Please, No Leftovers

What is your opinion of leftovers? Do you enjoy them or detest them? Would you serve company leftovers? I have heard of one family that throws away all their leftovers, never eats them. Have you ever been to a church garage sale? I heard someone talking about this the other day and they stated, “Our church is not going to have garage sales anymore. I am tired of charging people for the 'junk' that our church people dump off and try to get rid of.” Ouch!

How about the refreshments at some church welcome centers? Now here is an area that could use some improvements! I have tasted some welcome center pastries that were at least a day old. They were too hard to even be used as good dunkers in coffee. Have you tasted the coffee that some churches serve up? Okay, I didn’t fight in any wars and I am not used to syrup in a cup that is as bitter as kissing a lemon. Not all church coffee is bad, but the issue that poor church coffee raises is deeper and far more troubling. The issue is, much of what we do as churches can often be described as substandard, second best, mediocre, or weak. Does God want our best, or is He happy with our leftovers?

We’ve all come across signs of slackness in church life: the 1950s decor still prevalent throughout the building (Green shag carpet is now back in. Don’t tear it out.), a computer used to run the PowerPoint presentations that has a Windows 98 operating system, what about notice boards still advertising Christmas services in February, no answering machine (If they do have an answering machine, no one returns your call.), ministers who are underpaid, live in crumbling, damp houses and drive cars that are so old you can’t find used parts for them anymore, worship teams that don’t practice and can’t sing on key and church websites that crash when you click on them, or haven’t been updated in 6 months? You know what I am talking about.

I'm not criticizing poverty in churches. There are many small congregations where few people are employed yet they somehow manage to do the very best with limited resources. And I'm not complaining about ministers who, through lack of resources, have to do more than anyone ought reasonably to expect. I still believe the hardest job in America is a minister that is the only staff person in a church of less than a 100 people. If you don’t think so, try it sometime. Have you ever tried to wear 50 different hats at once?

What I'm concerned about is a casual attitude to church life that accepts second best as good enough for God. This can happen in any church but is particularly troubling in churches where wealthy members seek quality and excellence in every other area of their lives. I have stayed in homes where God has really blessed this

family, but I then arrive at the church they attend and am transported to the slums. I believe Solomon invested much more sweat equity into his own house than God’s temple. The litmus test could be, would we live in the parsonages we supply for our ministers or in the churches we attend? I was personally so embarrassed one time for a minister because of the parsonage the church let this family live in, I was ready to tell the elders off before I left town!

Why do we have a quality problem?

In some Christian circles there is still a belief that nothing should be enjoyable, especially church. We were created to suffer and pick up our cross daily. Anything that smacks of pleasure is viewed with suspicion. In this perverse view there is virtue in hard pews, out-of-tune instruments and rambling sermons. Such things – and poor coffee – are supposedly good for the soul!

Today there seems to be an undervaluing of the local church. Today the local church is no longer automatically high on a Christian’s priorities. I tell people always lease space to meet in. Why build a building? You can’t get anyone to clean it or mow the grass. There are even some who consider the local church to be irrelevant and dispensable.

Do you know what your Spiritual gifting is? What is your passion? What skills do you have? What type of personality has God blessed you with? What has God called you to do for His church? Oftentimes we don’t achieve quality because we aren’t evaluating to determine what ministry God has wired us to do. Putting round people in square ministries will never bring out the quality that God has blessed them with and therefore bless His Kingdom. (For that matter, being round people isn't giving God our best, either, just our stomachs.)

When is the last time your church evaluated itself? Evaluated its ministries, its facilities, the ministers, and its leadership? How do we know if we are achieving quality if we don’t evaluate what we doing as a church? Is VBS working? Is our worship music attracting? Are the ministers calling and engaging with the culture? Are the carpet, chairs, paint, or decor worn out in our facility? Do the shepherds actually shepherd anyone? 

All of the above is not exhaustive, but should get our brains thinking about some of the quality problems we might have in the churches we attend or minister at. The question then becomes, “Why should we pursue excellence?”

In a classic book by Bob Russell, “When GOD Builds a Church,” he dedicates a whole chapter (4) to excellence. In fact the subtitle of that chapter is, “Do your best in every area of service!” He lists Eccl. 9:10 and Col. 3:23-24 as scripture references for this chapter, along with a Southeast Christian Church slogan, “If it bears His name, it is worth our best”!
 

We worship a God who demonstrates excellence in all He does. He created the entire universe and then made that simplest and most satisfying of quality control statements: what He had made was good (Genesis 1). When faced with solving the problem of a human race that had rebelled against him, He chose the most costly of solutions: sacrificing His only Son. It is very simple, if we want to overcome acedia in this area of our lives, all we have to do is remember His Creation and the Cross!