Brotherhood

Introduction

It is a poorly kept secret that I have, for some considerable time, viewed “men’s ministry” with somewhat of a jaded eye. I have not been greatly inclined to engage in breakfasts, lunch meetings or studies supposedly targeted towards making better Christian men - and for a very good reason. They are for the most part an ineffective event. By that I don’t mean that what is being talked about at these meetings is necessarily bad or incorrect (although I do reserve the right to use the word “tedious”), nor do I suggest for a single moment that there is not at least a modicum of benefit from Christian men gathering to have fellowship with one another. But if one were to measure the usefulness and/or effectiveness of the ministry in terms of developing spiritual maturity and lasting benefit to either the men involved or the church in general, you might be enticed to draw a similar conclusion to that which I have so boldly stated.

My view is that men’s ministry cannot be a special monthly event, or a weekly program – it is potentially even more than the more intense activity of discipleship. I think that men’s ministry is a “cultural” thing, and the development of men in the church requires “cultural change” – it has to be ingrained into the very nature of our church. It is a committed push towards developing true spiritual men (i.e. men that are full of and controlled by the Spirit of God).

If there was a true commitment to seeing men act as true men of God, and were being trained from their youth to develop strong spiritual character, the church would be defined by characteristics such as strength, purpose, effect, stability, authority and integrity. These characteristics would be manifested through the men in the church – setting an example to follow. If you agree with me on this proposal, then it follows that we as men have an obligation to lead but not as authoritarians - as a group of men that takes responsibility.

That said, and despite what appears to be the overt cynicism that I initially brought to the subject, I have begun to see that there is some benefit in a form of men’s ministry, but it takes a form that is considerably different to that which has traditionally been touted.
It is to that end that I write this discussion paper on the concept of men’s ministry built around the philosophy of what I will for the moment term “brotherhood”, and why this could potentially provide the impetus (or at least a genesis) for creating effective men’s ministry.

Disclaimer

Much of what I have written may give the appearance that I am being overtly critical of the church in general. However I do not write from a position of strength – rather, I write with a sober realisation of my own shortcomings with respect to the standards and demands that God has established. Any criticism is first and foremost directed at myself, and I certainly in a poor position to “pass judgement” on no one.

Biblical basis

A little background is in order so you get a feel for why I started writing about this subject…and perhaps the circuitous route that I’ve taken. The background is important – it might help to explain why I have seen this subject as important, and perhaps some of the questions that arose in my mind as I studied it.

I had for some time been looking into the ministry gifts, which Paul defines in Ephesians and again in 1 Corinthians. The ministry gifts are referred to in other areas as well but these are the major sections. These gifts include pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles. This is all good stuff, and clearly necessary for the church to grow (according to Paul, who laid it out for the Ephesians).



As you can see from the attached graphic, there is quite a range of ministry gifts – and each has a particular purpose. These ministry gifts will, in the future, prove to be the “anchor points” for the church (more on that later).

Ephesians seemed to be a good place to start when thinking about how to develop a strong church. Paul writes that the people fulfilling these ministries are there to create a specific effect – let me spell it out in terms of how the bible refers to them:

• The work these ministry gifts accomplish results in the perfecting and the full equipping of God’s people (i.e. the aim is for us to reach the full level of maturity that God has for us individually and corporately)
• God’s people then do the work of ministering toward building up Christ's body (i.e. we have the responsibility to bring about this level of maturity that God has planned for the church)
• As they do this, the church develops until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the knowledge of the Son of God (i.e. we move from being bound together by physical factors and start to be interconnected spiritual beings – connected to one another and with God)
• This results in us achieving really mature manhood - completeness of our spiritual personality

The language that Paul uses when talking about these gifts may sound a bit “spiritual” but there is some real practicality contained in these words that needs to be teased out. Stay with me!

I have had ongoing debates with various friends about the potential for us to become perfect here on earth – I won’t burden you with that discussion (but it rages on, much to my delight). Sufficed to say though that Paul is talking about a capacity for the church to build up to a point where we can achieve what he terms “really mature manhood”.

