Charlie Wear’s Notes

It was late on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon. The leadership seminar audience was full of pastors from Korea. The late John Wimber had been diligently moving through the written material giving it his best when he looked up with a kind of wry smile on his face and said, “We’re just a bunch of guys trying to keep our pants zipped up, our hands out of the till, and be nice most of the time.” These minimum daily requirements for leadership seemed to be something it was possible I could live up to.

Let’s face it though, it’s not easy being nice. I was on the phone with my cable company for about 40 minutes the other night trying to straighten out why I had a $400 bill. Not easy being nice. A client showed up to a hearing without the proper identification meaning I have to come back to court on her case, her response, “I didn’t know.” Not easy being nice. I drove from Moreno Valley to San Bernardino (about 20 miles) to pick up a part for my car, and opened the box to find it was the wrong part. The right part was not available. Not easy being nice.

Jesus said, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jn. 15:13 (NLT via Biblegateway.com). Lay down my life? How about just being nice? In the life of church, this is sometimes not so easy. Have you noticed that couples get divorced? Usually the husband or the wife gets “custody” of the church. In most cases, this means that the “missing” spouse loses all of those “church” friendships. Trust me, that’s not easy.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discussed the trials of “break-ups” with friends. From the article: “It’s a myth that friendships last forever,” says Irene S. Levine, a psychologist, professor of psychiatry at New York University’s medical school and author of “Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend.” We are tied to our family by blood and our spouses by law, so we are often more attentive to those relationships. “Friendships are relationships of choice, so we tend to overlook them,” she says.

The church is the “body of Christ.” It’s really impossible to “break up” with your left foot, isn’t it? Yet, it isn’t really a body, is it? Friendships, the truest kind, where people care for you and love you in spite of your messy ways, and your weaknesses, those are hard to come by. They are hard to lose. Miles and years, changing jobs, and changing circumstances are allowed to separate us from those we have loved and cared for! Thank God he invented Facebook! Now I can renew old friendships (kind of) and make many new friends with people I don’t even know! At least I can have up to 5000 friends before my friends have to become fans!

In times past you could always find someone’s closest friends on one of the handles carrying their coffin from the funeral chapel to the hearse for the ride to the cemetery. I guess this is the kind of thing that “older” folks think about. Who’s going to be hanging on to my coffin handles? Love, friendship, being nice and laying down my life, this is all pretty deep stuff to be thinking about on an early Sunday morning!

I was happy to attend the first Verge Conference this year. Missional Communities are the new buzzword for churches. Megachurches and minichurches are interested in discovering what it means to be organic and missional. I was happy to be in a place where I could meet Tony and Felicity Dale and hear Neil Cole speak. For me, the few conference days were one of those “aha!” times when knowledge and inspiration come together to give clear future direction.

Everyone Gets to Play by John Wimber

One of the take-aways from the conference was the way that one of John Wimber’s one-liners has infiltrated common usage. More than one speaker when describing the missional community proclaimed boldly “Everyone Gets to Play!” By the way, this is the title of a book of Wimber’s writings compiled by his pastor-church planter daughter-in-law, Christy Wimber. Now, I have some experience in the Vineyard. And I think I know what John was saying when he said it. I also think I have some insight into what he was not saying!

Let’s take a side trip into what “Everyone Gets To Play” means in children’s sports. This is the concept that has every player participate in the game, no matter their skill level. It means that every player will get a certain amount of playing time in the soccer game, or a certain number of at-bats and in the field in the little league game. It does not mean: “Everyone Gets to Play Goalie! or Everyone Gets to Play Pitcher!”

In the church, everyone does NOT get to play Preacher, or Pastor, or Worship Leader! Recently I started attending the church services of a congregation that is, in a sense, restarting. The first week the Pastor proclaimed something like: “We want to release you to follow your [ministry] destiny and dreams!” My inner-Pharisee replied, “No, I don’t think so, Pastor, because my destiny is to preach for the next six weeks to your congregation, and I don’t think you want to release me to follow that dream!”

You see, in a baseball game, there is only one pitcher, in a football game only one quarterback, and in a soccer game only one goalie. Even though Wimber’s statement was a game-changer in the church circles he influenced, it didn’t actually change the game that was being played. I do believe that when Wimber first became a Christian he “got into the ministry.” He was a soul-winner for sure before he ever went on the staff of a church. He was doing Jesus’s stuff, the stuff he was allowed to do by his denomination, 24-7. He hadn’t yet started playing the “church” game, I don’t think.

For people like Wimber, those who aren’t consumers but those who are full participants in the way of Jesus, there is no amount of money, power, fame or position that motivates them to do Jesus’s stuff. They do it because they understand that it is the gospel in action. I wish I could say that I have grasped this concept for many years, but I only have kind-of figured it out in the last couple of months. I am a minister of Jesus. No, I am no longer a paid clergyman. But I am “a person acting as the agent or instrument of another.” [dictionary.com]

Understanding this has made a huge difference in my life. My clients are my ministry. Each one a gift from God. I found myself comforting a client whose 90 yr. old mother had recently died, praying for a client’s low back pain to be healed and asking God to help my clients keep their home. Now John Wimber figured this out early, and the church noticed and made him a paid clergyman!

Paul didn’t say “Everyone Gets to Play,” he said, we “are the body of Christ” each one of us is a part of it. Being part of a body is not a game we play. Paul’s approach to describing the body, did not leave any room for “special” parts of the body. A close reading of the New Testament does not reveal a clergy-laity distinction and implies that ordinary people were engaged in extraordinary exploits in advancing the gospel.

Over the years I have learned that in the “church game” not everyone gets to play. However, recently I have seen that in the real life that comes from Jesus, we are all invited to be players to the max!

The Lord God Reigns by Carl Tuttle, Firmpaths Music, (c) 2010