Spiritual Gifts

Misfits of the Church

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This post has long been in the queue. Though it has been ruminating in my heart, I haven’t wanted to hurt anyone or to run the risk of being too personal or too specific, which might have repercussions and would make life harder for me and the people I love.

But I have to write this anyway. It’s just taken a few months, and I can’t vouch for the results. YMMV in whether this is a worthwhile post or not.

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The people in my church whose homes I have visited have been leaving. While the church itself appears to be growing, familiar faces, the ones I most look for, are gone. The tables in the church café once occupied by those who were ready to talk deep things now sit empty. I look for those people whose thoughts I most appreciated, but they aren’t there.

Empty pewI note the fact that I have visited these people’s homes because it says something about who they are. Sure, I’ve visited the homes of a few others who are still around, but the disproportionate number of leavers still says something about who those people were to me: my best church friends.

Gone. And they’ve taken something vital with them.

People leave churches for different reasons. Church shoppers will go on about one or two things they didn’t like that became dealbreakers, but when longtimers leave by choice and their reasons for doing so vary widely, one wonders if a more systemic problem exists.

When I reflect on the people I have known in my Christian life who have left churches, they all seem to have something in common: they are square pegs in round holes.

This is not to say that no square hole exists for them anywhere, only that they will always stick out from the crowd. Not only do they tend to be the 20 percent who do 80 percent of the work, but they tend to be the least acknowledged for it.

And this is because the Church in America has no idea what to do with them.

Something is broken in our churches when it comes to some kinds of people. I’ve encountered too many ultragifted people who ended up as so much church-created roadkill because church leaders either had no idea how to utilize that gifting or they resented or despised that person’s gifting.

Some would argue that this is all sour grapes, but the list of names keeps growing of good people I’ve known who were either used up by a church and discarded or ignored altogether.

The one who creates beautiful art but who is told she can’t display it in the church building.

The one who hears from God but who is told such words are not appreciated.

The one who can see the roadblocks preventing growth and ways around them but who is despised because he is not ordained.

The one from the “rough background” who is forever limited by those who cannot put aside what he once was and did.

The one who failed once and will never be given a second chance.

The one who doesn’t agree with every denominational position and so will never be considered for leadership.

The one who warns people, who prefer the status quo, of the dangers ahead.

The one with great vision who is surrounded by those with little or none.

The one with many flaws but who loves people abundantly and unconditionally, just like Jesus did.

The one who is always serving, though not with the imprimatur of those in charge, and who makes them look bad for doing so.

Those are ten such “misfits” of the church. Many more exist. You may be one of them.

I keep encountering more longtime Christians who are giving up. They’re not abandoning Jesus; they simply don’t know how to fit within the typical church. And it’s not for trying. I know these people have tried. But they’re weary of always receiving the left hand of fellowship, and they despair of ever contributing their God-given gifts because The Church™ does not want those gifts or it places ridiculous qualifications on their use that have no basis in Scripture and every basis in human selfishness and pride.

We talk, talk, talk, and talk about community in the Church, but what kind of community do we really have when someone is told to stop being the person God Himself is making him?

The Kingdom of God is filled with misfits, so how come our churches aren’t?

Are Scholars and Teachers Truly Leading the Church? And Should They?

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Don Miller

Donald Miller

Many of my Christian friends have noted Donald Miller’s recent post about rescuing the Christian Church from leadership dominated by scholars. Miller, the firebrand behind the famous (or infamous, depending on your view) Blue Like Jazz, sells his perspective hard. As always, I recommend you read the whole thing.

But is he right?

The Internet is a screwy place. If one were to view the whole of American Christendom by what one reads on the Internet, Miller’s contention might seem accurate. What’s written on the Internet does skew toward academic discussions, and yes, people fight like cats and dogs over doctrines (both macro and micro) on Web sites of all sizes.

But the Internet is skewed toward odd demographic leanings, and as a result, I don’t believe what is discussed on the Internet mirrors the discussion of the average church. Plus, those of us who write about church-related issues should not believe our own press. Fact is, the average Christian could care less about the Godblogosphere.

Or their nearest Christian seminary, for that matter. “Normal” people just don’t have the wherewithal to care about the background machinations of American Christendom. They leave such ponderings for eggheads who write blogs they don’t read or brainiacs who inhabit seminary classrooms they’ll never darken.

Hey, let’s get real, OK?

