My Will, but not My Power

I believe that the Spirit brought this to my mind the other day: we often confuse--or, perhaps more accurately, we conflate--the concept of our will with the concept of our power.

Take this statement, for example: "You are responsible for your own spiritual growth." Now, that statement is completely and utterly true when it concerns our will. We, as followers of Jesus, do indeed have to make an intentional choice to follow him, which entails choosing to do certain things and practice certain disciplines that, when energized by the Holy Spirit, will form the life of Christ in us. In that respect, it very much is our choice and our decision. Without us choosing to do so--without making the decision to personally and devotedly follow Jesus in the ways he has directed us to follow him--we indeed will not grow. We must engage our will, and submit it to God's will.

However that same statement--"You are responsible for your own spiritual growth"--becomes an utter lie when it concerns our power. We, on either side of death, are forever incapable of growing ourselves. We can not produce or manufacture this maturing and developing life of Jesus in ourselves, no matter how disciplined we are, and no matter how hard we have willed it. God has done it first by breathing his breath of life into his image. Jesus has done it again by regenerating God's broken image within us, through his death on the cross and resurrection to new life. The Spirit continues to do it as he guides us on the various paths all leading to our death (to ourselves) and our life (hidden in Christ). And while we can choose to do certain things that allow us to experience and participate in this redemptive work, we never at any point discover ourselves to be the Redeemer. God reveals to us that our own power to bring about any of this God-life at every step is both wanting and impotent.

As we come to understand this distinction between our will and our power, I think that it becomes our responsibility to leverage it on our ministry philosophies, our programs, and other ministry means. My guess is that we have a lot of programs that masquerade as operating only by the fuel of God's power and the additive of our choice... but, in reality, are operating by human power.

How many churches and church programs have such a short shelf life for this very reason?

Big Church

I gave a tour today to a new employee of our church. She is taking over some administrative responsibilities for our musical worship area, which I am currently and interimly supervising. I thought that it might help her administrative understanding if she was able to see all of the different parts that go into producing a worship service at our church. I figured that if she could see the big picture and how all of the pieces fit, it would bring to life some of the more mundane but critical administrative functions that are necessary to support it.

As I was giving her the tour, I realized: there are a lot of pieces.

It's a huge undertaking to produce a service in a big church. We have a digital board that mixes sound in the house, along with a large analog board that mixes the monitors on stage. We have a top-of-the-line computer with several monitors that runs the three projectors, managing slides and video. We have another board dedicated to running all of the house, spot, and intelligent lights. And those are the things that are back in the sound room.

We have a video room that manages three live and human-operated video cameras in the house. It also manages the switch between live video and character generation. There are more monitors, flat screens, and TV's in there than you could shake a stick at. Above the video room is another room housing all of our amplifiers, breakers, and a sequencer for turning it all on and off. There's also a big rack of something in there for which I can't even guess its function.

We have a catwalk that extends the width of the worship center on which thousands of dollars of lights hang, and on which countless feet of power and other cable traverse. We have a stage that can (and has) house an entire high school band, with imputs galore.

Millions of dollars are invested in that facility. Thousands of man-hours are required to operate and maintain it.

I mean, I knew that it was "big." But, in giving this tour today, I realized even more: this is one big, complicated, complex thing that happens every week.

I'm tempted here to do some sort of evaluation of it. But I'm not going to. Right now, I'm still somewhat in awe of just how big the whole thing is... and I'm content to leave it at that.