Sidelined in The Kingdom of God
I have been in bed with the flu all weekend. I’ve never had the flu, so it’s been interesting. I hardly ever get a fever when I’m sick, so experiencing my temperature go up a little over 102 was quite an experience. A slight delirium, somewhat pleasant yet disturbing dizziness, compounded with the need to sleep for hours on end. Since Friday night I have caught up on 2 television series and watched 5 movies, including Rocky 2 which was on at 4 this morning.
As I type this, the twentysomethings service that I lead worship for is getting revved up for the evening. The band is rehearsing, the media people are getting things lined up for the evening, our volunteers are starting to put all of the pieces into place. And I’m not there. Not even close. I am in bed with my Mac, and some Jello. And as I continue to form words and sentences, I struggle with a small, distracting voice that is pulling at my ear, telling me that something is wrong. Very wrong. The voice is telling me I should be there.
We are all kingdom builders. Working in ministry we are constructing a kingdom, brick by brick, every day. The real question is, whose kingdom are we building? Are we building the Kingdom Of Me, or the Kingdom of God? Are we constantly building structures and systems that hinge solely around us? Have we placed ourselves as the chief cornerstone in so many threads of our ministry that when we are sidelined for whatever reason, things fall apart?
When we build the Kingdom of God, we have to look at what that means practically in a ministry job. It’s nice to say and all – “I’m building the Kingdom of God today!” – but come on – what does that mean when it’s your job?
I am a rookie in this business, but I am learning through hard knocks that building the Kingdom of God is all about investing yourself in a small handful of people. Period. There’s no religious 34 point strategy, no holy-sounding discipleship plan, it’s simply about relationships. I used to think my job was all about creating systems. Creating systems for communication, systems for meetings, systems for agendas, systems for creativity, systems for artists, etc. I have abandoned my cold hearted search for the perfect systems and dropped everything to find that investing in my team of people has done the unthinkable.
When you pour your life into the ministry team that immediately surrounds you, systems create themselves. We can’t attack it from the reverse. If we spend all of our time creating systems, in 10-20 years, someone else will come in and uproot everything and implement a new system. If we pour our lives into people, the impact on their lives is eternal, and the relationships themselves develop systems that work. In turn, we create a team that knows our heart, vision, and can implement those things in our absence.
Examine your team members, and figure out their language. Camp out there. If you take notice in people’s passions, interests, and lives, something amazing happens – they show up. They are on the same page. You don’t have to twist their arm anymore. Figuring out their rhythms and what makes them tick develops a system and work environment that yields quality work and eternal, personalized fingerprints on the Kingdom of God. Too often we create our systems first, and then try and invest in our people through the confines of those systems, only to find it doesn’t work. I am beginning to find this particularly true in the case of working with artists.  But let’s save that for my next article.
Building a Kingdom that doesn’t revolve around you simply means that when you can’t be there, things don’t fall apart. That’s the less than spiritual application here that seems to be more telling than anything.  Building the Kingdom of God essentially means taking my nameplate off of the door. It means dissolving behind the forefront of my team, still reinforcing them and supporting them, but not having to be the name and face that goes out in front of the calvary. It means that when I’m gone, I’ve invested in my team enough to know that we share one vision, to the point that the details will get covered just as if I had been there. At least that’s what I’m shooting for. And if it means talking for hours on end about Radiohead with a team member, I’m willing to take the time.
The voice of the Kingdom of Me will still nugde from time to time. It will never be completely silent. We will eternally have the urge to be everywhere and up in everything.  Sometimes we have to be sidelined to look at the cold, hard facts. When we’re sidelined, that’s when our kingdom is exposed. I wish I could say that I have this figured out, but I am still learning. Some days I can see some beautiful strands of the Kingdom of God shining through my work, and somedays I can see the Kingdom of Me crashing down at my own hand. Tonight as service is about to begin, and I am about to combat another round of fever, I really hope that my people do a better job than I could have ever done. I really hope that I am not missed. I hope that the time I’ve spent with my team shows up tonight in their comittment to excellence, attention to detail, and passion. More than anything I hope that when my Kingdom is exposed, what’s seen is an eternal investment, and not a temporal self-gratifying strutcure.
(this article was written while listening to Anberlin, and was fever-induced, which means it might not make sense.)