Masks, Manipulation, and Maneuvering

“Since God has so generously let us in on what he is doing, we’re not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times. We refuse to wear masks and play games. We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes. And we don’t twist God’s Word to suit ourselves. Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God….We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7-8 MSG)

The temptation among spiritual leaders (perhaps, especially, for church planters) is to “never let them see you sweat” — to wear masks and disguises, to work behind the scenes to make things appear better than they really are. Sometimes this is an effort to make our church “look good” in the eyes of the ones we’re trying so desperately hard to reach. At other times, it’s an effort to make ourselves look good — an effort to convince ourselves and others that we really do know what we are doing.

But when we do this — when we turn to masks, manipulation, and maneuvering — we actually veil the gospel. People end up looking at us and to us rather than looking at and to Jesus. Ironically, the very thing that we hope to do — making things look more attractive — ends up detracting from what God is doing. This goes all the way back to the Garden, where we humans hid for the very first time.

Too many times we end up like the Saul of the Old Testament, small in our own eyes, trying very hard to hide our smallness from others. We heed the voice of the deceiver who convinces us to tell ourselves, “If they knew me for who I really am, they wouldn’t like me, much less follow me.”

How much better to be like the Saul of the New Testament, the Saul who became Paul, who realized that “we carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of ordinary lives,” and went on to tell us why we must do this:

“That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at.” (2 Corinthians 4:7b-8a MSG)

When I’m convinced that my ministry is “not much to look at” — not very impressive — I may be in the very place that God wants me to be, carrying His bright message around in a very ordinary container.

The Masks, Manipulation, and Maneuvering by Church Planting Journey, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.