Missions is concerned with expanding the Church to every tribe, tongue, and nation.
It's long been my conviction that this can only be accomplished by "non-professional" (read: unpaid) ministers, since there just aren't enough "professional" ministers to get the job done (do the math).
Most of us have heard of Wikipedia.org - the volunteer-driven, online encyclopedia whose content is entirely owned and developed by the general public.
It's an incredible concept, and it's success flies right in the face of our "don't trust the unwashed masses - leave ministry to the professionals" attitudes about church leadership.
(By the way - "Wiki" has absolutely no relationship to wicca - the occult practice - so relax, we are God-fearing, Jesus-loving evangelicals here... not witches.)
I'm reading a book called Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which has been widely praised as an accurate assessment of the cross-organizational public collaborations that are transforming high tech marketplaces around the world. This is more than just globalization or democratization - it's about giving the unwashed, unproven masses a serious chance to contribute. (Gasp!)
Here's an excerpt from the book's Introduction:
"Throughout history corporations have organized themselves according to strict hierarchical lines of authority. Everyone was a subordinate to someone else... There was always someone or some company in charge, controlling things, at the "top" of the food chain. While hierarchies are not vanishing, profound changes in the nature of technology, demographics, and the global economy are giving rise to powerful new models of production based on community, collaboration, and self-organization rather than on hierarchy and control."
Fascinating. Now, without getting too personal - does that sound like your local church?
Next, check this out:
"As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen."
Check out the pronouns: "each one", "one another", "anyone".
This instruction comes from Peter - who was First of All the Unwashed Ministers. Think about it... Who were the disciples? They were the religious refugees, the Border People on the outskirts of a Pharisaical order. Yet Jesus made Peter the rock on which His Church was founded. And He did it in three years.
Ministry skills can be taught and learned - and I believe it is the job of local church leaders to train and release the willing, without regard to their social, economic, or educational background.
Let me be clear: I am NOT advocating a democratic theology, nor a democratic church leadership; John 1 and Ephesians 4 leave no gaps. And I am not pointing fingers - WE are the Church, and we Westerners bear the stains of materialistic consumerism that keep us in our chairs.
But what I am ABSOLUTELY advocating is the abolition of the glass ceiling that keeps proven, mature believers within our church from sharing in the ministry of the Church, whether on the streets in the mission field, or in the pulpit at home.
The Western Church has focused for decades on gathering and nurturing the "unwashed masses". Our next challenge is to release these "unwashed masses" for whom Jesus died as redeemed ministers. It takes more time and true leadership skills to train and release ten "non-professional" ministry leaders, than to control and rein-in a thousand "nice people" as spectators.
I believe the administrative task before the Western Church remains one of refining our organizational structures to look less like Corporate America, and more like the forms and functions found in Scripture. Like Michelangelo said, when he was asked about his magnificent carving of David the Shepherd King, "The image is already in the marble, all I do is cut away everything that is not the image." We must love the Image of the Church within the cold stone our fathers have left us.
Over 100 years ago Dwight Moody said, "The world has yet to see what God can do in, and with, and through a man or woman who is totally dedicated to Him."
And if Jesus doesn't care whether they're on staff, or dress like us, or talk like us, then neither should we.
