here is the text of what it said….
"Ok, church staff, you're not a family. You're more than likely a team. I think this shift in perspective and language could prevent a ton of hurt in the church, Yes, the church is a family but the way that most ministry models organise staff and volunteers to make church happen is way more like a team and there's a huge difference. Families don't require performance to belong but teams do. On a team your role is connected to how you perform and when someone isn't contributing or if there is a misalignment development is required and sometimes changes are made. That's not wrong. That's just how teams work. And teams can possess healthy aspects like honor, respect, dignity, confidence, empowerment - all these things that a healthy family should demonstrate - but its damaging when churches and organisations say they're a family but operate like a team, especially if they lack the characteristics that a healthy family would possess. That disconnect is disorienting and it hurts people. So what does this mean. Perhaps a new model for ministry is needed, but if not I think it could be extremely helpful to stop calling church staff and volunteers a family if it requires operating like a team. Just name it. If your model requires you to operate like a team, you're not a family. Own it and celebrate that teams can still be healthy, empowering and deeply honoring. I'd love to hear how you might nuance this too and what you think about this distinction."
…it got me thinking… and I sent the person a reply as he had asked for feedback from viewers of the status, and we had interacted to and fro on various things in the past and we had invited to our previous honour-shame workshops, and to be honest I was also keen to hear his response to my ponderings on it…
And I was challenged to then share more widely what I wrote and what he replied (he has given me permission to include his reply).
I wrote (with a few minor edits here):
[I believe] this is linked to part of our ministry focus in helping people navigate and restructure Christian life and ministry perspectives around both relationships (honour) and rules (more law oriented structures).
It's not a quick easy answer but…The West has been more rules focused in the 20th century in particular, but is becoming more desirous of 'relationship' focus in the 21st century…All the while the majority world has embraced more Westernisation over the recent decades. I think both are struggling to find a balance of how both elements should work together…and finding that 'blending' the two is far more difficult than expected and will take more than just adopting other cultural ways or making our societies more multicultural .
Sadly the tendency I see in both is being to gravitate back to the stronger and more comfortable historical social background context that each is familiar with and which still sits behind what has been more recently embraced, because the new 'blending' doesn't seem to be working as planned (although some of course will say the problem is that we haven't yet embraced the alternative view sufficiently).
So [some of] the West is beginning to say we have to get back to more rules and structures (what some label as right wing politics), while [some of] the non-west says we have to get back to more traditional dynamics (what some see more aligned with socialism). Yet at the same time each is still trying to embrace the glimpes of what they think is 'good' in the alternative views. There is a tension and uncertainty that develops. …and as people from the society then become members of a church, the same tensions emerge in the church.
The problem also is that in our world we are surrounded with sin-distorted views of both views to some degree, (in all of our earthly cultures). It's only in Christ the sinless One where we see both functioning as they are meant to in God's perfect creation plan. Thus only in Christ can we begin to function as those who belong to Him, in the entirely new culture of those re-born into the new Kingdom of His body the church , for that is where the true functioning of how these dynamics [of both rules and relationships] should be—and have the potential to be seen—hopefully in ever increasing measure.
The reality is that we are all a work in progress, and often the church is just functioning as a section of the wider surrounding society, rather than an entirely new Kingdom culture.
However, I am challenged to think that just like in biological families, there are teams within families…I don't think it's an either-or situation but a both-and, primarily a one-within-the -other situation.
Growing up, one time my Dad involved me in his 'team' to research and prepare for what new refrigerator the family would buy. My mum didn't care for that kind of that research task and my brother was too young. My Dad chose based on skill and ability along with willingness. We were all family but a part of the family formed a 'team' within the family. The non-team members didn't stop being part of the family, just because they weren't part of that 'team' and the team didn't have to be an entirely new family in order to be a team…if you get what I mean🤔
We are (identity…thus foundational [equal] value based family) before we do (activity…thus functional based performance, roles and teams).
Eg. OT Nehemiah had teams to build the walls, within the family of God, and those teams were based on willingness as well as skills performed with excellence; Paul and Barnabas and John Mark set out as a missionary team based on the gifts God had given them to work together in the task God had called them and to do it well (maybe why Paul did not allow John Mark to continue with him at one point since Paul believed JM had failed to do his task as part of the team with diligent mature faithfulness); Paul tells Timothy to appoint Elders and Deacons who would become teams within the church family for each team to fulfill their appointed roles with a standard of excellence set forth firstly in the qualifications for appointment).
The problem also is that in our world we are surrounded with sin-distorted views of both views to some degree, (in all of our earthly cultures). It's only in Christ the sinless One where we see both functioning as they are meant to in God's perfect creation plan. Thus only in Christ can we begin to function as those who belong to Him, in the entirely new culture of those re-born into the new Kingdom of His body the church , for that is where the true functioning of how these dynamics [of both rules and relationships] should be—and have the potential to be seen—hopefully in ever increasing measure.
