I think a majority of church arguments stem from conflicts over how much weight a person is pulling, how much a person is doing and participating in the church’s endeavors. Depending on the church of course (I can’t imagine this being an issue in many Catholic churches). But often times protestant churches, especially here in Japan, when complaints arise, when blame is thrown around, it is often regarding how much a person is doing. Everyone is generally doing something in the Japanese church, but there are those who carry a majority of the weight…and there are others who do not. And I could go into the whys and whys nots of all of this…but that would require much too much time.
There are many valid points that the church should be a joint endeavor. But, while thinking of this, I also always feel a bit of a drawback against the harsh comments by those carrying the weight against those who do not carry so much. For one thing, the few people that do often speak out against others…they tend to be a certain personality type. Very much a self-starter, not one to really “be still and know”, and more likely to go out and volunteer and help those in need. This is great (the latter part), but when the person speaks out against those who do not move in the same way, often thinking of others as spiritually inferior (because of the lack of action)…there is much aversion to this that rises up in my own heart. And for this too, there are many reasons (not all of them even good I’m sure), but one important reason…is found in the emphasis of Paul.
How many times did Paul speak harshly to a church because they were not doing enough? That they were not productive enough, did not evangelize enough? And the answer is nearly zero. Rather, Paul writes to the church again and again “don’t devour one another” “accept one another” ” think of the next person more highly than yourself” ” be one in Christ”…Perhaps it is like 100:1 ratio (I really have no idea). And so when a church is not reflecting this, this desire to accept one another, and is rather moving much more like a business, and people aren’t meeting their quota…we have gone seriously astray from the Bible’s vision for the church. We do want people to participate more, but if we just look at the overly active people and their work, expect others to do the same…our standard is no longer the Bible, or Christ, but a specific personality type. This is dangerous because we in effect begin to “rebuke the foot for not being an eye” even though the Creator specifically made that person to be ” a foot” (for those who have no idea, 1 Corinthians 12 gives an example about the body of Christ).
So, I think rather than asking people to meet some haphazard standard, we should call each person to follow Christ (which will look different for each person).
Quinby 