Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

For about 75 minutes today I sat in a video teleconference (VTC) listening to someone rationalize why my context of ministry was getting the amount of money it was getting.  It was a mathematical justification, not a ministerial justification. The dollar figure was based on how much money I said I needed (based on standardized institutional ministries) as compared to other folks in my region--and when all the chips hit the floor an average was calculated and I was deemed "somewhat efficient" and given X amount of money.


75 minutes to explain that.


A good friend of mine spent a fair amount of time on VTC of a different breed (Skype) with pastors from his area as they tried to figure out why he needed to continue his sabbatical and season of discernment.


My point:


The system needs to stop serving the system and start serving the people. The system needs to flatten and dispose of all the standardized boxes they expect ministry to fit into and let the Called live out their calling. 


Why are churches and ministries suffering?  


Because the system wants the communities to serve the system instead of the system empowering the communities to serve people.


In the book Community and Growth Jean Vanier writes:

A Community that is committed to itself--to appearing perfect, stable and secure--rather than to people...is like a person giving an address who is more interested in the beauty and coherence of the talk rather than in whether the audience can hear and understand it...It is like a beautiful liturgy that no one can follow and during which people have difficulty praying.

The community (i.e. Institution) needs to stop being committed to itself--whether that community is the larger systems of the Church or some other institution.  It's like the shift that has occurred in corporate America.  There was a time when companies cared about stakeholders more than they cared about shareholders--to where did that mentality disappear?  Now there are institutions that call themselves people driven and Christ centered who only desire to have the institution maintained and have stopped caring about the people inside.


If this shift from serving the institution to serving people doesn't happen then we look like idiots telling tales that are full of Sound and Fury yet signifying nothing.