by Rev. Blane Young || Executive Director, DCXA
(3) Shifting from Consumer to Commissioned
In the context of the early Church, all disciples helped make other disciples. In other words, there wasn’t a framework that someone could receive grace and accept the Gospel and then not share it with others.
Inherently, our faith is about transformation and participation.
Action. Engagement.
To use a sports analogy, in the Kingdom of God, there are no bench players and there are no spectators.
Ephesians 4 tells us about the role of spiritual (Christian) leaders:
…to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…
Now, in this context, remember that saints = believers.
Thus, the role of Paul (and people like me that lead campus ministry) is NOT to do the work of ministry but to equip others (students in my case) to do the work of ministry.
That’s how the body (the community!) gets build up.
As Natalie says it, if you’re disappointed with your campus ministry or local church (or they aren’t meeting 100% of your needs and desires, 100% of the time) — that’s not crisis, that’s normal life.
We can’t expect others to fill a void that only God can!
We also can’t come into a spiritual community simply seeking our own needs to be met. That’s not God’s desire or intent!
What then is the right course, believers? When you meet together, each one has a psalm, a teaching, a revelation (disclosure of special knowledge), a tongue, or an interpretation. Let everything be constructive and edifying and done for the good of all the church.1 Corinthians 14:26 (AMP)
See, it’s not that ministry is a team sport — it’s that following Jesus is a team sport, wherein everyone engages in ministry!
If you attend three different campus ministries (one for the retreats, one for the services, one for the groups) — you are making it about you whether you realize it or not. If you attend two churches, sporadically, because the worship is ‘better’ at one and the sermons are ‘deeper’ in the other, I think you’ve missed the point. It’s okay, I’ve been there and there’s a way out.
It’s to plant roots in imperfect places: to be formed and to help others be formed.
Likewise, it’s to let the principles of community be more important than the ideals represented by one’s personal preferences.
Is this easy? No.
Is it what God desires? Yes.
We can’t be commissioned to reach and serve and bless and share the Gospel with the lost or unengaged on our campuses, if our primary focus is our consumption. You and I, see, we can consume too much of a good thing. Every year this is made evident when people die from water poisoning during hazing practices on college campuses.
Water is good. It’s necessary for life. But too much and it’ll kill you.
Our devotion and passion for Jesus isn’t measured in how many ‘Christian things’ we partake in, but if we are living for Christ and doing so in a way where people might be reached and added to our community (and communities like ours).
You are in close proximity to people that are far from God — as am I. Let’s not ignore that while being over-committed to Christian things (activities), because at that point, we’ve accidentally become the Pharisees. We’ve become passionate about the things related to God, but not God Himself or the heart of God (which is the lost).
To be sent, you have to have a home base.
We want to see students sent to the unengaged on campus — from the home base of Chi Alpha or from the home base of another ministry.
You can’t have more than one home base, because then you’re a spiritual tourist and not someone commissioned to the world.
Thanks for taking time to read this, over the next few days, we’ll have 4-5 more blog posts published in this series.