Read Online Unleashing The Power Of Rubber Bands by Nancy Ortberg - Free Book Online
Authors: Nancy Ortberg
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put the blue ribbons on people with obvious up-front gifts—the teachers and leaders and singers. Their giftedness putsthem in the spotlight in a way that almost inevitably leads to them getting more attention than they deserve.
When we free ourselves up from evaluating and weighing and comparing everyone’s contributions, remarkable things happen.
But as we all know, there are some things that even a sermon or a song cannot do.
For seven of the nine years that John and I lived in Chicago, we worked on inviting our neighbors, Neil and Pat Benson, to church. Neil and Pat were great neighbors, the kind who are pleasant every time you interact with them and whose yard is a pleasure to look at. They were both schoolteachers in the local district, had no children, and put their Christmas tree up every year by Halloween.
So although I’m telling the truth when I say they were pleasant, I will admit that both their yard and their Christmas tree made me feel inferior. I still liked them, and we had a cordial relationship with them. We tried every which way we knew to get them to accept our invitation to come to church with us.
“Hey Bensons! John is preaching this weekend at our church, and we’d love to have you come with us.”
Hmmm . . . we think we have to clip our toenails that day, but thanks for asking. And then that strained smile, with the subtext of “please don’t ask again.”
Undeterred: “Hey, Bensons, I am preaching this weekend. What do you say you come and then we all go out for lunch afterward?”
Wow, thanks for asking, really. We’ll be grading papers, I’m sure.
The kids singing in a choir, Christmas Eve, nothing. So after a while, we just stopped asking. And actually, I think it was the right thing to do. It was getting a bit embarrassing.
Imagine my surprise when one bright spring day while I was standing out in the yard, Neil came bouncing over to inquire what time the Sunday services were, and informed me that he and Pat would love to come to church.
Huh?
He told me about a teacher’s assistant who worked at their school. She was a single mom with three young children whose husband had recently and quite suddenly died. She had no car and struggled to make ends meet on a teacher’s assistant’s salary. Both Neil and Pat liked this woman a great deal.
Then they discovered that someone had given her—as in, no charge—a car. A used one, but solid, reliable transportation nonetheless. And that someone represented a ministry from our church that had been started by a guy whose life had been changed by Christ.
Here’s the short but wonderful version of his story: This guy had started coming to Willow Creek when his life had hit the skids. His marriage and his job were in shambles. He was struggling with addictions that were seriously interfering with his life. And in that condition, he came to church.
After a period of some months, he understood the salvation of Jesus in that deep way that someone who is desperate understands. His life was truly and radically changed. His marriage survived and flourished, and with some help he wrestled free of his addictions. He regained his standing as a dad his kids could love, and he was incrediblychanged and so incredibly grateful.
So one day he explained to our senior pastor that hehad a strong desire to give back, and although he couldn’t preach a sermon or sing, he had an idea. Spawned by gratitude and supported by his abilities as a mechanic, his idea was to start a “cars ministry” in which he and others would fix up and donate used cars, mostly to single moms.
And all the time that John and I had been inviting the Bensons to church, thinking they just needed to hear a great sermon or listen to beautiful soul-stirring music, their intersection with our church was with a mechanic. A mechanic, gifted by God, changed by God, and filled by God to overflowing.
The Bensons attended our church for the next two years, retired to Florida, and
When we free ourselves up from evaluating and weighing and comparing everyone’s contributions, remarkable things happen.
But as we all know, there are some things that even a sermon or a song cannot do.
For seven of the nine years that John and I lived in Chicago, we worked on inviting our neighbors, Neil and Pat Benson, to church. Neil and Pat were great neighbors, the kind who are pleasant every time you interact with them and whose yard is a pleasure to look at. They were both schoolteachers in the local district, had no children, and put their Christmas tree up every year by Halloween.
So although I’m telling the truth when I say they were pleasant, I will admit that both their yard and their Christmas tree made me feel inferior. I still liked them, and we had a cordial relationship with them. We tried every which way we knew to get them to accept our invitation to come to church with us.
“Hey Bensons! John is preaching this weekend at our church, and we’d love to have you come with us.”
Hmmm . . . we think we have to clip our toenails that day, but thanks for asking. And then that strained smile, with the subtext of “please don’t ask again.”
Undeterred: “Hey, Bensons, I am preaching this weekend. What do you say you come and then we all go out for lunch afterward?”
Wow, thanks for asking, really. We’ll be grading papers, I’m sure.
The kids singing in a choir, Christmas Eve, nothing. So after a while, we just stopped asking. And actually, I think it was the right thing to do. It was getting a bit embarrassing.
Imagine my surprise when one bright spring day while I was standing out in the yard, Neil came bouncing over to inquire what time the Sunday services were, and informed me that he and Pat would love to come to church.
Huh?
He told me about a teacher’s assistant who worked at their school. She was a single mom with three young children whose husband had recently and quite suddenly died. She had no car and struggled to make ends meet on a teacher’s assistant’s salary. Both Neil and Pat liked this woman a great deal.
Then they discovered that someone had given her—as in, no charge—a car. A used one, but solid, reliable transportation nonetheless. And that someone represented a ministry from our church that had been started by a guy whose life had been changed by Christ.
Here’s the short but wonderful version of his story: This guy had started coming to Willow Creek when his life had hit the skids. His marriage and his job were in shambles. He was struggling with addictions that were seriously interfering with his life. And in that condition, he came to church.
After a period of some months, he understood the salvation of Jesus in that deep way that someone who is desperate understands. His life was truly and radically changed. His marriage survived and flourished, and with some help he wrestled free of his addictions. He regained his standing as a dad his kids could love, and he was incrediblychanged and so incredibly grateful.
So one day he explained to our senior pastor that hehad a strong desire to give back, and although he couldn’t preach a sermon or sing, he had an idea. Spawned by gratitude and supported by his abilities as a mechanic, his idea was to start a “cars ministry” in which he and others would fix up and donate used cars, mostly to single moms.
And all the time that John and I had been inviting the Bensons to church, thinking they just needed to hear a great sermon or listen to beautiful soul-stirring music, their intersection with our church was with a mechanic. A mechanic, gifted by God, changed by God, and filled by God to overflowing.
The Bensons attended our church for the next two years, retired to Florida, and
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