It’s this concept that led me to conclude that, unless the ministry gifts are operating effectively, we as a church are not going anywhere! Unless we have true pastors, teachers, etc operating in the church and doing their job, we are going to see the opposite of what Paul was talking about. A church without the ministry gifts is a church characterised by ill-equipped saints, who have no capacity and potentially no interest in ministering to and building up the church. There will be division in the church (a lack of “oneness in the faith”) characterised by opposing views and potentially outright conflict. The church will in effect be a collection of children, not exhibiting the real maturity of which Paul speaks.

Disturbingly, there is evidence to support the view that the church has indeed infantilised itself by failing to place appropriate focus on the ministry gifts, and I specifically use the word “appropriate”. There’s a lot of talk about these ministries, and many are lionised as being holders of these positions, yet the lawyer in me is persuaded by the strong circumstantial case that these people are either not who they say they are, or they are not fulfilling the role to which they have been called.

It’s probably more correct to say that the church has not taken the appropriate steps to initiate an environment in which people can begin to grow into these roles. Perhaps there is a lot of focus on the gifts, but no real action in the background to develop people into these roles. Part of the problem we have experienced to date has been that there is a focus on fitting people into ministry roles without the precursor steps of growing people in their capacity to take on responsibility.

One of the reasons that I think that this subject is so important is that we are at somewhat of a watershed moment in the history of the church. I am convinced that God wishes to see the model that He revealed through Paul brought to life. This is going to require some pioneering work, and perhaps even a few mistakes, but it is to that end that I think that this discussion about brotherhood has some merit – it creates the environment for bringing these ministry gifts into being, and the “hard men” that are ready to step into the roles.

Hidden dangers

This paper is not a discussion on how the ministry gifts operate, but I do want to point out a particular aspect of the gifts of which we should perhaps be aware.

There is great power and authority to attaches to these ministries. Like nuclear power they have great potential for good, whilst at the same time they can have a devastating effect if not undertaken with care and circumspection. An incredible level of responsibility attaches to the ministry gifts – probably more so than is generally spoken of.


There is a specific order to the gifts, starting with those that speak in unknown tongues, moving all the way up to the apostles. Each carries with it a level of power, responsibility, and authority. As one moves up the hierarchy of gifts, we see increasing levels of authority, but contemporaneously the level of responsibility changes. For instance, administrators attract a relatively low (but in no way insignificant) level of responsibility, and apostles attract the highest level of responsibility.

What I am suggesting is that one of the reasons that some of the gifts are not being seen is because God is still looking for people whom He can trust, who will act selflessly, and who understand the spiritual concept of “taking responsibility”.

I would venture to say that we see, in some quarters, the role of the teacher being undertaken. It is interesting to note that Paul said that the church of his time did not lack for teachers – back in his time (and I suspect in today’s age) plenty of people would take on that level of responsibility, and exhibit sufficient spiritual maturity to be entrusted with that position. However, the greater roles require a level of commitment and I suspect God finds it increasingly difficult to identify people who can take on those roles. It is as if there is a “ministry threshold” that exists.

Paul creates a dilemma for us – whilst proposing that we need these high responsibility ministry gifts operating in the church, he also says that we should be very careful about aspiring to those ministries. With responsibility, authority and power comes accountability and a requirement to meet a higher standard – and the potential for condemnation and severe repercussions for failure.

Yet it remains that, without having each of these ministry gifts working together, we have a church akin to a high performance engine with some critical components removed. The potential for remarkable performance exists, yet this will never be achieved whilst we’ve only got half the engine operating.

