Unless the Lord Builds the House...

Things were really crazy around The Street the past two weeks, especially for a person who loves order and organization.  The second year of the Leadership Institute has been exciting, but as with any new program, it has been full of changes in schedule, going with the flow, and a lot of flying by the seat of your pants.  I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to schedules and organization, and will work until I get blue in the face to make an air-tight plan that is completely foolproof.  However, that very attitude of schedules, agendas, and programs is contrary to the very core of Mercy Street's mission: to spark Christ-Honoring relationships that develop the future leaders of West Dallas, not to develop Christ-Honoring programs.  Schedules are rigid, people are flexible.  Programs are orchestrated by man, but God calls us to be led by His spirit.  Things we do are temporary, but people's souls last forever.  Therein lies the beauty of the ministry of Mercy Street's mission- to be willing to drop any program, any phone call, and change any plan to facilitate the opportunity to develop a relationship.  It has been refreshing and puts my busy mind in a position to ditch the agenda and allow God to move.  I saw this idea play out in such a cool way during our weekly elementary outreach program, Super Thursday.

We had our first Super Thursday of the summer last week, and most of it was planned and orchestrated by the Senior Interns. We lead the Bible studies and planned the crafts, and took care of most of the programming.  We lead the music and made sure everything went just as planned.  But at the end of the day, while talking with one of the junior interns who had been planners for Super Thursday before, I begun to realize that I wasn't teaching any sort of leadership in this way.  I was "leading by example" by planning and organizing and making sure everything ran smoothly, but not helping any of my junior interns take ownership of the program and learn  how to lead.  This was doer-ship, not leadership.  My heart wasn't content with that.  And to make things worse, despite the super-smooth program, I didn't see a crowd of kids begging to accept Jesus or thirsting to learn more about Him.

So, this week I took a completely different approach to the week: let's delegate everything.  The Bible story would be taught by a junior intern, as well as the other activities in class.  Let them lead, and let them fail if need be.   It irked me, it bothered me, and I wanted to just do it myself so we could make sure it went well.  I noticed the other Senior Interns following suit- the group time and stage direction was done by the high school students.  It was neat to see, but behind my smiling face, my head was spinning with questions: Have they thought about this?  Who is doing what?  Will they be able to explain the lesson as I would?  But, just like the t-shirts tell me to, I kept calm and carried on.  And thats when stuff got interesting.

As I stood in the classroom doorway and the kids filed in, I was full of confidence (and pride?) at the cool activities that we had come up with for the day.  But kid after kid kept filing in.  And then more kids filed in.  And more and more.  Suddenly, my confidence was stripped.  We had prepared activities and crafts for 8-10 kids and 6 leaders, but suddenly we had a room full of about 30 sweaty and excited primary-schoolers all wanting to talk and be noticed at the same time, as well as 6-8 volunteers from Bethel Bible Church.  How was the plan going to work?  How would we make it turn out perfect?  We were telling the story from Matthew 7 in which the wise man builds his house upon the rock, and had this awesome plan to make a fort out of sheets and have them all sit in it to listen to the Bible story to get the point across.   But there were far too many kids for our plan.  We couldn't even fit all of them inside the fort!  To make matters worse, I'm not sure anyone could pay attention to our awesome junior intern telling the Bible story because they were distracted by the tent we all thought was so awesome.  After the craft we had prepared was a bit of a flop, I would normally have just chalked the day up as a loss and tried to fix the kinks to do all I could to make the next week perfect.  But God was teaching me things.

I looked back at the course of the day and saw beautiful things.  While we had three times as many kids as the previous week, which screwed up the plan, we had three times as many kids there to hear the Gospel!  What a gift!   While not everything went perfectly, we had high school aged interns articulating God's word to a younger generation.  While their telling and interpretation wasn't flawless, what makes me think mine would have been?  I began thinking, wasn't this what Jesus was meaning when he called us to make disciples?  Wasn't it about people who love Jesus teaching other people who love Jesus how to tell others about Jesus in the best way they can?  That's far more beautiful than a schedule or a program, and sure includes far more interruptions and by-the-seat-of-your-pants moments.

I finally stepped back and realized that in all my schedules and plans and ideas of how things should go I am a lot more like the foolish man building his house upon the sand of his own ability.  That pointed me to Psalm 127:1a:

"Unless the Lord builds the house,
Those who build it labor in vain."

It appears that even if the house is a fort made of sheets, Jesus should always the builder.