Idolizing “Doing”
Written in February 24, 2019 by one of our staff at YWAM Harbour City
As missionaries, we are largely volunteers. Our organisation in particular requires all its staff to raise their own funds for their living expenses, including rent, utilities, food, airfare, outreach expenses, and everything else.
People ask why we don’t receive a salary — but as a non-profit organisation we have no income, and thus no ability to pay our staff. It’s something we take in stride – raising funds, that is – and the longer we’re on the mission field the more we grow in the skills and humility necessary to do so. It’s a fabulous exercise in trusting God, but that’s a subject for another post.
Being staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers adds an interesting dimension to an organisation. It means we cannot motivate our staff with financial or even positional incentives with greater leadership comes greater responsibility but not necessarily any of the perks traditionally associated with “moving through the ranks” at a typical company. This frequently leads to difficulty when as an organisation we are not headed in the direction the staff had imagined, or at less than the desired pace.
I grew up in an environment in which “doing” was portrayed as the ultimate expression of Christian love and commitment to Christ.
One’s status as a Christian – IS there such a thing? – would rise and fall based on measurements such as hours prayed, chapters read, services attended, people led to Jesus, time spent volunteering, and other easily observable behaviours. I took this emphasis to mean that God found my actions as important, if not more, as the people around me. I quickly developed the habit of evaluating my own value to the Kingdom of God based on the quality and quantity of the things I did.
Lately I’ve been reading a devotional focused on idolatry, and we went through a week discussing “the idol of mission.” Not sure what this would entail, and as a full-time missionary, I went into it quite fascinated. Turns out the author was specifically addressing the idol of doing.
One of the more sinister strategies employed by the idol of mission is the way it causes us to focus on the wrong fruit. Rather than measuring the virtues of one’s character, the idol of mission draws our attention to the scope of our influence. We ought to be asking, “How much do I look like Jesus?” But in many religious communities, this is ignored in favour of another question, “How much am I doing for Jesus?”
– With God Daily
As missionaries, we are constantly required to report our progress.
Our support base – the generous Christians who pay our rent, our grocery bills and our outreach expenses – should receive regular updates on the outcome of their investments. This is all well and good, but it can cause us to focus exclusively on our accomplishments and, in some cases, to neglect the first calling of a Christian, which is to know Jesus.
It starts off innocently. We are grateful for the financial support of our friends and family. We want them to be assured their money is going to good use. But the longer we live here and the more newsletters we write, we can more and more easily grow frustrated with ourselves when we go a week – or a month – without seeing someone’s life changed, or a new ministry started, or some needy people tended to. We can equate a lack of observable progress with a decline in our value as missionaries (at the least) or as children of God (at the most).
When missional effectiveness becomes paramount, we can mistakenly equate effectiveness with faithfulness. We can fool ourselves into believing God is pleased with us simply because we are accomplishing measurable things in his name.
– With God Daily
Lately God has been challenging me in this area. “What if I didn’t ask you to start any new ministries right now?” he asks. “What if I just want you to pray and seek me? What if I want you to be faithful with what is in your hands? What if I’m preparing the way ahead of you, and it’s going to take a little time, and if you jump out to do ministry in the interim ‘just to do something’ to feel better about yourself, you’ll be dong it without me?”
Moses told God that he would rather stay in the wilderness forever than leave without God’s presence. Do I have the same heart? Am I willing to remain in the waiting, loving Jesus and being faithful to the last thing He told me, until He leads me to the next step? Am I secure enough in my value or do I believe I need to keep “doing,” whether to please God or to impress my supporters?
Do I worship the accomplishment of the Great Commission?
Or do I worship the One who gave it?