The “shape” of the curve on the graph is important – you’ll note that responsibility/selflessness are not directly proportional to power/authority. I don’t at this time propose that my reasoning is entirely correct, but at least intuitively I suspect that our level of selflessness needs to grow at a faster rate in comparison to the power and authority that would accompany us. Why? Primarily because of the inherent risks that attach to receiving God’s power – and there are risks. I said previously that we are talking about power and authority here that is far more potent than anything that we can at this time imagine, and given our predisposition towards selfishness there is always the risk that we could allow our own desires and pride corrupt and usurp God’s work through us. Unless selflessness outstrips authority, corruption could most certainly creep in.

The Dilemma

Having been convinced that there was a requirement for these ministry gifts, and that God needs these ministry gifts to be operating effectively before anything else can really progress, I then began to wonder why we don’t see people fulfilling these functions. Let me be more specific (and put the pressure back on myself for a moment) – why do I have such limited “drive” to meet the requirements of responsibility and selflessness to be positioned for higher levels of ministry (forgetting the labels for the moment).

I’m working from what I believe to be the strong premise that God is ready, willing, and able to create some rather remarkable and amazing things happen in our lifetimes. His nature is inherently creative and imaginative, and if we mix that with what we have learned of His desire to have a close relationship with us, these things combine with the potential for staggering results.

What I’m proposing (and I reiterate that these are proposals only) is that God’s capacity to do all these remarkable things is stymied by one or more of these three things:

• The lack of need for these roles to be filled right at this time; and/or
• The lack of people willing to step up into these roles; and/or
• The failure on God’s part to appoint people to these roles.

I think that all of these options are worth considering. God may perhaps be holding off on “formally” appointing people to these roles for the very reason that people are unwilling to step up. Or maybe He doesn’t require the roles to be fulfilled right now – maybe they are designed for another time and place. Maybe it’s the case that there are people who are fulfilling these functions, but they are not recognised (or “labelled”) according to the schema proposed by Paul. Any one of these scenarios is a possibility.

I would hazard to say that were it the case that these appointments as prevalent as God intends, we would not see the dysfunctional state of the church that we now see.

One thing I do recognise though is that I have seen people appointed to these roles by the church into one of these ministry areas, only to fail to meet what are the biblical expectations of that role. People that claim to be prophets who fail to speak with authority or wisdom. Pastors that fail to take care of their congregations. Teachers who handle the Word carelessly. There has historically been a “failure to deliver” from people who supposedly have been entrusted with these ministry gifts. Sure, they’ve been willing to undertake the role, but there are question marks over whether they are truly stepping up into the role (which I’ll discuss) and more importantly there are questions surrounds whether they have actually been gifted in the ministry they so boldly undertake.

The church can only handle so much responsibility at the present time. The church “hangs” on the ministers along the curve…kind of like a curtain hangs by hooks along a curtain rail.
Given that there are a lot of missing “hooks”, what we end up with is a “sardine effect” in the church – we are all packed together down one end of the Responsibility/Authority Curve because there are no hooks to allow the church to expand outwards towards greater maturity.
The attached graphic gives an example. If the most mature level of ministry in the church is the “helper” then there is nothing for the church to “hang on” beyond that ministry gift” The result is like a shower curtain that is drawn aside and bunched up down one end of the curtain rail (the shaded area).

Now I need to make something abundantly clear here – just because we cant see people exhibiting higher gifts does not give us an excuse to maintain our current level of maturity. This whole paper is about trying to create impetus for us to “slide along” the rail and become those “hooks” that God needs. Forget the labels on the graph at the moment – God will appoint people when and where He sees fit – but the precursor is for us to create an environment where this can happen (the pioneering work I mentioned earlier).

When we start to talk about building God’s kingdom, what we are talking about an environment where we have God’s power and authority evident, which requires all the “offices of government” to be assigned. All of the hooks are available for the kingdom to hang together.

Stepping up

I think that the genesis of the problem we are seeing in the church stems from this failure to step up, and so it’s worthwhile looking at what this actually means, particularly since I am placing the responsibility for this problem back on the men of the church, and thus the need for men’s ministry to be geared towards this little problem.
I need to take a short detour here for moment to talk about the concept of love, with a view to setting the scene for some more “tough stuff”.

