Do Your Job!
I live in New England and people shout that headline on a pretty regular basis. “Do your job!” is shouted, headlined, and posted through the season.
Patriots
The Patriots Football team is such a huge commodity as an entity, that is. In reality, the team is made up of people, many, many people. I think sometimes we lose sight of that with groups. The team had $2.6 Billion dollars in revenue in 2013. Fans buy merchandise, tickets, travel, and spend time, energy, and money on parties, food, drinks and on and on. Still fans shout, “Do your job!”
Everyone has a collective job to do -they win football games. They do it well. The team plays other teams, just as popular in their own areas. In Pittsburg, the Steelers and in Dallas, the Cowboys, and they have the same job. They play football. It is a grueling job, no doubt. Lots of training, disciplined diets, careful personal responsibility, and dedication for the players, but there are also many support staff jobs, managers, maintenance, crews of people doing everything from marketing to cleaning the stadium.
The single collective objective is to please the fans by winning games.
Games
I often say, “I’m not into sport-ball.” My family doesn’t watch. We don’t spend money. None of us really even care about any sports. I do care about the people. When I see a story about a football star punching out his wife or girlfriend, I’m horrified. Or a story about another giving to a school, I’m elated.
People in groups are doing a collective job, but they are still individuals. They, we, each have personal responsibilities. According to the Scriptures, we will each stand alone before the judgement throne of God.
Church
We, the church collectively has a job to do. The church is supposed to tell people the Good News and save souls. Collectively, that is the job, to bring in the harvest, to rescue those drawn to the death, to tell people that God so loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son, hat whosoever believes in Him,should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Are we doing our job? Or are we leaving it to the church leadership, those few people with titles. Auxiliary staff doesn’t exist in the church. If you have accepted salvation by believing that Jesus died on the cross, bridging the gap between you and God the Father, a gap you couldn’t have crossed alone, then, you are commissioned and given the task of becoming His hands and feet here on earth.
It is us, every one of us, that are to tell others about this mystery. We do it by diligence at our vocation, honor in relationships, loving our neighbors, and by renewing our minds with the Words of Scripture. It takes dedication and effort and it takes acute awareness. Mostly, it takes vulnerability.
In talking with people about getting involved in church, meaning working with leadership, doing works, my friend expressed the age old sentiment that has had me attending occasionally. The politics and power grabs of people are everywhere, including in churches. There are the same struggles in every collective group of individuals.
If football teams can do their job, the church should be able to do hers.
Do your job!
This is so challenging for me. I hope it is for you too. The whole world is dying, groaning and travailing, falling apart and suffering under the sway of the evil one. There is an answer, a supernatural peace that comes into our lives when we simply ask for the Son’s presence, a peace so profound, that people have died before they would verbally deny it.
In my work, I am often struck by unmet requests for secular services. They are so few. Services are provided to suffering people, unable to pay, primarily by people of God. It is love that serves. Love rescues. Loving relationships restore. Love gives, when no one is looking and when no one is paying.
Share your thoughts in the comments. What do you think?