by Eddie Pipkin

I was riding along with a ministry friend last week, talking about all the good work he has been up to, and the conversation – as it inevitably does – turned to the one volunteer who was gumming things up and driving everybody crazy.  We talked about some strategies for dealing with such a person, but then I said, “You know, I think more and more that the friction is the whole point.  It’s the relational work that we have to do that matters, not the stuff we get accomplished, but the people we’re partnering with.”  It got me to thinking about how a house becomes a home.  As we all know, they are not the same thing, after all.

One of my favorite things to write about is that our focus should be people, not programs.

Our ministry lives are structured programmatically, which is only natural.  We organize our days by building programs and planning events.  We host gobs of meetings to get people together to move these programs and events forward, building timelines and to-do lists, objectives and strategies to accomplish our goals.  When we interact with people, it is most often linked to how we can make those structural elements happen.  Who can do the job to achieve Objective A?  Who can help us check off the items on Checklist B?

The people in our ministry, both in leadership, and, often, awkwardly, even in the community we serve, can come to exist primarily as factors that serve the programs and events, rather than the other way around!  Obviously, the programs and events were meant to serve them, but it’s so much work to bring ideas to fruition that our priorities can get transposed.  Did you ever host a thing that on paper ran like clockwork but at which everyone had a miserable time?

We all know the difference between a house and a home.

A house is a structure in which we live.  A home is a gathering place in which love lives.  One is for storing stuff, and one is for nurturing connections that sustain us.  One provides shelter.  One provides heart, hope, and help.

A family can live in a beautiful, well-appointed home, but still be miserable and broken.  A lovely home can be a woe-filled façade, perfect on the outside and dysfunctional on the inside.

We can get so obsessed with the appearance of our house that we sacrifice the relationships of the people who inhabit it.  This happens all the time.  We might have the most vibrant paint colors, the hippest home decorating, and the plushest furniture, but we have worked so many hours to make that happen that we have shortchanged the ones we share all that good stuff with.  We might have immaculate living spaces, but the children who move through them feel alienated because they are yelled at every time they make a mess.

We can spend tens of thousands of dollars remodeling our kitchen and making it a magazine worthy showcase with stunning finishes and the latest influencer-promoted gadgets, but if nobody ever sits down to share a meal together, what was the point?  If you build the most epic playroom of all time, colorful and game-filled, but it’s used as a dumping ground for kids whose parents are too busy to spend time with them, you’re opting for style over substance.

If, on the other hand, that evocative new kitchen space is the catalyst for dinner parties that bring people together for lovingly prepared meals and long conversations, the house is providing the framework for a home.  If that over-the-top playroom is a shared space where parents and kids interact, and the neighborhood kids hang out for creative, safe play, that house is providing a framework for a home.  And in either of those cases, some chaos is bound to follow.  Spaces will get used, and the use will show.  Messes will be made, but the wear and tear should be a source of pride; it is the evidence of “home”building, the residue of relationships.

Relationships are messy.  And maybe learning to live together in the messiness is the point.  Maybe learning to work together even when we are at cross purposes is the finest work we do.

Churches are houses, and the people who share them are families, and we should be very careful that we don’t let having the finest programs and snazziest events become more important than the people who lead them and participate in them.

Sometimes, literally, the church building can become more important than relationships.  I’ve written plenty about groups that take ownership of spaces and won’t share, people who are made to feel unwelcome to use our spaces, and signage that makes people feel not wanted.  But fetishizing our programs and events can produce some of the very same effects (an obsession with ownership, exclusivity in action, perfectionism that ostracizes, rules that take out all the fun, and communication that bizarrely seems to repel more than attract).

Programs and events are not our ministry!  Relationships are our ministry!

Programs and events are the infrastructure on which the ministry of relationships abides.  Build them well, and relationships thrive (the true metric for all our efforts); build them with misplaced motives, and relationships atrophy.

We put so much effort into doing the biggest and best thing, and part of that effort is spent in dreaming that if we can get the smoothest, most optimized meetings and frictionless teams, if we can tamp down the drama and sideline the troublemakers, we can reach a state of productive bliss and boffo growth.  But is this a false quest?  Is it even biblical?  Taking a long look at the ministry of the disciples, it’s always instructive to think about what made them a strong team.  I would not describe them as a frictionless, optimized, corporate corps.  While they ended up hosting a lot of “events,” these seemed more spontaneous and organic than structured and strategized.  What was at the center of this ministry, this narrative?  Relationships, always relationships.

Yes, Peter would become the rock on which Christ would build the Church, but before the Church ever had any significant organizational framework, Peter and the rest of the followers of Jesus already had a home.

It’s that sense of home that we live to create, whatever we’re doing and whoever we are working with, both the people who uplift us with their can-do spirit and ceaseless optimism and the people who make us feel like they are distracting us with their contrary opinions and endless questions.  A home is always complicated.

How do you and your church do at remembering to value relationships over a shiny institutional façade?  (That’s a great question for families and friend groups, too, isn’t it?)  Are you so busy renovating the house that you are forgetting to make it a home?  Or are you so committed to a happy and healthy home that you celebrate even the messes?

God bless and good luck!  Share your comments . . . in the comments!