Don’t zone out of me, OK? One of the problems that I have had when people start to talk about God’s love, or God being love, is that it tends to go straight through me. I totally agree that “God is love” – I’ve all been taught this since forever. However, what this phrase actually means and implies necessitates a far greater understanding of God’s character – the concept of love is an incredibly large and complex subject. Sadly, it has become a “throw away line” that has lost significance…probably due in part to the fact that our concept of love has become rather tainted.

I don’t intend to write a huge diatribe on love – rather, I want to make particular note that one of the defining characteristics of “perfected” love is complete selflessness.

Paul gives a pretty comprehensive rundown of how love manifests and how it is characterised. It is God’s character we are talking about here – these are the character traits that God exhibits consistently, and that motivate His every thought and action. You will note that selflessness features heavily in the definition proffered by Paul. Try this as an experiment – wherever you read the word “love” in the bible, replace it with the word “selflessness” – you’ll see why I see selflessness as arguably God’s most dominant character trait.

I previously proposed that every ministry gifts requires a person to have at least some of God’s character active within them. The higher ministry gifts require a person to have adopted God’s character and values to an even greater extent.

That being the case, it could be suggested that the church is notably devoid of ministry gifts because it lacks love. This is rather bold statement to make; however you would think it likely that the church that effectively adopted God’s characteristics and values (all wrapped up under the general banner of “love”) would be a spiritually vibrant and highly influential organism (and note that I have steered away from the word “organisation”). A church that displays spiritual maturity, comprehensively exhibiting all levels of ministry.

The ministry gifts (and the spiritual gifts in general) provide a good indication on the health of the church. God ‘s gifts must be operated in love (otherwise the whole Chernobyl thing I was talking about earlier). The people that are “stepping up” are those within which God will choose to invest His gifts.

Where we as individual parts of the church are focussed on our own lives to one extent or the other, we inevitably create levels of insulation - we are separated from one another.
This is controversial in that it could be argued that we all have responsibilities in life that we need to respond to that preclude us from connecting – we simply don’t have enough time, energy or capacity to be selfless. I’ll talk about that shortly, leaning heavily on some of the things that Paul wrote about…which shows that this is not a new issue for the church!

Setting a foundation of values

I have previously written extensively about the fact that we are tripartite beings i.e. we are made up of three distinct parts – body, mind and spirit. Our body is the part of us that interacts with this physical world – pretty straightforward. Our mind contains our emotions and our attitudes…this results in the behaviours that we exhibit. It is also the part of us that contains our free will (which is another massive subject that will have to be left for another time).

Our spirit doesn’t really get a good “look in” because it seems to sit behind the scenes – we know that we have one but realistically it seems to be the “passive” element of our make-up. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.

This could be controversial; however it is my view that it is our spirit within which our values are seated – our concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, driving the way in which we live our lives.
The main reason that I come to this conclusion is actually quite simply. God is a spiritual Being, and I would propose that God is not a Person that is driven by His emotions. He has always been motivated by His values. God’s values must be embodied within His Spirit…after all, where else could these values be contained?

As I said, values are the things that direct our attitudes and behaviours. Our values drive our attitudes. Our attitudes drive our behaviours.

It makes a certain amount of sense, doesn’t it?

OK, the reason that I am talking about this issue is that selflessness is an attitude that stems from the value of love, and I am proposing that the attitude of selflessness is key to what God wants to do in the church at the present time. To bring it back on topic, I believe that men’s ministry has become inwardly focussed, encouraging men to look at themselves and their own issues, rather than encouraging men to look outside themselves and selflessly expend themselves).

Love has connotations of being “soft” or “weak”, yet careful revision of I Corinthians 13 should modify your thinking – exhibiting the behaviours that spring from the attitudes that love creates within us requires considerable selflessness – in fact, it requires an exercise of self-control and self-discipline of great proportions. To go one step further, it requires a “hard man” to be able to manifest love the way that Paul lays it out in 1 Corinthians 13.

