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I Don’t Care
(What you want, what you really, really want…)
In the mid-nineties, the Spice Girls had a hit song called “Wannabe,” which contained the refrain, “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want. So tell me what you want, what you really, really want…” The tune was catchy and spoke of the nature of friendship and relationships, but it also provided an apt commentary on our Western culture. Burger King’s tagline is “The way you want it.” Chik-fil-A stresses, “It’s our pleasure to serve you.” Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, used to say, “There is only one boss, the customer.” Slogans that tout the importance of customer satisfaction abound in our culture today. It’s how businesses succeed in building a loyal customer base. Further, as someone who has been in small business himself, a satisfied customer is what you ultimately want, and the businessman should strive to give his or her customer what they “really, really want.”
Yet, churches are not businesses. Nevertheless, church leaders fall into the trap of thinking of themselves as businesses. Surely, when attendance goes up, revenue tends to go up. When attendance drops, revenue drops. Yet, while the purpose of a business is to generate revenue, the purpose of the church is to build Christ’s kingdom. And these, my friends, are two very different goals. Nevertheless, churches often circulate surveys and other questionnaires asking the people in the pews what they want in a pastor, what they want from the pastor, what they want as part of the worship service, and what kind of programs the people want…what they really, really want.
The problem is that the church is a Kingdom, or at least, the local church is meant to be a microcosm of the Kingdom of Heaven. And, Kingdoms have Kings. In the case of the church, these Kings are not mere figureheads like the King of England, but it has a real King with real rules and commands, and the King expects His citizens to obey said rules. In fact, the King has established offices in His Church to ensure that His laws are taught to His citizens, that they are trained and equipped to carry them out, and to discipline said citizens when the citizens refuse to submit to His authority.
Who is this King over the church? It is Jesus Christ the Lord. Who are His ministers? They are Elders, Deacons, and Pastor-Teachers. Deacons are charged with ensuring that the poor, the widows, and orphans are cared for and treated with equity. Elders are charged as overseers over the body, and Pastor-Teachers are given the awesome responsibility to teach and equip the citizens of Christ’s Kingdom for ministry, so that the people are also able to live their lives as disciples, obeying all that the King has commanded.
And so, within the Kingdom of Christ, what is important is not what the people want, what is important is what the people need to train them to be good and productive citizens of the church. Of what value, then, are polls and questionnaires? What is important is not citizen satisfaction, but the satisfaction of the King. In fact, the citizens will discover, if they submit to the will of the King, that they will find far more satisfaction in the things that satisfy the King than in the things that they think will satisfy themselves.
And so, what you (or I) might want (or think we might want) is irrelevant in the life of the church. The only thing that is relevant is what Christ wants. And so, as a Pastor-Teacher in the church, I really don’t care what you want, what you really, really want; I care what Jesus wants, what He really, really wants.
Elders and Deacons
“Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the holy ones in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the overseers and deacons.”
(Philippians 1:1)
Finally, we see that Paul not only addresses this letter to the people of the church, but to its leadership — the overseers and the deacons. It is certainly true that Paul speaks of other sorts of servants in the church…administrators, teachers, evangelists, etc… (1 Corinthians 12:27-30; Ephesians 4:11), but it would seem that these two offices serve as broader categories within which the other offices find their definition and qualification. Thus, however many offices in the church that a particular group happens to hold to, offices fall under the broad category of oversight or service.
What should also be noted — and is arguably more significant — is the reminder that the church itself does not exist as a broad and extended group of individuals. Believers are not autonomous, to put it another way. God has brought us together as one body — a larger institution — under the leadership and direction of officers. Like the Roman Centurion (Matthew 8:9), we are all men and women under authority…one of which is the godly leadership of the church that God the Father has raised up to honor his Son. True, there has been much wicked leadership through the generations — the unfaithful shepherds that God condemns (Ezekiel 34:1-6) — and while these wicked shepherds are often the ones that sear themselves into our memories, history has been filled with many, many faithful shepherds who labor in quiet obscurity amongst their flock. Though we like our independence, when we wander independently, we wander astray.
Thus, Paul addresses the entire church, a unified body of Christ, called and purposed to tear down the strongholds of the devil in this world (2 Corinthians 10:4-6) and making disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19-20), all that the Father draws to the Son (John 6:44). This is a body made up of believers in covenant with one another under the leadership of Elders and Deacons, all to God’s glory. Were more of our congregations to think this way, I imagine that we would not have as many struggles within our churches and we would be quicker to weed out false shepherds from our midst.
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