Friday, December 19, 2008

CATHEDRAL FATIGUE

Ministry involves a lot of building -- building a community of faith, building programs to serve people, and even building and maintaining physical buildings. We typically plunge ahead into that work, doing everything that seems good because we are ostensibly doing it for God. We think that a high level of activity and productivity is what God expects from us, so we work harder and go faster from Sunday to Sunday, program to program, and mission to mission. The result is often a deep and pervasive sense of [what I call] cathedral fatigue. We want to do a lot of things for God, but here is the question: Have we bothered to ask God what God wants us to do?...

Someone once said that if you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans. God must get a kick out of all the grandiose plans we make for our lives and for our churches. We are so busy making plans for God that we often fail to listen for the plans that God is making for us. In many ways, prayer is more important that productivity. That is the cure for cathedral fatigue.

-- Robert Kaylor in Come to the Manger, published by Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN. Used with permission.


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2 comments:

  1. Rev. Dave WilkinsonDecember 19, 2008 at 9:24 AM

    Received via e-mail:
    When I read the subject line on this, it reminded me of 2 of my favorite books by one author: Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End". If you haven't read either of these yet, find time in your life to do so (they are tomes!!); if you have, I hope you see the parallels between these stories, and the soundbites sent out today. -- C. Courtright

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  2. Rev. Dave WilkinsonDecember 20, 2008 at 10:57 AM

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    That said, why do we keep doing it? Each one of us is the church, HIS bride. Because of the legalistic, hypocritical, self righteous stigma we've earned by overachieving in HIS name, many will never set foot inside a church. If we imitated Jesus, copied His ways, showed His love, in our everyday surroundings, would the rest be so important?

    A quiet servant -- S. Heroux

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