God’s Spirit was given to us not simply so that we had His presence with us at all times, nor did the Spirit come just so that we could have power and special gifts (and in saying all that I do not in any way seek to diminish the value of the aforementioned). One of the key purposes for the Spirit being given us to live within us was to create a “value change” – a capacity to develop and “socialise” the values of God. When we do that, our attitudes and behaviours will change. We have no capacity within ourselves to be selfless. We are predisposed towards self-preservation – it is hard-wired into our natural core.

Much more could be written here, but imagine if you will a group of men each of whom acted towards one another with selfless, putting the value and importance of their “brothers” ahead of their own. Men that were motivated by God’s Spirit at all times. What would be the outcome? How “tight” would this group of men be? This leads into the idea of “connectedness”.

How “connected” should we be?

I keep reminding you that this manifesto is about brotherhood. Brotherhood itself is part, a subset if you like, of the larger concept of Christian unity and the way in which we, as spiritual beings, need to be strongly connected to one another.

Unity is kind of a scarce commodity in church circles – factions and cliques abound. Some of the factions within the church are rather passive in nature – people with particular interests or at a particular place in life. A generalisation of course, but reasonably accurate. For instance, married couples with young families gravitate towards one another. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Similarly, young people will tend to move within their own circles, sharing similar life experiences. Again, this is not altogether a bad thing. Musicians, artists, lawyers, doctors – churches contain all the various “subcultures” that we see in society at large.

However, there is the risk of exclusivity creeping into the church. It starts small, building up over time. In fact, it becomes part of the character of the church.

It is not unusual that there are so many churches that break down or split. Satan is a patient being, and he is quite happy to let the fissures and factions build slowly. I don’t think it is Satan’s preferred option that churches break down and split apart in a spectacular fashion - a factionalised church has far greater potential for ongoing negative influence (generational influence in fact). However, I also have no doubt that Satan takes some considerable pleasure in seeing churches fall apart.

The church is cognisant at some level of the need to create unity and connectedness, and to that end we see a plethora of programs and events that are designed to connect people with one another. The issue here is not with the programs themselves – I am sure that there is much benefit to be gained – but rather that there is no true spiritual unity that underpins these programs and events.

Unity is not something “man made”, and in fact any attempt to create unity through natural means results in a house of cards, liable to fall at any time. Society is characterised by what social scientists have called “contracted relationships” – which basically refers to relationships that exists whilst the individuals involved see that there is some personal benefit in being in the relationship. I see no reason to believe that the church and its programs would not suffer from this, and indeed there are some hard questions to be asked about the large numbers of people that leave a church when they are personally dissatisfied (rather than because of God’s direction). The church is at fault in these circumstances – it is upon the church that rests the responsibility to proactively develop spiritual unity.

Unity is not a mutual thing – there is nothing “equal” about unity. It would be nice if it were mutual, because this would mean that each part of the church is contributing equally to the unity of the body. Yet this doesn’t seem to be the case, and neither does the bible suggest that we could expect this to ever happen.

The creation, development, and maintenance of unity is, by it’s very nature, against the laws of nature. Our natural tendency is towards disharmony, a proposal that many may argue with, but we see it both as a scriptural principle and in the world around us.
Because it is such a hard thing to bring about, the responsibility for unity absolutely falls to the stronger members of the body. It is incumbent upon the more mature Christians to act as the “reinforced concrete” that provides strength and flexibility to the body.

It’s a funny thing about reinforced concrete. Concrete on its own is very strong, but it suffers from being brittle and having an inability to stand up under unusual stresses and loads. Putting rods of steel through the concrete allows it to flex and take on those unusual loads.
We are in a position of strength as Christians, but unfortunately we cannot be “loaded” - we can bear our own weight (most days), but problems arise when you start loading on anything else! To carry the analogy forward, God is looking for mature “load bearing” Christians that not only have the strength of character that is required (i.e. they hold to and are driven by God’s values) but also embody the flexibility that is required (i.e. they are selfless and exhibit the full gambit of attitudes that fall out of having God’s love).

