GlocalNet

When I was a little boy and would help my grandfather on his farm or my dad in some project where I’d be holding a rope or hose or whatever, the one who was doing the work would often say, “Gimme some slack.” What that meant was they needed more rope, more hose, more whatever and I needed to loosen up my grip and give them more to work with. Holding the rope was important, because if I didn’t it couldn’t be directed or they couldn’t work, but if I didn’t give them some slack and space,  they couldn’t get the work done. I had to loosen my grip, and trust that they knew what they were doing.

When God called William Carey to be a missionary in 1792, he told a group of pastors, “I will go, but you will have to hold the ropes for me.” Some men and women held the ropes and as a result he went, and the rest is history. They had to give him a lot of slack. Theologically, not all agreed with what Carey did. One man, Bishop Ryle, stated, “If God wanted the heathen converted he will do it with you.” He was definitely a 5-point Calvinist! Practically no one had ever done what Carey had done.  To take your family and move to a foreign field and live and die there? Family—his wife joined him only as the boat departed. (I wonder about this with Carey.) We could go on and on about the “slack” he had to have in order to do what he did.

I think we find ourselves in just such a situation today. Too many people are lobbing grenades at too many people. Emergent, traditional, house, building, seeker, 3rd space, on and on and on. . . The world has changed and as one of my friends likes to say we have to “contend” for the faith, and he’s right. However, much of our “contending” is about our religious culture and not theology or Scripture. We should affirm the different ways God is working in our world and culture today—not view it as competing approaches, but multiple approaches that will be necessary to reach everyone.

Jesus asks, “When I return will I find faith on earth?” Another question we might ask ourselves is “When the Great Commission is fulfilled, will it be done by a fragmented fighting body of Christ or a unified focused diverse body of Christ?” I believe it is the latter.

One of my heroes is Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to summit Everest. I trekked to the base camp of Mount Everest once. I got an email from James Davis who was recently in his home in New Zealand with his wife, Lady June. Here is what Sir Edmund Hillary said:

“I have thought clearly about my life and what I have done. I first thought about it. I am often asked about the great adventures for today. There are lots of great adventures left but one has to look for them. The person has to find them. It is always more thrilling to do something that no one has ever done before and go to a place where no one else has been before.”

When you go and do the unknown, there will be elements of fear that will come your way. Yet, if you did not have fear, then you would probably not want to do it anyway. Without fear the adventure would be boring and not worth doing.

If you are going to be successful in your new adventure, then you will need to have the knowledge, experience and problem solving ability to take you where you need to go. Notice, one has to have knowledge, experience and problem solving ability in that order. I have done some stupid things in my life and take responsibility for them. I have also done some great achievements as well.

The only question we must ask ourselves today is not whether or not we should throw a rope to unique ways God is calling the entire body of Christ to engage the world, but how tight and how loose to hold the rope. I leave you with a powerful verse from Bob 3:22 “Giv ‘um some slack.”