The reality is that we are all a work in progress, and often the church is just functioning as a section of the wider surrounding society, rather than an entirely new Kingdom culture.
However, I am challenged to think that just like in biological families, there are teams within families…I don't think it's an either-or situation but a both-and, primarily a one-within-the -other situation.
Growing up, one time my Dad involved me in his 'team' to research and prepare for what new refrigerator the family would buy. My mum didn't care for that kind of that research task and my brother was too young. My Dad chose based on skill and ability along with willingness. We were all family but a part of the family formed a 'team' within the family. The non-team members didn't stop being part of the family, just because they weren't part of that 'team' and the team didn't have to be an entirely new family in order to be a team…if you get what I mean🤔
We are (identity…thus foundational [equal] value based family) before we do (activity…thus functional based performance, roles and teams).
Eg. OT Nehemiah had teams to build the walls, within the family of God, and those teams were based on willingness as well as skills performed with excellence; Paul and Barnabas and John Mark set out as a missionary team based on the gifts God had given them to work together in the task God had called them and to do it well (maybe why Paul did not allow John Mark to continue with him at one point since Paul believed JM had failed to do his task as part of the team with diligent mature faithfulness); Paul tells Timothy to appoint Elders and Deacons who would become teams within the church family for each team to fulfill their appointed roles with a standard of excellence set forth firstly in the qualifications for appointment).
The reply came promptly back…
Thank you for sharing such a profound reflection. You've articulated the tension the church is facing. As you said, both the Western and majority world cultures are grappling with the shortcomings and attempts to blend operational guidelinesIn Christ, we see the perfect harmony of truth and grace, structure and relationship. Gods Kingdom culture transcends our default human frameworks. And any we could ever come up with.The family-team analogy illustrates how identity comes before function (roles, tasks, teams), and how teams within the church should emerge from spiritual maturity, willingness, and gifting. (not cultural pressure or institutional models)As we disciple and build within the church, we must keep calling people back to this foundational truth: that we are a new people, living by a new set of values, shaped by the only One who perfectly models both justice and mercy. It's a call to build not just a better version of society, but something entirely new.
This was a reply to which I could say an enthusiastic AMEN.
In addition to the the thoughts I shared above in the WhatsApp message...It is interesting to note that the video mentioned how that most of the dynamics desired were 'honour' related and it specifically mentioned three such words - 'honour, dignity and respect'.
~In whatever way we term it, foundationally people are looking first of all for honour.
When we attach such honour only to 'doing', in performance based contexts, we focus people onto achieved honour only and we stay blind to the need for honour to be rooted firstly and foundationally in who we are, in inherent or innate ascribed honour. Performance/task based, or merit based achieved honour is legitimate in its place. After all, Jesus accomplished the task the Father set for him and received the honour of that accomplished 'finished' task (John 17:4; 19:30), and we will receive crowns/rewards for the works we have 'done' on this earth because faith without works is dead (James 2:26). However, when we conflate ascribed/inherent honour and achieved/performance honour (as the West has done extensively, particularly the American part of the West), we end up with people trying to live out and frame foundational 'equality' honour by efforts of 'equal' performance, and that is something that can never be found…and it fuels unhealthy competition, jealousy, envy and rivalry, as well as impossible, unhealthy and unrealistic goals, fruitless searches, despair and hopeless resignation.
God made us with equal foundational honour, and saves us into a new equal family honour in Christ, but not to all function equally in skills or performance. We are all part of Christ's body in equal foundational value, but not in varied functional use - the eye is not the foot and each performs totally differently and the eye can never perform successfully as a foot and was never meant to or gifted to. But the eye is equally of as much value in the body as the foot (1 Corinthians 12:15-26). There is only unity in the diversity when there is first unity in the shared foundational identity. This has implications for all of life.
These are issues I believe underlie so many of the complex contentions of our world today, as it grapples with the many lies about these issues that float around the globe. Such contentions ultimately find their source in the 'father of lies' whose one goal is to destroy what God designed and desires. It is only as we deal with these root issues that we will see new or different fruit in our societies and churches.
Once again,
As I interacted on Whatsapp, it was not only great to share truth that brings clarity and enthuses others to biblical discipleship, but makes my heart rejoice whenever the often overlooked unnoticed impacts of the dynamics of honour and shame are seen more clearly, especially as to how they impact church life, not least in Africa.
Furthermore, it is an encouragement for us to press on in what God has called us to, so that churches and their members and leaders are pointed to truths that are core to God-glorifying church life.
(Acknowledgement to the status posted and reply to my response, by Michael Opare-Kumi, who is originally from Ghana and is a husband and father and leads the media ministry at Sediba Life Church in Gaborone, Botswana)
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