Again, I am of the opinion that this starts with men of God displaying these ideals, and this invariably will involve sacrifice. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the concept of brotherhood is heavily characterised by sacrifice – it costs us something in order to be a true brother.

It is the case that we have various rights prima facie that we could lean on if we wanted to. We see that Jesus had rights when He was here on earth (because He was God after all), but the bible says that He did not “leverage” those rights. Jesus understood what it meant to be a “brother” rather than demanding respect and obeisance to His authority.
The idea of sacrifice is sort of tempered by the fact that we are motivated by love, and the selflessness that attaches to that.

Paul talks a bit about this in Corinthians, and we see how even he as an apostle was willing to sacrifice and flex where required in order to create unity and be useful to the people with whom he came in contact.

Breaking the insularity

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul writes quite extensively about the issue of marriage, and this scripture has probably received some bad press over the years. Paul was an unmarried man, and in his letter to the Corinthians he proposes that a person is better off remaining single than to seek to be married. He makes various allowances on that matter, recognising the difficulties that we all have as human beings, yet he also makes it clear that there are problems that attach to being married.

However, to simply look at this scripture as Paul’s “jaded” views on marriage is short-sighted and desperately ignorant. Understanding that every scripture was written to teach us something of a spiritual nature and with a view of developing our spiritual maturity and relationship with God we should look behind what Paul was saying to understand his motivation for writing this stuff.

In the preceding chapters of Corinthians, Paul gives the church a flogging. Firstly, he berates them for being unable to sort out their own internal disputes (and instead were they were taking each other to court….good for lawyers, not so much for church unity). The chapter before that he rakes them over the coals concerning their lack of purity. Jump back one more chapter and Paul actually sounds a bit sarcastic, saying that the Corinthians were behaving as if they “had their act together” (and this is also the chapter that speaks about having many teachers but very few fathers).

Paul hits 1 Corinthians 7 in full flight, having laid a foundation in the preceding chapters wherein he saw fit to audit the health of the church (which was his prerogative as an apostle)– with damning results:

• The church had become self-important (because they were after all a pretty good church);
• The church was complacent (and were quite effectively justifying that complacency);
• The church was focussed on personal desires and needs (many of which you would not prima facie consider inappropriate).

It’s within that paradigm that Paul is telling them to think very carefully about the lifestyle that they desired, because (as he said in 1 Corinthians 4) the church had hit the ministry threshold – their capacity to build and strengthen the church had topped out at the level of teachers. Exceeding that threshold required them to break the insularity that they had built up.

Higher ministry gifts, as we discussed, carry higher levels of responsibility, authority and power, and along with that is a requirement to become more selfless. Insularity and self-focus has little place in the life of a highly gifted minister.

Making it happen

This whole thing becomes an interesting academic exercise unless we move from theory to practice, and I was determined to propose some ideas or options for moving us along the curtain rail I mentioned earlier.

In saying that, I also have a strong recognition that God works with each of us differently, and it would be inherently dangerous to propose that my journey is the way for everyone. The most effective means of avoiding this risk, I believe, is to ensure that any proposal has a “watertight” scriptural basis.

To that end I am only going to propose one idea upon which God might then build something. Again, I think Paul nailed it, and for the sake of the exercise I have noted the entire passage that I want to refer to and use as my modest foundation.

Galatians 6:1-5 (Amplified Version)

BRETHREN, IF any person is overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort, you who are spiritual [who are responsive to and controlled by the Spirit] should set him right and restore and reinstate him, without any sense of superiority and with all gentleness, keeping an attentive eye on yourself, lest you should be tempted also.

Bear (endure, carry) one another's burdens and troublesome moral faults, and in this way fulfill and observe perfectly the law of Christ (the Messiah) and complete what is lacking [in your obedience to it].

