It’s hard to know what people are passionate about. Over the years I’ve tried to inspire and stir people into action for the things of God. However, they seem so distracted by other things. Yes, they want God in their lives, but only to supply the things they need for the things they are doing. I think most still do not understand that the believer is called to serve God’s purpose with their lives.
Knowing this, I continually work to challenge people to rise up and take hold of the work of the Lord and advance the kingdom of God in the earth. Yet, I understand that there are many things in life we need. Part of the work of the ministry is to insure that people’s lives are taken care of so they can devote themselves to God’s work without distraction, but it seems we get involved in majoring on the minors. We just have no passion for the work of the Lord.
Recently, our leadership team has been reading the book Ministry Nuts and Bolts. From this book, and others I am reading, I see that the basic motivation of people’s lives comes from their core values. You will never notice this until you touch one of those values and see the reaction that it gets. These are the things they are passionate about. Now these can be good things or bad things, but one thing is for sure, their passion lies in their core values.
Now here’s the perplexing thing, what if they are not passionate about the things God has called them to do? This has been my impasse for years in ministry, trying to get people to become passionate about what God has called them to do.
I remember a minister in Louisville, Kentucky I knew years ago. He said, “The proof of passion is pursuit.” I’ve always remembered that statement and it is part of my overall ministry philosophy. I’ve seen its truth over and over again. If someone is passionate about something they pursue it with great time and effort. Two illustrations that come to mind are athletes and musicians. The one spends hours in training for his sport, the other spends hours in practicing a musical instrument. They prove their passion by their pursuit.
A person who says they are passionate about something and does not involve themselves in it is either lying about it or has simply deceived themselves. What this means to me as a minister is, I must find a way to move beyond just inspiration and expectation and find the core values people are passionate about and build upon those.
I’ve never used surveys before, but everyone I’ve talked to says they work better than you think. However, you must be willing to accept the results you get and understand their significance. Well, we did a core values audit at Calvary and what it said was far removed from what I expected. Yet, it reveals a great truth that hinders most believer’s lives.
That truth is, we think what we should value is what we actually do value. It’s a kind of deception that invades most of our belief system. If we think something is good and we agree with its goodness, then we believe we actually value that thing. Let me say it this way, our values audit would imply that we are a church dedicated to prayer like no other church around. It scored the highest of our core values. Yet, there is no physical evidence this is true.
What we are doing is saying that we believe it is important, but not necessarily to us. In other words, we think people ought to pray, but we do not. I’m not saying we don’t pray at all, but it’s not the core of our lives. So what the survey really revealed is we think what we are aspiring to be is actually what we really are.
It’s like the TV commercial where the guy said, “I’m not a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.” Actually we believe we are what our minds tells us we are, not what our lifestyle proves by our pursuits. Bluntly, this is what the Bible calls being self-deceived. So it is really harder to get at the core values of people than you might think. Their defenses rise up and they say what they believe to be right and good is really what is right and good about their lives. This is far from the truth.
Therefore the issue remains, how do you get people to see themselves in the light of the truth about themselves? How do you really peel back all the layers of facade and examine the true core? On the one hand we wish what they were saying was true, and they believe it is, but on the other hand, the evidence is not there. As we continue to study our core values at Calvary, I pray God will give us humility and allow us to see a true picture of where we are and the ability to discern it from where we need to be.
“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you:
Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought,
but rather think of yourself with sober judgment,
in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”
Romans 12:3, NIV.