Godly Living vs. God-like Ambitions
Understanding Our Place
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In the pursuit of faithful ministry, Christians must balance
adherence to eternal, unchanging truths (space) with
their application in time-bound, shifting local contexts (place).
This balance involves navigating the dual aspects of space and place—universal principles and specific, contextual applications.
When ministry overly emphasizes the issues of “space,” seeking widespread impact and recognition, it risks neglecting the unique needs and significance of “place,” the local community where God has called His servants to minister.
Several dangers arise when we prioritize space over place, presenting perennial risks for Christian ministers that have become particularly sharp in our generation. This emphasis can tempt ministers to reach for God-like attributes such as omniscience and omnipresence, leading to unrealistic expectations and potential burnout. We need to understand and accept our limits to maintain faithful ministry.
To understand this danger more completely, consider, for a moment, the attributes of God. Traditionally, we have divided God’s attributes into two categories: communicable and incommunicable.
God’s communicable attributes include His holiness, love, mercy, justice, and wisdom. By communicable attributes, we mean that God’s people should share in this aspect of His character. Christians should be holy, loving, merciful, just, and wise. The task of Christian discipleship is the pursuit of God’s communicable attributes.
God also has incommunicable attributes, such as His omniscience, impassability, and omnipresence. These are glorious perfections of God’s divine life that He does not share with His people. They represent an ontological distinction, an uncrossable chasm, between the creator and the creation.
In fact, we might go so far as to say that Christians should not pursue God’s incommunicable attributes.
Christians can be tempted by God’s incommunicable attributes.
Every Christian pastor facing difficult decisions desires omniscience.
Every Christian counselor facing broken lives desires impassability.
Every Christian minister facing multiple, conflicting obligations desires omnipresence.
Every Christian must recognize the difference between these two categories.
If a Christian fails to match God’s communicable attributes, the proper response is repentance and lament.
But if a Christian fails to match God’s incommunicable attributes, he ought not to confess that failure as sin. God has not given humanity limits as sinful tendencies that must be confessed and overcome, but He has given us creaturely limits to be received with thankfulness.
Our finitude should not drive us to sinful confession but to thankful reliance on a God who is limitless.
When ministry and theological education emphasize space over place, we unintentionally encourage ministers to try to be omnipresent. Might this be a driving factor behind “celebrity ministers”—devaluing local ministry (place) in a quest for wide-spread impact (space)?
Instead, Christian ministers ought to be thankful recipients of the place where God calls them to be, faithfully serving the Lord in the beauty of that “there.”