Light the Dark

John 17:15-19 The Message
I'm not asking that you take them out of the world But that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no more defined by the world Than I am defined by the world. Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth; Your word is consecrating truth. In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world. I'm consecrating myself for their sakes So they'll be truth-consecrated in their mission.

In my experience I find that many ascribe to the pastor 100% ownership in bringing people to church, meeting physical and spiritual needs, counseling, evangelism, event planning, teaching the word, dedicated and fervent prayer, convicting us of our sinful lifestyle and the list can go on and on and on. Sure, not one of these things is out of the scope of the minister but is his position in the vast ranks of believers the only accountable to all faith performance? Perhaps the simplest job description for pastors should be subject matter experts a type of Spiritual Human Resources generalist. The hard, physical, put-your reputation-on-the-line working out of faith should be overwhelmingly evident in the lives of the church goers. Furthermore, at a rate that is exponentially more when compared to the pastor because the average church member to pastor ratio is something like 28:1. Sadly, this is not the case, we have in essence resolved ourselves to sit passionately poked by motivating words of the pastor but never moved, no, never so impassioned as to jump to action.

What if God had a physical scorecard for us? For those of you who don't know what a scorecard is; it is a type of business report card where the company takes the most important business analytics and compiles them on one page. At the left of the scorecard are targets and the manager can look and compare his/her results to the target. So, back to spiritual scorecards. . . . What if we could pay 14.95 a month and log onto to "Spirifax" to check our spiritual scorecard. How would we rate in gives of self and money freely or the number of times we actually listened to the Holy Spirit's leading. Would we lose a performance appraisal rating for the amount of times we intentionally broke the law or because we did not log enough service hours. Perhaps we would gain points for having a weekly bible study with the kids. Truth is I don't know; but I know this: My scorecard at work compels me to action and there are times I wish I had a spiritual scorecard with Christ as the target because I know it would motivate me.

On the other hand, if we did have spiritual score cards I am sure we would use them to give each believer a hierarchal ranking. Our flesh seems to want to make everything a competition. We have the power of the Holy Spirit inside us and like the verse above suggests, those of us that are not full time ministry are in the world; literally the trenches not just the pastors, directors, elders, deacons, and church office managers. He has given us a mission there. If we are not listening for the prompting of the Holy Spirit when another colleague or employee is in need we run the risk of allowing ourselves to be of the world Monday through Saturday and only in the world as scripture commands on Sunday. My reasoning is simple; the world's way is about performance driving, about making or saving as much money as possible, and does not often consider the needs of those doing the hard labor. If business men and women merely maintain the environment we are serving only the world, if we risk ourselves for the souls of those God has surrounded us with then we are laboring unto the Lord.

Go ahead, I dare you, LIGHT THE DARK!

Mike