Do Your Job!

                *** Warning: the following message may be offensive to the weak, lazy, unengaged or entitled ***


I grew up in an era where, if you came to work and did your job, your reward was that you didn’t get fired. These days, if someone does what’s asked of them, they expect an extra reward for it – a bonus, a trophy, a promotion. As disappointing as that is in the workplace, that same sense of entitlement seems to have infiltrated the church.

When did we lower the integrity standards? The commitment standards? When did it become so easy to just walk away from things because they weren’t perfect anymore? – jobs, marriages, churches…. even our bodies are disposable. Don’t like that nose? Ditch it – buy a new one.

When did we become entitled to perfect, easy and glory for just doing what’s expected of us? 

Recently my husband and I were paid a compliment that left is scratching our heads is disappointment. Not that the compliment wasn’t positive and sincere – it was. And who doesn’t appreciate a compliment – we did. But both of us were immediately struck by how disappointing it is that we were being recognized and praised for doing what we perceived as just … well, what’s expected, what’s right, what everyone should be doing.

One of my favorite Stokes-isms is “there’s no such thing as a perfect church… and if you found one, YOU’d mess it up.” People get disenchanted with a church because this isn’t the way they’d do it, that isn’t how they want it. They can’t do the things they want. They don’t offer the programs they want. They changed the music, the pastor, the carpet and they’re out of there. I don’t get that. 

We are the body of Christ, people! If your hand stopped working, would your knee just say “I’m outta here”? If something is not quite right in one area, we abandon another? When I think about the idea of a “church family” there are going to things you don’t agree with, there are going to be sisters or brothers you don’t like as well as others, there will be hard feelings at one time or another and sometimes it’s your problem and sometimes it’s theirs, but we share the same blood – the blood of Christ in this case – and we are commanded to love one another and so that’s what we do. Not because we’re going to get a trophy for it but because it’s what’s right.

SO DO YOUR JOB! Love your brother, commit to your church - even when it isn’t perfect … or, ESPECIALLY when it isn’t perfect – serve the body of Christ, and don’t be one of the weak who run a way or the entitled who want a trophy or unengaged who don’t care or the lazy who don’t work as the part of the body of Christ they are expected to be.