Show me a place where hope is young

Here’s the situation: you have 5,000 marbles rolling around on the floor, and 500 people sitting along the wall. You could ask 25 people to pick up 200 marbles each. Or you could ask each person in the room to pick up ten. Which makes more sense?

I want to see a church that works like the latter. I want to see a body where every single person steps up and has a role, and that role is never overwhelming because everybody else is carrying their weight at the same time.

I want to see a people who are not afraid to love, to give of themselves, if only in small, everyday ways. That is ministry.

I think the American Christian culture has turned “ministry” into a chore. “Ministry” is never easy anymore. You can’t just spend time with a few folks and have meaningful conversation, you have to spend ten hours preparing for a Bible study, and go to a weekends seminar on discipleship, and not miss church or the evening worship service or the wednesday morning prayer meeting. Why does church feel like a replica of the coorporate world where you have to fill in every waking moment with “ministry.”

I just spent two weeks in a country where time does not matter. In Venezuela, church begins whenever all the people arrive, and the bulk of the “ministry” I did was just sitting around talking with brothers and sisters about life and love and why. And God used it to accomplish something great; the weight was on his shoulders, not mine.

I tried last year to bring that back up with me, and completely lost track of it in a matter of weeks. This year, I want to live in that place where my Savior’s yoke is easy, his burden light.