During one of my recent
church visits a man holding a guitar said, “I’m the worship leader. I’m Matt.”
A little later the speaker who delivered the mission moment praised the leadership
of Matt and Bryan. Since the bulletin gave no names or identifications it
wasn’t until I exited the building and shook hands with the pastor that I
learned he was the Bryan spoken of earlier. When I mentioned the visitor’s dilemma
in not knowing the name of the preacher and he said, “It’s probably okay if
people don’t know my name because it’s not supposed to be about me.” I
understand this form of humility, but in today’s church the phrase, “It’s not
about you” has become a cliché. Certainly we need to be humble, but the Lord
never intended for his disciples to be incognito. Scripture makes it clear that
it’s important to know Simon son of John would be called Cephas (Peter), that
Saul was renamed Paul, and that Judas son of James was not the traitor Judas
Iscariot.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I think God expects us to approach Him using good sense. He made part of our minds to search for and make sense out of things. Why would He then turn around and dismiss our good sense from the way of approach to Him. It is a dangerous thing to dismiss any element of reality in making assessments of things and determining how to do what we have to do.
-----The new life is a highly relational life. Loving your neighbor as you love yourself tends to make for relationship. Do we love ourselves any at all with efforts to know ourselves better so we can better care for ourselves? Should we then seek to know our neighbors better? Is knowing our own name not some part of knowing ourselves better? Should our neighbor’s name not be part of knowing our neighbors better? It’s a relational thing.
-----But then again, maybe these servants don’t want actual relationships. Maybe all they want is show relationships to go along with a celebration show. Identifying yourself with a name by which others can categorize their memories about you does tend to acknowledge a developing relationship.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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