by Paul Arnott

JULY 2002

BY PAUL ARNOTT STATE DIRECTOR CMS VICTORIA

Accountability is a word we shy away from. It ties us down. It requires us to be transparent. Many of us duck it, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly. But at the end of the day we are all accountable. The time will come when all who belong to the Lamb will stand before his gaze and provide an account of our lives, the good, the bad and the ugly, for all to hear. So we'd better get used to being accountable. I'm currently listening to a talk on the accountability expected of Christian organisations by someone called Butch Maltby, who just had to be American. Despite the name it's good stuff. Here's some of it on the issue of accountability:

"We're accountable to each other, not only God. Those who give us money need to be sure to our organisation/church and to them. We should annually tell those who give what we stand for in terms of financial accountability. We need to be squeaky-clean in the eyes of God and human beings in regard to our disposition of resources. We must be open in the way we do business. We need to be transparent in our accounting."

"Key questions those who give to you ask of you: ? What's unique about your organisation/church? ? Why should I give to you now? ? What impact will my gift have? Remember blind institutional trust is fast disappearing. Unless people can see that their giving makes a difference to their world, to their community they will direct their money elsewhere."

Those of us involved in local churches may be tempted to feel that the last point doesn't apply to us, but I want to suggest that increasingly this attitude will impact on the local church. In an age when there is a greater than ever demand upon the Christian dollar and when people can give to causes that give them both a great sense of ownership and satisfaction, like World Vision child sponsorship, we need to do far more to deal personally with those who give to us. Blind institutional trust is fast disappearing. It's certainly foreign to most under 40's.

Paul Arnott.

The Church of Hospitality by Joel D. Heck

Church consultant Lyle Schaller says that "community has moved out of the neighborhood and into the marketplace." If that is true, then the church must look to provide community--a sense of togetherness--not only in our homes or at our church, but also out in the marketplace, especially in the urban centres of our country.

Some communities are hospitable, while others are not. Some communities welcome new people to town through a program like Welcome Wagon or simply through the friendliness of the people. That's hospitality. When churches practice hospitality at the community level, they welcome new residents, display friendliness as members of the community, and meet the needs of their community in ways and at places that are usually apart from the church's regular programming.

The church offers hospitality at the community level when, as a member of the community, it sends a letter of welcome to newcomers, sends visitors to meet newcomers, or offers a service that meets a community need, such as Mothers' Day Out. This is feeding people when they are hungry, visiting them when they are in prison, inviting strangers into our home, and looking after the sick.... ______________________________________________________

You've just read an excerpt from the Summer 2002 issue of FIRST PRIORITY, a Web journal featuring the best writing on evangelism today. To read the Rest of this article, visit http://www.palau.org/firstpriority . This article excerpt is copyright © 2002 Joel D. Heck from his book "From Guest to Disciple" (Concordia). You may forward this excerpt via e-mail. All other rights reserved.

RUTHLESSLY ELIMINATE HURRY by John Ortberg, guest columnist

Not long after moving to Chicago, I called a wise friend to ask for some spiritual direction. I described the pace of life in my current ministry. The church where I serve tends to move at a fast clip. I also told him about our rhythms of family life: we are in the van driving, soccer-league, piano-lesson, school-orientation-night years. I told him about the present condition of my heart, as best I could discern it. What did I need to do, I asked him, to be spiritually healthy?

Long pause.

"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life," he said at last.

Another long pause.

"Okay, I've written that one down," I told him, a little impatiently. "That's a good one. Now what else is there?" I had many things to do, and this was a long-distance call, so I was anxious to cram as many units of spiritual wisdom into the least amount of time possible.

Another long pause.

"There is nothing else," he said. "You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."

I've concluded that my life and the well being of the people I serve depends on following his prescription, for hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Hurry destroys souls. As Carl Jung wrote, "Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil."

For most of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.

One of the great illusions of our day is that hurrying will buy us more time. I pulled into a service station recently where the advertising slogan read "We help you move faster." But what if my primary need is not moving faster?

Time magazine noted that back in the 1960s, expert testimony was given to a sub-committee of the Senate on time management. The gist was that due to advances in technology, within 20 years or so people would have to cut back radically on how many hours a week they worked (or how many weeks a year they worked), or they'd have to start retiring sooner. The great challenge, they said, would be figuring out that to do with all the excess time.

Yet 30 years later, not many of us would say this is our primary time challenge. In fact, quite the reverse. Robert Banks, author of All the Business of Life, notes that while our society is rich in things, we are extremely poor in time. In fact, never before in human history has a society been so things-rich and so time-poor.

Our world has become the world of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: "Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."

Meyer Friedman (who with Diane Ulmer wrote Treating Type A Behavior -- and Your Heart) defines hurry sickness as "above all, a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time, frequently in the face of opposition, real or imagined, from other persons."

Though our age intensifies "hurry sickness," it's not a new problem; people in ministry have been subject to it at least since the days of Jesus. During one hectic season of ministry, Mark notes of the disciples, "For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat."

Far too many people involved in ministry think of this as a life verse, as if God will reward the hectic one day with, "What a life you had! Many were coming and going, and you had no leisure even to eat. Well done!"

Not quite. Jesus was aware of this problem, and he constantly withdrew from crowds and activities. He taught the same to his followers. In one instance, when they returned from a busy time of ministry, filled with adrenaline, he told them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."

If you want to follow someone, you can't go faster than the one who is leading; following Jesus cannot be done at a sprint. Jesus was often busy but he was never hurried. Being busy is an outer condition; being hurried is a sickness of the soul.

Jesus never went about the busyness of his ministry in a way that severed the life-giving connection between himself and his Father.

He never did it in a way that interfered with his ability to give love when that was what was called for. He observed a regular rhythm of withdrawal from activity, for solitude and prayer.

He ruthlessly eliminated hurry from his life.

John Ortberg is teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.

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