I can remember years ago standing up on a bigger platform, watching the thousands who came to a church gathering each weekend. There I was with guitar and microphone singing to the LORD and inviting people to join me in an expression of worship. For the most part I enjoyed what I did, though I had little means of measuring it. What sort of impact did it have? What did it mean in the lives of people? What sort of eternal imprint was GOD leaving as a result of it all? I specifically remember asking many around me, "What difference is this making?" All of these questions and more flooded my mind each week in both my preparation and presentation.
It is not that I believe there was no place for what I was doing, or anyone else like me was doing. I just wanted to know how we were to know what impact it was having. There was no metric for it all. Well there was one, but I considered the spreadsheet of all the numbers over the past week, month and beyond to be an insufficient measure.
I continually found myself saying, "Who are these numbers? What are their stories?" Somewhere in all my pleadings I knew at least that if a measurement was to be had it was to be discovered in the lives of these people. And yet week after week the context did not allow for much of any assessment of the lives of people, but instead we were left scrutinizing our presentation and scrupulously combing over the trends revealed by each and every spreadsheet, fictional or factual.
There came a time when I recognized all I was looking for was to be found only if I left all that was before me. It took a complete walking away from this magnificent stage, this platform, to take on one much smaller. And there I found it. It had been there all along. In fact, little did I know I had already been using it and equally being impacted by it.
It wasn't in the "church" building. It wasn't even on any of the property owned by the church. It was a public venue. There it was though each week, waiting for me and my company at a cafe every Friday. Coffee or tea for each of us to sip while we talked about real life. I heard of pains and struggles, and of joys alike. I opened up on things GOD was reminding, refreshing me in, as well as points of my own shortcomings and confusion. And week after week I met with one or two other guys in the same cafe to talk about the same lives we lived, and how the gospel of Jesus applied to it all.
Over time I realized this was it. This provided me the metric to see exactly what was going on, and to measure what growth was taking place, what impact was being had. Of course it was limited, but over time I began to see it was not all mine to manage and measure.
As I eventually stepped out of that context I took the concept of gathering with one or two guys at a time into my new context. Rather than worry about the church gathering on Sunday, I made it my goal to have a weekly meeting with one guy here, two guys there, one other there. It was a completely inverted model, not that it was new to me, or that it is even perfect, but it helped me measure things far better.
Before I even paused to look for it, I noticed something else happened. As I had started doing this with a number of men, they in turn took it and started doing the same with others in their sphere of influence. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of something. Where life met life is where we had a means to understand a bit more of what God was doing and how people were growing. And where that went on it was also proving to grow into a greater sphere of influence beyond what I could even see any longer.
I still believe God's people do well to meet weekly. I will still endorse the Sunday corporate gathering and other similar things. I still take my responsibility as a pastor very seriously and labor each week to "preach the Word." When God's people get together to celebrate Him, to hear from Him, the people of God benefit from it. And for absence of it, these same people will no doubt suffer. I believe the local church will benefit greatly as people endeavor in small intimate contexts to get in each others lives to see how the Word is being applied. And too, when the church makes it their aim also to engage the non-believing world in conversations about life, then the gospel will advance and souls will be won.
When we are intentional in doing this together, we are fulfilling our call to love one another. So make space in the margins of life. Make space at your coffee table, or at the coffee shop. Make space in your busy ministry efforts full of big numbers, to also hear of the names and narratives of these you seek to influence.
There came a time when I recognized all I was looking for was to be found only if I left all that was before me. It took a complete walking away from this magnificent stage, this platform, to take on one much smaller. And there I found it. It had been there all along. In fact, little did I know I had already been using it and equally being impacted by it.
It wasn't in the "church" building. It wasn't even on any of the property owned by the church. It was a public venue. There it was though each week, waiting for me and my company at a cafe every Friday. Coffee or tea for each of us to sip while we talked about real life. I heard of pains and struggles, and of joys alike. I opened up on things GOD was reminding, refreshing me in, as well as points of my own shortcomings and confusion. And week after week I met with one or two other guys in the same cafe to talk about the same lives we lived, and how the gospel of Jesus applied to it all.
Over time I realized this was it. This provided me the metric to see exactly what was going on, and to measure what growth was taking place, what impact was being had. Of course it was limited, but over time I began to see it was not all mine to manage and measure.
As I eventually stepped out of that context I took the concept of gathering with one or two guys at a time into my new context. Rather than worry about the church gathering on Sunday, I made it my goal to have a weekly meeting with one guy here, two guys there, one other there. It was a completely inverted model, not that it was new to me, or that it is even perfect, but it helped me measure things far better.
Before I even paused to look for it, I noticed something else happened. As I had started doing this with a number of men, they in turn took it and started doing the same with others in their sphere of influence. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of something. Where life met life is where we had a means to understand a bit more of what God was doing and how people were growing. And where that went on it was also proving to grow into a greater sphere of influence beyond what I could even see any longer.
I still believe God's people do well to meet weekly. I will still endorse the Sunday corporate gathering and other similar things. I still take my responsibility as a pastor very seriously and labor each week to "preach the Word." When God's people get together to celebrate Him, to hear from Him, the people of God benefit from it. And for absence of it, these same people will no doubt suffer. I believe the local church will benefit greatly as people endeavor in small intimate contexts to get in each others lives to see how the Word is being applied. And too, when the church makes it their aim also to engage the non-believing world in conversations about life, then the gospel will advance and souls will be won.
When we are intentional in doing this together, we are fulfilling our call to love one another. So make space in the margins of life. Make space at your coffee table, or at the coffee shop. Make space in your busy ministry efforts full of big numbers, to also hear of the names and narratives of these you seek to influence.
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