talk about God’s grace in human transformation. After a break, Dallas got up to speak. He opened with these attention-catching words: “I am going to tell you what is the single most important task of a Christian, especially those who are in church leadership.” There was a moment of silence as we waited to hear what he believed was the most important task of a Christian. My mind raced for a moment—what could it be? I have heard Dallas teach for hundreds of hours. I thought he might say “Scripture memorization,” because I know he believes it is very transforming. He leaned in to the microphone and said, “The most important task we have, especially for those in church leadership, is to pray for the success of our neighboring churches.”
I was stunned. The most important task? I could easily come up with a dozen things I would assume were far more important for Christians, especially pastors. What about caring for the poor? What about spending quality time with God in solitude and prayer? What about sharing our faith with nonbelievers? No, according to Dallas, the most important thing we can do is to pray for the success and well-being of the other churches in our area. I pressed Dallas later to explain what he meant. He said that when we pray, genuinely pray, for the success of the churches that are in our proximity, we are breaking the narrative of selfishness and entering into the mind of God, who is also praying for the success of those churches. The practice, he said, puts us in sync with the kingdom of God.
What do you think about Dallas Willard’s choice of praying for other churches as the most important task of a Christian? How does it put us “in sync with the kingdom of God”?
He encouraged not only pastors but entire churches to do this. Recently I was preaching at Highland Park Community Church in Casper, Wyoming, and the pastor did just that. He listed a few churches in the area and asked God to bless the work of their hands. He named the churches and even mentioned some of the ministries within those churches. It was a beautiful thing. It changed the atmos- phere of worship; it connected us to something larger than ourselves; it helped us see the beauty and power of the kingdom of God. I asked one of the pastors about this practice, and he told me they do it every Sunday. I told him about what Dallas had said. I said, “You all are doing it! Keep it up.” He blushed a little bit, but I wanted to affirm what he was doing and what it was communicating to the people.
The Space of Grace
When the architect paused to think about his answer during the committee meeting, he was choosing to live out the true narrative found in the teaching of Jesus and in the Epistles. The narrative teaches us that in the kingdom of God we are not competing with anyone. The narrative that says we are competing with others— especially other churches—is a false, illusory, fragile narrative that moves us further from God and ourselves. The architect wisely sought a space of grace, as I call it, where he could distance himself from the false narrative and discern the truth he encountered in the narrative of Jesus.
He had a space of grace, a pause in which he was able to speak from a Christ-centered place. The key here is that we learn how to find those spaces of grace in which we examine the narrative we are going to adopt. It is a slow process. But if we continue to reboot our minds and stay with the substantive narrative of Jesus, we will move closer to God and to ourselves, and the fruit of the Spirit will begin to flow out of us. So how did the architect answer the question, “Can we build a building that will help us compete with the church down the road?” He said something like this:
First, I just want to make it clear. We are not competing with the church down the road. We are all on the same team. Their growth is our growth, because we are all together in the kingdom of God. Second, our job is simple: we need to do the best job we can with the money God has provided for us. That means working hard to build a beautiful space that will honor God and be a blessing to the people who inhabit it. And that is what I am trying to do with the skills I have been given and the training that I have done.
I said to the minister who was presiding at the meeting, “So, how did the others in the group react to his answer?”
“That was the amazing part,” he explained.
His answer changed the tenor of the whole meeting. We had been focused on the wrong things, using the wrong standards. The dominant, false narrative of church success had been on people’s minds, which is that churches are evaluated by the ABCs: attendance, building and cash. When that is our focus, everything goes wrong because those are not the values of the kingdom. I try to say the kind of things the architect said, but they often think, “Oh, that is just the preacher using preacher talk,” but when he said it, it really spoke to them. The rest of the meeting took a new direction. We started asking questions about how we could do the best job we can do with what God had given us. By the end of the meeting we were all excited to be a part of what God is doing in our midst.
The pastor concluded, “Changing the spirit of a church meeting from a worldly focus to a kingdom-of-God focus is no small feat. It was practically a miracle.” As a veteran of many church meetings, I knew exactly what he meant.
Soul Training Treasuring Our Treasures
The good and beautiful community of apprentices is made up of people learning how to put the needs of others ahead of their own. This is peculiar behavior in our world. It shows that we are maladjusted to the narratives of this world that tell us to “look out for number one” and that say “winning is not everything—it is the only thing.” It shows that we are maladjusted to self-seeking, racism and aggression. How do we live this out? Where do we live this out? It begins, I think, by changing the way we see other people. If we see others—whether in our family or on the freeway—as merely human, it becomes easy to see them as either obstacles or opportunities to further our own happiness.
The key is to put on the mind of Christ and to see others as he sees them: treasures. Then we will naturally move to treasuring them, which makes putting their needs ahead of our own not only possible but likely. We live and move in different circles, and have different relationships with the people in our lives: family and friends, coworkers, fellow Christians, and strangers and acquaintances. It is easier, for example, to treasure my family, but that does not mean I do it well. It is harder to treasure the person who is being rude in the hardware store, but that does not mean it is impossible. This week I would like you to engage in several ways of treasuring the treasures all around us.
Living Unselfishly at Home
When deciding where or what to eat, ask the others in your family where they would like to go. Unless the food they choose causes you to have an allergic reaction, go where they want to go, or eat what they want to eat.
If you are married or have a roommate, ask how the other person is doing, and really listen. Even if you have other things to do, practice putting his or her needs—even if it is an emotional need—ahead of yours.
If you have children in your home, give them the honor of choosing how to spend one evening this week—any way they want. It may be watching a movie or playing a board game, but the key is that they get to choose.
Living Unselfishly at Work
Take time to visit a coworker and ask, “What are you working on that I might be able to help with or carry some of your burden?” This usually leads to some interesting requests!
Make coffee or tea for others, or bring some treats, or clean up the area where people get coffee and snacks.
Living Unselfishly at Church
Park farther away from the sanctuary, rather than closer, to leave the space for others.
Sit up near the front of the sanctuary or in the spaces where people seldom sit, leaving room for others in the more desirable seats.
Offer to do some needed chores, such as folding bulletins or cleaning the parking lot.
Living Unselfishly in Daily Life
When driving, be on the lookout for opportunities to let people in to your lane.
When shopping, be mindful of others as you navigate through the store, and allow others to cut ahead of you in line.