By some counts, we have 300,000 churches in the United States. In my wanderings through the Church over the course of 35 years, I’ve met perhaps two dozen people I would deem genuine scholars, and not a single one of them was running a church. I’m not sure from where Miller is getting his academic oligarchy, but if even a tenth of those 300,000 churches are pastored by someone who can translate a chapter of John from Greek to English, I’ll volunteer to shine Miller’s shoes for a year.

So much for the scholars. If anything, churches are hurting for a good scholar or two, leaders or laymen. I once attended a church that had a genuine scholar in its midst, and the church leaders would trot him out from time to time to give his academic imprimatur on some supposedly weighty theological matter, and then they would usher him back into his hermetically sealed container to await his next rethawing. If anything, when true scholars do exist in our pews, we tend to treat them as something of a sideshow act. Shame on us, but there it is. In addition, some local church leaders see scholars as a threat, not as a resource. Human nature being what it is, when you’re trying to prepare a sermon on a text and you’ve got someone sitting in the seats who held that passage in Dead Sea Scroll-version in his hands and read the Hebrew right off it, well, it’s a tad unnerving to most guys who barely made it through seminary, if they even made it to seminary at all.

Teachers are another issue, though. And on this, Miller may have a bit of a point. But, as we’ll see, only a bit, because perception and reality are not the same thing.

We have a fundamental problem in the American Christian Church regarding roles and gifts. Somehow, and more and more books are appearing that look at this problem, we’ve developed a way of doing church that focuses all the responsibility and leadership initiative on one soul: the pastor.

Yet even a casual reading of the New Testament tears down our idolmaking for that calling. The pastor simply cannot be the focal point of all ministry within a given church. The Bible makes this clear:

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?
—1 Corinthians 12:27-30

Fact is, pastor isn’t even mentioned in that passage. The closest we get is apostle, and plenty of folks out there who get all worked up about things don’t believe apostles exist anymore, so where does that leave us?

Well, back at pastor, because our societal and cultural constructs have made pastor the be all and end all of ministry.

I’ve talked to many pastors over the years. Most of them didn’t receive a call to teach others. Most received a calling to help the Church and the people in it however best they could with whatever gifts they had. Though Miller would have us believe that church leadership at the local level is crawling with teachers, it’s really only crawling with those people who have had teaching thrust upon them. And that’s a massive distinction.

For years George Barna has polled the American Church to get a sense of where we’re at. A few years back, he polled pastors and asked them how well they thought they were teaching their charges. The mutual pastoral backslapping commenced, as pastors uniformly believed they were doing a great job teaching. But when Barna polled the congregations of those same pastors, ignorance of even basic doctrine was rampant. The disconnect was startling.

And why shouldn’t it be when we keep expecting pastors to be the primary teachers in a church? They simply aren’t in most cases. They weren’t trained to teach, don’t know how to teach well, and were cast into the role of teacher with the facts, but not the skills.

Scratch the surface of the average church pastor, and you are most likely to find someone who excels at creating vision, connecting to people relationally, or has gifts for administration and management. Some are gifted teachers, but not most, yet they are expected to teach at all times.

Miller is wrong if he believes that scholars and teachers are leading the Church for the simple reasons that genuine scholars are rarities (and even rarer in leadership within a local church) and the average teaching pastor has been ill-equipped to teach. Tossing labels around is one thing, but let’s be honest about the true state of the Church.

The better question is whether we value teaching too highly. I don’t believe that can ever be the case. Barna’s polling not only revealed the overconfidence of pastors in their teaching, but it also exposed the general ignorance about the Faith that wreaks havoc everywhere ignorant Christians go. People ARE destroyed for lack of knowledge. Christians who don’t know what they believe cannot transmit what they believe to others who do not understand. End of argument.

So, where is the balance in all this?

Ideally, the Church should…

Teach its people the Faith.

Encourage the giftings of each person within the local church for service to that church and the greater whole of Christendom.

We’re not doing either of those well.

If you’ve read me long enough, you know I have a beef about our lack of a cradle-to-grave educational plan in our churches. We must have one. Each church must determine theirs.

AND we need to identify the gifts and talents of people in the seats so that they are released to minister as God would have them. Sadly, the “pastor as church emperor” stifles that potential. If anything, the pastoral role should be just one of several. Many pastors don’t preach well. Then who is the best preacher in the church?  Many pastors are less-than-ideal comforters of the bereaved and hurting. Then who are the best comforters? Many pastors don’t listen well, either to their people or to the Lord. Then who are the best listeners and the best prophets? Many pastors don’t teach well. Then who does? Let’s get the right people in the right roles and start doing this right. And if that means the pastor reads the Scriptures on Sunday and someone else preaches or teaches, then fine. If that means that no one is paid staff, then fine. If that means the staff is huge and paid, fine. If that means that the whole church lives in one large apartment complex and does a kibbutz-type thing, fine. But let’s stop whatever we’re doing with the current model because it just doesn’t work all that well.