For if any person thinks himself to be somebody [too important to condescend to shoulder another's load] when he is nobody [of superiority except in his own estimation], he deceives and deludes and cheats himself.

But let every person carefully scrutinize and examine and test his own conduct and his own work. He can then have the personal satisfaction and joy of doing something commendable in itself alone] without [resorting to] boastful comparison with his neighbour.
For every person will have to bear (be equal to understanding and calmly receive) his own [little] load [of oppressive faults].

Let him who receives instruction in the Word [of God] share all good things with his teacher [contributing to his support].

The cunning plan that I want to present to you as a starting point for moving forward pretty much focuses entirely on what Paul wrote to the Galatian church. This was an important letter that Paul was writing here – in fact, whilst it suggested that Paul often dictated his letters to others to write for him, Paul says in Galatians 6:11 that he was writing this letter himself (noting that his handwriting was quite distinct) – it was significant that Paul didn’t use a “middle man” for this letter, and that what went on paper came straight from his heart.

Note also that the Galatians were a pretty strong church, but something had caused them to “top out” and stop progressing. They had started out very strong, but had got sidetracked somehow. I would encourage you to go back and read Galatians before enduring any more of what I have to write, and to read it with a recognition that this was a real church with the same kinds of problems that we experience today. They weren’t stupid people – in fact, in many ways, their church far outstripped our own. Yet they seemed to reach a ministry threshold, and Paul writes with a desire that they break through that self-imposed ceiling.
OK, assuming you’ve read Galatians, I want to crack the passage in chapter 6 and present my case for the “go forward”.

There seems to be 5 primary things that we need to get to grips with:

1. There were some people in the Galatian church that were “spiritual” i.e. that were responsive to and controlled by the Spirit. Clearly this was a church in which there were people committed to a strong relationship with God, and a relationship that meant that they had high spiritual sensitivity. With that kind of character, these people would have undoubtedly taken on the challenge of replacing their own selfish values and desires with God’s values.
2. It was this group of people that had developed a high sense of sensitivity to the Spirit that Paul charged to act very selflessly – although they may perhaps have had grounds to consider themselves superior because of their maturity in God, Paul tells them to act with gentleness and to take responsibility. This group needed to be “load bearing” or, to use a previous analogy, to be the “reinforced concrete” in the church that could provide strength and flexibility. They provided the hooks upon which the church could hang. Whilst “mutuality” is implied (“bearing with one another’s burdens”) it’s clear that Paul isn’t suggesting that it was “quid pro quo”. Taking responsibility means picking up the load without an expectation that the person you’re helping will return the favour!
3. Paul focussed this group on the people for whom they needed to be responsible i.e. people that were both inside and outside the church (but particularly those inside). Being spiritually aware as they were, it would be a safe assumption that this core group knew who they should be responsible for, and what they were supposed to say or do in the situation…they would be alert for the opportunities.
4. Paul encouraged this core group to be self-reflective, and realise that there were high risks attached to the responsibility and authority that they embodied (the most prevalent risk being that they would consider themselves too good to be “load bearing” Christians, and that they had transcended the need to be involve themselves in “lesser duties”). Paul leaves them in no doubt that they were not perfect, and that there are always things that even this mature group of “stabilisers” needed to be careful of. They had their own faults – potential “cracks in the concrete”. Paul doesn’t try and tell these people what they should do (they were, after all, controlled by the Spirit) but rather he focussed on the fact that they needed to work on their selflessness and “step up”.
5. Whilst the core group bears the load of those that are not necessarily as mature, it is also the case that they have a responsibility towards the higher level “hooks” – a need to share and encourage those that have greater burdens of responsibility and authority. The people that constitute these higher hooks have their own faults and problems, and Paul’s words establish some “expectation management”. Because someone is placed in a higher ministry position does not provide a basis for judging that person – they are not perfect! Rather, Paul encourages the core group to stabilise the both those “below” and “above” them on the ministry curve.

