building for god’s kingdom

I won’t embarrass myself, but just know that I could share many stories of times I’ve done things ‘for’ someone and found myself eventually having to apologise and say, “Sorry, I was just trying to help!” However well-intentioned our actions may be, they can be un-helpful or even harmful. Even sincere people can be sincerely wrong.From age 11-18, I spent my summers working for my Dad in construction. I learned a lot about building in those summers, but I also learned about working with a team. When you’re building a house, you have to understand and appreciate the overall process in everything you do. You may have an idea that seems helpful by itself, but in the whole scheme of things can end up being unhelpful. It could make more work for someone else, cause confusion, or a host of other things. For example, I may see that some boards on the roof need cutting. By itself, this is fine for me to do. However, if someone else is already making preparations to do it, then one of us is going to be wasting time. Also, cutting boards on the roof creates saw-dust, which can cause people to lose their footing on the roof. What’s more, there could be a reason that the boards haven’t been cut yet – maybe on this specific house there is another design feature in mind.

Another example; I may notice that a stack of boards are on the other side of the job-site from where they are going to be used. I could save someone a lot of time walking back and forth by moving them closer. There could be several things I’m not considering, though. Maybe the area I would move them to is about to be used for something else. Perhaps moving the boards at all would just confuse the person who was going to be using them, etc.

As you can see, there’s a lot that can go wrong on a job site. Intentions may be good and effort may be expended, but sometimes with distorted results. You could think it was wonderful that you cut a lot of boards, but maybe they were supposed to be cut later or differently. You may feel proud that you solved an apparent board location problem, but maybe that was the best place for them in the long run. Perhaps you can think of similar examples for other environments.

On a job site, these problems can be easy to deal with. In fact, the longer a team works together, the easier they are to deal with. You learn to ask questions and think before you just ‘do’ something. You learn how to see the big picture. You learn to work together.

In church life, however, the things we do are often close to or at the heart of our very identities. The tasks that we perform are marks of our spirituality and if the tasks that I’m doing are thought by others to be contradictory to the big picture, then we feel that our very spirituality has been attacked.

In the same way that simply ‘doing stuff’ on a job-site is not always the right thing, in the church also, simply doing things just because we can doesn’t mean that we always should in view of the big picture. Could it be that sometimes we may be just ‘moving spiritual boards’ around the job-site when we need to be cutting them according to the plan and installing them where they go, etc.?

In the world of construction, corrections have to be made. The workers have to accept it, grow, learn, move on – and most importantly – get to building the right way! At least in some ways, it is no different in the church. We’ve got a job to do. Let’s keep the big picture in mind. Let’s communicate with one another. Let’s not take advice too personally. Let’s grow. Let’s sharpen each other, making us sharper tools in God’s hands. Let’s get on with building for God’s Kingdom.