In short, does the Church function as a body with Christ as the head or with the pastor as the head? We know the answer. Now what are we doing to rethink how we do church so that everyone in the church is operating in their genuine giftings and receives the honor due them?

Ultimately, this is what Miller is aiming for. Taking a potshot at scholars and teachers isn’t the way to get there, though. We know the Church is a body, so let’s stop shooting that body in the foot.

Two Areas of Deafness in Church Leaders

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I think the worst tool ever foisted onto the Church is the spiritual gifts inventory.

What could be worse than a host of people checking off boxes of gifts in a list that align with their own jaundiced view of themselves? What genuine surprises come from filling out a form according to one’s view of merit? The woman who wants to be considered a prophet somehow turns out to be one. The man who has always admired teachers somehow discovers that he has that gift also.

Yet the American Church continues to attempt to function according to the “gifts” of self-anointed prophets, self-identified healers, and self-sanctified pastors. How can that end in anything other than tears?

In the same way, most Christians think they are wise enough to scry out the meaning of everything the Holy Spirit speaks to them. All such leading can be interpreted without help. Are church leaders listening to the Spirit?No one else is needed to listen to that leading and help make sense of it. We’re Americans, so why should we need anyone else’s help to understand how to live our lives according to the leading of he Spirit?

We toss all sorts of responsibilities onto the backs of church leaders. No doubt, we rely too much on them to do our spiritual work.

However, amidst all that role baggage, no role can be more important for the church leader than leveraging godly wisdom and experience to better the functioning of each member of the body of Christ. Yet when was the last time a church leader sat down with you or me to help us discern our spiritual gifts and God’s direction for our ministry?

Truth is, that’s almost unheard of in modern American Christianity. How essential it is, though!

Sad reasons for that lack exist.

Many church leaders can’t assume the role of guiding people toward a genuine discovery of their true spiritual gifts because that leader hasn’t had his or her own gifts accurately identified by a previous generation. The problem is self-perpetuating. Too many church leaders shouldn’t be leading, yet they are because no one managed to sit down with them and help them identify their real gifts and how they should be used.

In the same way, too few church leaders know how to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit in their own lives, much less in the lives of others. So they live in a constant fuzzy state, not knowing whether God is speaking to someone or not. Thus, they fear speaking revealed truth into other people’s lives because they’re not sure what the revelation is or means.

The clock  also plays a detrimental role here, as this kind of discernment of spiritual gifting and leading requires time. It forces a leader to watch people in the church and note what the Spirit is doing in a person’s life. A time commitment is essential.

Does anyone spot the other problem?

One of the reasons I think the megachurch model is inherently defective is it automatically precludes the leadership of the church from having any relationship with the majority of individuals within the church’s body. How can a pastor or elder spot the gifts in a person’s life if that person is just one in a sea of anonymous people?

Helping people find their gifts and understand the Spirit’s voice requires relationship. It means an investment in the people in the seats that goes far beyond great preaching. And too few church leaders are capable of making that investment.

The truly crazy factor in all this is that our failure to correctly identify gifts and leading only makes more work for church leaders because the congregation doesn’t know what it exists to do.  That confusion makes for a vicious cycle that only causes the congregation to toss all the work they are meant to do onto the backs of church leaders. Then the leaders feel too crushed to bear the load of identifying gifts and the Spirit’s call on other people. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The answer to this problem is not an easy one. The easiest part is simply acknowledging that the problem exists, and the mere acknowledgment means taking the blame for this lack. Yet what church leader wants to take more blame?

If we can’t start there, though, we won’t be able to train people to better listen to the Spirit, to discern spiritual gifts in people’s lives, and to use the gifts God gave leaders for actually raising up the future generation of leaders. We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t acknowledge that we’ve botched this for decades. We won’t fix the problem unless we correct church models that don’t allow for it either. Yet what church leader wants to fall on THAT sword? (“Sorry, but the way we’ve been doing discipleship in this church for the last 30 years doesn’t actually equip the saints for ministry.” Yeah, that will go over well.)

Being a church leader is hard! But if we’re in that role, we need to accept its difficulty and take a mature look at what is asked of us. If we’re not operating in the Spirit in such a way that we help our charges develop their real spiritual gifts, if we can’t help them understand the Spirit’s leading in their lives,  then we’re utterly tanking in one of the primary duties of our role.