How does all this give us a practical approach? Importantly, how does this relate to Christian men? Let me propose a way forward:

Proposal #1
We need to spend more time developing a practical relationship with God, and by that I mean that do three things:

• We recognise God’s presence with us at all times, and take active steps to acknowledge that;
• We maintain a constant expectation that God will communicate with us (in some way, shape or form); and
• We develop a increasing obedience to the guidance and teaching that God gives us (either in the moment or as we study the Word).

Proposal #2
We should recognise that our character is inherently selfish – left to our own devices, we will invariably take a path that is at least partly selfish. It is not within our own ability to act selflessly – the behaviour of true spiritual selflessness can only originate from a person that is controlled by and responsive to the Spirit. Sure, we may act selflessly (in the eyes of others) but if this doesn’t originate from God’s motivating power then it’s pointless, fruitless, and in fact selfish! For that reason, we need to be constantly self-evaluating, and indeed we should be quite aggressive in this task, thinking carefully about what we are doing and why we’re doing it. Put bluntly, are we acting from Spiritual motivation and Godly values?

Proposal #3
We need to understand that God has made us “hooks” for one or more people in our environment, which encompasses both the church and those outside the church. Even with our relatively limited stature as “spiritual” men, we have to recognise that we sit at least somewhere on the ministry curve, and that means we’ve got a responsibility right now to stabilise our environment and become “load bearing”. It is a worthy exercise, I believe, to commit to paper those people for whom God has made us responsible, and I challenge you to suggest that there is not at least one person on that list. Those people are, for all intents and purposes, the most important people in your world. You will be held accountable for them.

Proposal #4
We should further recognise that a special responsibility is placed on men to be the first to step up. Paul’s writings may appear anti-feminist; in fact, he is capturing on paper God’s design for men to exhibit the values and characteristics of God. Paul writes that God is the authority over a man, and man over a woman. The implication is enormous. God is the epitome of selfless. Men should therefore act more selflessly than women. I propose that men have this special demand placed upon them.

Proposal #5
We as men need to disengage from the doctrine of mutuality and embrace the doctrine of unity. Practically, this means that we are not looking for an equal and “balanced” response from those for whom we are responsible – in fact, we should resolve ourselves to the fact that there will be apparent inequality because we are load-bearing. Acting in brotherhood means a recognition that we are carrying our spiritually “younger” and “older” brothers and sisters (Christian and non-Christian). The concept of “balance” and “mutuality” is not biblical and is in fact selfish – it will kill our capacity to be selfless.

When to begin

I should be quite overt about defining the group to which I believe that this approach applies, and to that end I want to start by highlighting a problem.

We focus our men’s ministry on men in a demographic of around 18 years old and upward. Cutting to the chase, my view is that we’re pretty much shutting the gate after the horse has bolted by focussing our attention here. Trying to change the culture of a person once their values and personal culture is set in place and well established is an incredibly difficult and time-consuming exercise. King Solomon captured this concept in Proverbs, recognising the need to begin instilling values at a young age.

I have no intention of developing this particular tranche further, other than to say that fathers have a particular responsibility to begin to instil the ideal of selflessness and responsibility in their sons from an early age. This is predicated on the assumption that men are in fact setting an example to their families and those around them – it’s pointless preaching something for which there is no example. It is unsurprising that Paul writes about the need for those who are the “hooks” in the church to have their act together when it comes to presenting an example worth imitating.

Conclusion

I am somewhat embarrassed at the rather clumsy fashion in which I have presented some of these principles, and have a strong recognition that there are elements of this subject that are important but have not been touched upon. Undoubtedly as you consider the matters I have raised, my inexperience will be exposed!

That said, I am personally concerned to preserve the ideal that the church requires selfless men to break apart the ministry threshold with which are currently burdened. Whilst at some points I paint a rather indifferent portrait of the current state of affairs, I trust that we might be enticed to consider that God has a desire at this time to “hook up” his church on strong anchor points, that we have been placed at this juncture in history for a particular purpose, and that we have a part to play.

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