INCREASED RELIANCE ON THE BODY:
The way we do Church in America is hire a few of us to do the work of the ministry. Unfortunately, this has created a culture where we believe the rest of us are not skilled enough to contribute. So we pay our tithe and sit in our pew and invite a friend once in a while.
This is a somewhat different picture of the Body of Christ that we're given in scripture. The scripture paints a picture of us being a body that needs all of the other parts - it says that gifts have been distributed among the body and that each needs to contribute for us to function properly.
Rom 12:5,6 - so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.
1 Cor 12:17,18, 24-26 - If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. . . . God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
Eph 4:11,12,16 - It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up . . . From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Unfortunately, since we're not doing that, most of us contribute nothing more than money and the few higher-ups that we do have running things are getting burned out and overworked.
As finances go down. We may have to start relying on all the parts of the body to contribute using their gifts. We may have to rely on more members of the body to use their pastoral gifts for free. We have millions of Christians in this country whose gifts are going untapped - that's millions of man-hours (perhaps billions of $'s) we could be using to build the kingdom.
The bad economy is an AWESOME opportunity to end the trend of allowing most of our members to contribute nothing to the body! Think of all that we could do if we were all forced to contribute!!
Don't rely on just your staff to get stuff done. Start reaching out to the body members for more help. If you're doing things in such a way that makes it difficult to involve lay workers for only a few hours a week, find a way to incorporate each member's contributions.
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