Staying in Your Lane

A few years ago I watched a friend melt down in slow motion.

At the time I didn’t know it was coming. If I had known, I might have said something, but I had my own family distractions to deal with and he seemed to be managing. He was one of those good guys who shows up in a local church with a surplus of gift, energy and goodwill, and is immediately drafted into everything. He was recognized as an elder despite a shortage of family qualifications. He ran the youth group and helped with Sunday School, preached regularly, spoke at conferences, worked a more-than-full schedule and he and his wife were relentlessly hospitable, despite not having a large place to share with others.

And then suddenly … POOF! He was gone.

A Happy Ending?

Now, I think this part of the story has a happy ending, or at least not a disastrous one. We’re not in touch regularly these days, but last I heard he was in fellowship in a decent church two hours away. The house got sold, family and work became his major priorities, he’s no longer an elder and he’s pared down his church involvement to something sustainable and realistic. He may even have avoided the semi-obligatory nervous breakdown that usually signals the need for drastic change. His fellow elders at his former church have nothing bad to say about him, because they just don’t talk about him as far as I know. His hasty exit obliged them to find a bunch of less-gifted and qualified people to fill all the roles my friend had apparently managed so ably, or simply to do without. I don’t imagine they were thrilled when he gave them the news. They never saw it coming.

I did, or I should’ve. Nobody can do all those things over the long term, let alone do them well. If he can, it’s because some other area of his life is being severely neglected.

The Perpetual Motion Machine Church

Yes, of course the system is faulty. Modern evangelical churches are perpetual motion machines, as I have written about previously, and the cogs must keep turning — or at least so goes the perception — lest we let the Lord down and show ourselves insufficiently obedient to his ‘call’. When I turned up at the same church for the first time, a woman tried to draft me for the choir before even determining if I was saved. That’s the kind of eagerness and commitment the folks there displayed for their pet projects and programs. Like many smaller churches, they felt the need to be doing everything the larger churches are doing. They were certainly ambitious. They just weren’t terribly realistic given the number of members in the congregation and the evident lack of gift in areas that really, really require it. So they burned out their best asset by overextending him.

That’s one way of looking at it. The other way is this: My friend didn’t know how to say no. I’m not sure he realized he could.

Christ Did Not Send Me

The more famous servants of God in the New Testament were certainly busy about the Lord’s business, but they knew how to stay in their lanes. They were good at prioritizing. They didn’t let themselves be talked into taking on areas of service for which they were not the best fit, and they knew what could be delegated and what could not.

Baptism, for example. Paul was crystal clear that “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.” Why not? Didn’t the Great Commission apply to Paul, “Go therefore … baptizing them”? Of course it did, but the apostle evidently saw the Lord’s instructions as corporate, and his personal role in the mammoth project of making disciples from all nations as more verbal than visible. Accordingly, he let others be active in ways in which they were able, while he stayed in his lane, preaching and teaching and doing whatever was practical and necessary to accomplish his perceived priorities. He made exceptions, of course: he baptized Crispus, Gaius and the household of Stephanas, but Paul did not ordinarily burden himself with these tasks. In this, he followed the lead of the Lord Jesus himself, who delegated the responsibility of baptizing converts to his disciples, as John notes.

It is Not Right

Consider the refusal of the apostles to get involved in the dispute between the Hellenists and the Hebrews. “It is not right,” they said, “that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.” Unlike many elders today, they stayed in their lane and trusted the Holy Spirit to equip and lead others to do work they were unwilling to take on. They understood their own gifts and responsibilities, and prioritized those.

In his body metaphor of 1 Corinthians 12, Paul likens the church to a human body and its members to the various members of the body: eye, foot, hand, ear, nose, and even the “unpresentable parts”. Can a foot act as a hand? Certainly, and sometimes it has to. I have often picked up something with a bare foot when both arms were occupied. Some people of a certain age and flexibility can do that. But a body in which every move ordinarily performed by a hand was replaced by a movement of the foot would be either dysfunctional or handicapped, not to mention the extra wear and tear on the muscles of the entire leg in maneuvering into positions for which it was not designed. The proper functioning of the local church depends on all its members staying in their lanes most of the time, doing the things for which they are best enabled.

A Caveat

Now, let me add this caveat. Sometimes believers God has equipped for service are reluctant to do the things they do best. Maybe, like Moses, they are always saying, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” The reason can be fear, lack of confidence, experience or faith, and with a little encouragement and perhaps an accommodation or two, they will blossom in a role they at first hesitated to assume. These are wonderful men and women to find when you come across them, but their fitness for the role God has designed them for will be readily evident to everyone except them.

But if your local church has to draft newcomers for service without vetting them, guilt individuals already loaded down with responsibility into playing multiple roles outside their areas of gift and expertise, or finds itself perpetually short of volunteers for this, that or the other program, the problem may not be unspirituality in the congregation. Your little group may be trying to engage in activities that are not the highest priorities of the Head of the Church.

Either way, you will not help the situation by letting others prevail upon you to take on burdens you are not equipped or able to bear. That which cannot be sustained will not be sustained, no matter how much we would all like it to be. The best possible result of letting yourself be drafted into excessive service is that you will perpetuate a less-important activity at the expense of a more-important one. The worst possible result is that the whole house of cards will collapse, and you with it.

I think my old friend would agree.