Years ago I was trying to fix a drawer and got down to one last screw I had to get loose. The more I worked to loosen the screw, the tighter it seemed to get. I had worked as a carpenter’s helper for six months, but our company majored in restoring fire-damaged buildings, which apparently means I got better at demolishing things rather than fixing them. A friend was visiting, and it wasn’t too long before he realized I needed some help. Very quickly he said, “Oh, this has a left-handed thread; it’s a reverse screw. If you want to loosen it, you need to go in the opposite direction.” I’m thinking, “It took me ten years to find out how screws work, and now they change the rules on me?” Too often we approach leadership and life transformation in pragmatic ways. We uncritically adopt the latest business practices in the church, working hard to tighten the screw, only to find that the tighter the screw gets, the less we become like Jesus.
Recently, there were several people making claims about Jesus’ origins.
One person said, “I’m going to give you three good reasons why I believe Jesus was Italian. He loved to talk with his hands, he had wine with every meal, and he used olive oil quite a bit.”
Someone from California said, “I’m going to give you three reasons why I believe Jesus was Californian. He never cut his hair, he walked around barefoot all the time, and he started his own religion.”
Then a black person declared, “I’m going to give you three reasons why I believe Jesus was black. He called everyone brother, he liked gospel, and he couldn’t get a fair trial.”
After that a woman gave the most compelling evidence of all: three proofs that Jesus was a woman. “He had to feed a crowd at a moment’s notice when there was no food, he kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn’t get it, and even when he was dead he had to get up because there was more work for him to do.”[2]
Creating a Missional Culture Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World JR Woodward
