Doing things "badly" but "wholeheartedly"

This year’s OMF Thailand’s conference speakers were Stuart and Jill Briscoe.  One thing which struck me and some of the other missionaries was when Jill advised us to do thing badly and wholeheartedly rather than not at all.  The context was when she had moved from youth ministry to become a pastor’s wife for the first time.  She had no idea about what being a pastor’s wife involved.  So she went round with a piece of paper and asked the congregation for their expectations of her as the pastor’s wife.  When she went home and read this extensive piece of paper she realised that she had none of the gifts to meet the expectations of the congregation.  In despair she went to her husband and showed him the list and he confirmed, “Yes, you have none of those gifts.”  What should she do then.  Her husband advised, “Then, just do it badly”.  When people saw her trying but doing it badly, what happened was two things.  People started feeling sorry for her and asked her “can I help you with that” and secondly, she stated to see that by doing it, she developed gifts she did not have before.

In my experience and that of many missionaries, we are put in situations where we just have to do things badly it needs to be done and there is no one else.  Before coming to Thailand didn’t think I was any good at cold turkey evangelism.  But after giving out giving out about 50 or so flyers advertising “The Lighthouse” (our outreach centre), it became almost second nature and people saw that I have a gifting in making new contacts and evangelism.

In the church culture in places like Australia and America, we’ve grabbed on to so much of the teaching on leaderships and gifts that we don’t tend to get involved in particular ministries unless we are “gifted” in it.  So we leave everything to the small minority who are considered “gifted”.  Perhaps if people were encouraged to do things even if it means doing it “badly” but “wholeheartedly”, then people would “discover” more of their gifts and more work could be done instead of the few doing everything burning out. 

On another topic, if we focused first on the character of our leaders (before putting them in leadership positions) rather than focusing mostly on their gifting, we’d have better leaders leading our churches.