Tim Chester writes about the unachievable standard that local churches can set for themselves when they make higher standards in all areas of ministry their focus.
Resources are limited, and achieving a high level of committment in some areas involves a choice to have a lower standard in anther area.
This is a simple matter of opportunity cost.
But we still fall for the temptation to guilt about areas that we are not achieving in, when the reason we are not achieving is because our resources are achieving results in another worthwhile area.
From Chester’s post:
I recently gave a gospel community 40 statements and asked them to put a tick by those statements that are clearly true of their community and a cross by those statements that are clearly false. Three-quarters put a cross by the statement, ‘We are actively and generously involved in world mission.’ Now I know that most of this community have been on mission trips in the last two or three years and they are involved in sending and supporting two missionary couples and one single young man in three unevangelized areas, in two of which Christians are regularly persecuted. There is regular news backwards and forwards, and they often pray for these people. So I began to wonder what level of ‘active and generous involvement in world mission’ would have been sufficient for them all the tick this statement. The point is that whatever the answer, it would have been a level that made it very difficult for this small group to tick any of the other statements! Whatever level of involvement in world mission they would have consider adequate would not allow them to sustain an equally adequate involvement in prayer, evangelism, social involvement, training and so on. They were setting themselves impossible targets.
Read the whole post.
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