I Must Decrease, They Must Increase

Sometimes the realization of some truth crashes over you all at once, like a wave breaking on the shore. Other times it mounts slowly, each piece gathered and joined together like a puzzle, until you finally see the picture.

More often than not, it is this latter experience that describes my encounter with truth. Something in a book stands out, a speaker talks, a brother or sister shares their heart, and together a picture is formed - of something that was always in sight but never seen. While you could say this is just a domino effect of my attention being put on alert by one idea and then catching it in other places, I still can’t help feeling that God orchestrates it all - he sets the dominoes up and knocks them down.

I’m thirty now, not old but also not as young as I once was. Throughout my twenties I felt haunted by an existential crisis to make something of myself. It has wandered away for now, though it will probably come back around when I turn forty. For now, I find my pursuits altered.

This alteration has come about in that puzzle piece kind of way. I want to maximize my gifts but no longer feel burdened by them - as if something must be done or else. Aspiration for fame is delusional and vain if somehow gained. However, a man like myself could at least accept some consolation - he could wrap himself up in the warmth of being needed. A pastor of a small church could certainly find himself that in abundance.

I can’t do that anymore though. I have asked the question, “How can I glorify God most in this set of circumstances?” My consolation is not his glory. A pastor leads his flock to ruin if he lets them believe they need him more than God. I am useful, but not needed; I am not needed, but I am loved by God. It’s in the axis and intersection of God’s love and ordained usefulness that joyful service is found.

I find myself there, because the question of God’s glory has led me to see that his full glory cannot be displayed through myself alone. God’s glory is most fully revealed in Christ, and Christ is most fully revealed in His Body, the Church.

As a pastor, this has led me to appropriate the words of John the Baptist. John’s disciples feared for his ambitions when Jesus began a ministry of baptism, but he would hear nothing of it. He tells them, “I must decrease, but he must increase.” (John 3:30 [ESV]) John knew his place in God’s plan - his interest was in God’s glory, not his own.

I’m hardly John, but as I pastor the Body of Christ in my locale I am convicted that Christ through the members of His Body must increase. This is the “they” in the title of this post. God is not glorified most when I do everything, when I control everything, when it is my face that dominates the congregation’s conception of the church’s identity and the public’s perception of our identity. They should not see me - they should see Christ, unmistakably.

My task is to help that happen. Some churches have the attitude that the pastor should do everything (not my church) and for all his efforts to persuade them otherwise the pastor may yet fail. Even so, the task remains. No pastor can replace the Body of Christ. We are mere servants, by automative analogy mere spark plugs, put in place by God to help get the Body going.

I’ve been about this work at my church, and I’ve been reminded even in successes that I truly (no compulsory humility here) can’t take any credit. With God’s grace, I just help tee things up - the rest is God at work through the Body. My best laid plans would come to absolutely nothing without his intervention.

I want more people to see that. That’s it not about Tom, or even a few select leaders, but that all that is good is the fruit of Christ working through his Body.