Becoming What?

by Mike Chong Perkinson

Any developmental process must consider the aspect of becoming; that is, dealing with the growth of the organism from a single cell into multiple cells. In other words, it is not so much what an organism is that is critical but what it is becoming. The purpose of a thing defines the essence or the nature of a thing.

When it comes to church growth and leadership issues, the emphasis tends to fall towards function and the goals the group is pursuing. This is not to say that such consideration is wrong, but to assert that the old adage of “putting the cart before the horse” is often in play when it comes to building church leadership structures. What we are inferring is that the theological basis and purpose of the church is often assumed and left unclear, often misunderstood. The pastor or leader is pressed by competitive demands of success and financial pressures to produce something that is worthy of recognition – a product if you will. Without addressing the matter of pride and selfish ambition, the pastor naively pursues pastoring with an agenda to see people come to know the love of God but finds the demands of the organization and the product overtake the desire of the pastor to truly shepherd God’s people into a life of spiritual fullness.

The movement of our church age is more towards building bigger churches than it is building big people. Remember big is not better nor is small better – better is better. With such a system in place, one has to be suspicious of the underlying values and philosophical base that supports such a structure. All too often, at least in our opinion, we see powerful leadership structures, built within the holy walls of the church with great organizational skill and powerful results that resemble the things of the Kingdom in operation but lack in the deeper dimension of actual Kingdom life that is expressed most clearly in the Fruit of the Spirit.

To put it simply, we have worldly leadership systems and values baptized into the world of the church and pawned off as God’s wisdom and design. By this, we are not suggesting that worldly leadership structures are bad in and of themselves or that the church does not need assistance in organizational development. Instead, it must be acknowledged that the church is an organization that resembles the world’s organization and is in need of organizational assistance. However, the church is not a business, although it has many similarities, it is a design of our Father who, by His sovereignty, has ordained the church to be His primary vehicle of edification for the body of Christ. The church then needs to operate by the values and philosophical base that is set in the scripture regarding its existence and conduct. It is clearly defined in scripture who we are to be and how we are to function as the people of God. We need to be able to stop and consider “why we are” before we ask “who we are.” The “why” question answers the “who” question and releases us to find our purpose and our being at the same time. Once we have answered the nagging question regarding our existence, we can safely engage into the arena of life and function freely. Being always precedes doing and function always comes from life. Philosophically, it is impossible to separate being and function. Let me explain, will and function exist like two sides of a coin, both operating and carrying on a different role and yet, are uniquely tied to the coin. The coin is being (the state of “isness”). When we look at the coin, we can differentiate various elements of it like heads and tails or will and function. However, the various pieces make up the whole and that we call a “coin.” For there to be function we must have being just like heads and tails would not exist without the essence called the coin. (Obviously this illustration can be extrapolated further with more detail – for our purposes we simply want to illustrate the inter-connectedness of being and function.)

The church has fallen prey to the forces of our society in that it has embraced, almost unknowingly, the values of a success-driven society that puts function in front of doing; to the point of ignoring being all together. God is more interested in who we are becoming as persons. Our pathways for spiritual formation in the church should then be built upon the “irreducible core” of helping people develop in their love for God, love for each other, and the making of disciples as life is lived out.

And so, who are you becoming? What is church becoming? How do the ministry processes and systems in your church help you develop disciples that love God, love others, and make disciples? How are you doing in living out the “IC”?

May we all become the people God has built us to be reflecting His glory as we live life. After all, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” (Irenaeus)