Lately I’ve been feeling inadequate.
Not enough. Deficient. Incomplete. Lacking.
I’ve felt this way before. For instance, there was when I was trying to serve people in my host country but often coming up short in my ability to navigate the language and culture and ministry expectations. And now I’m back in my passport home trying to serve people who are new to the US, working on their own navigations. And I frequently get tripped up by the red tape and details and deadlines—even though it’s my system we’re dealing with.
It’s challenging to be in a position where you feel in over your head, and when you’ve put yourself there by choice, it adds to the complicated emotions. It all can easily become overwhelming. It helps, though, to develop an attitude of humility—the kind of humility Christ modeled when “he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7 NIV), and came to our world as a baby, as one of us, even the least of us. He “condescended.”
Today, we warn against condescension, but the meaning of condescend was originally to climb down to be with someone of a lower rank or position. Back then, that was considered a good thing, and the word was used to describe Jesus’ journey to be with us. It was only later that condescend took on the negative connotation of making a show of superiority.
To be clear, we are not Jesus. When we travel to serve abroad, we are not lowering ourselves to a lesser people or place or culture. But we often find ourselves lowered in station, as we may no longer be seen as fluent, learned, influential, titled, or skilled. How can we deal with this new reality? By developing “the same mindset as Christ Jesus.”
And it’s not just in his coming to earth that Jesus teaches us about condescending. It’s in his leaving too. “It is for your good that I’m going away,” he told the disciples (John 16:7). Following Christ’s ascension, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, descended to take residence in a small group of lowly, imperfect ambassadors. In a similar way, at some point, we are faced with the decision to depart from those we are ministering to, handing over our hopes, dreams, plans, and goals to those we’ve tried to prepare. But what if they’re not ready? What if they need more guidance? What if they haven’t reached the standard of quality that we think is necessary?
I’m reminded of a phrase used by a campus minister of mine, Roy, when I was in college. “If something’s worth doing,” he would say, “it’s worth doing poorly.” He didn’t mean that we shouldn’t do our best but rather that we all should try, even if our best didn’t seem good enough. Try, do, obey, attempt anyway. When he’d started the ministry years before, Roy coordinated and spoke at the weekly gatherings. A talented piano player, he knew that he could lead the singing, too, but instead he asked others, often others with less skill, to lead worship. By letting someone else take part, even if that meant enduring some off-key chords now and then, he built up and trained those who could exponentially grow what he had started.
A couple weeks ago in this space, Anita Rahma mentioned the novel The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, comparing the book’s unruly Herdman siblings to some of the children she works with. I’d like to stretch the application a bit further.
In the book, and now a film, the Herdmans hijack their small town’s Christmas pageant, taking over the main roles. I’ve not read the book or watched the movie yet, but I’m familiar with the story. In the end, the people in the church learn that when we allow someone to do something poorly, we often see how well it can be done.
Maybe some of you have just finished corralling a group of young, less-than-Oscar-worthy performers to act out the Christmas story. Of course, you and your team could have given a more authentic and reverent performance. But that’s not the point.
Or maybe some of you see yourselves less in the play’s organizers and more in the kids acting in the play. It’s not so hard for me to identify with the Herdmans. As a child, I wasn’t a scraggly ne’er-do-well (actually, I was a straight-laced people pleaser, which carries it’s own baggage), but I did my own part to make Christmas gatherings in our two-room-no-indoor-plumbing country church memorable. Each Christmas, the adults would set up a plywood partition at the front of the church to give us kids a place to change into our costumes. One year, while we were donning our plaid bathrobes and putting dishtowels on our heads to transform into shepherds (or was it magi?), we knocked over the makeshift wall, taking the Christmas tree down with it. And then another year, the program host invited me to the piano to play a solo I’d prepared. As I slid onto the bench to serenade the congregation she asked me what piece I’d selected. I proudly answered with the name of that holiday staple: “Turkey in the Straw.”
In the movie trailer below, a character calls the Herdmans “absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world.” How, oh how, could they be worthy of portraying Mary and Joseph and sharing the story of Christmas? Hmmmm. How, oh how, could God call a man named Saul to spread the Good News, a man who called himself “the worst” of sinners? How, oh how could he entrust the gospel to the likes of us today who serve cross-culturally?
Lately I’ve been feeling inadequate.
Not enough. Deficient. Incomplete. Lacking.
Yeah, that sounds about right . . . for a Herdman like me.
[photo: “Ladder from Above,” by Erik Norvelle used under a Creative Commons license]
