Yes - We're Strange

If you didn't know it, Michelle and I are a little strange. I didn't ask her permission to say that - so don't tell her. (I don't think she reads this anyway!)

Our strangeness is found in Ephesians 4:11 which lists the five leadership gifts that God gives to people in order to build up the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

There is varied opinion on if this is an exhaustive list, if these gifts apply to every believer, if they are listed in some sort of order, or if every leader has at least one of them. I don't want to get into those issues. Instead, I want to complain (vent) a little, and tell you why we're strange.

You see, Michelle and I tend to have the apostleship and prophet gifts. Before you think we've gone beyond strange to certifiably looney, let me define those gifts for you. (It doesn't mean we can see the future or we are one of the original 12!)

• Prophet - someone who sees in black and white and is constantly pulling the church back to the basics. They are able to look at the culture as a whole and see where it is going astray.
• Apostle - someone who has a big vision for the kingdom of God outside of any one individual organization. Someone who focuses on the needs of a culture rather than the capabilities of the church, and would rather train other leaders to be successful than have their own organization. Think about Paul in the Bible.

Here is our struggle: if you reverse the order of the list in Ephesians 4 (putting prophet and apostle last), it roughly estimates the importance the current church structure in the USA puts on each gift. Teachers are highly valued - after all what's church if you can't learn something new. Pastors are also highly valued, but if they can't teach well, they are always looking for a job. Evangelists are around - but make everyone uncomfortable and often end up striking out on their own. Then there are the prophets and apostles ... which most people in the church wouldn't even be able to define.

So, Michelle and I are here in the States trying to live out leadership gifts that we can't even define well under a church culture that usually doesn't think the same way as us. And we wonder why we're always frustrated! It seems that most people who think like us drift away from church. They go to work in non-profits somewhere or maybe they just give up on the local church altogether. We don't think God is asking us to be those people. He wants us where we are.

So whether you're working with us trying to figure out how to help our community at Engage, trying to help Indian women in poverty at Renew, trying to start church planting movements in India or South Africa, or even working with us on the ever exciting finance team, bear with us ... we're just weird people trying to figure this whole thing out.