SOME THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN 30 YEARS OF PASTORING:

#1 - Put the top on the bottom where it belongs.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It's a book by Robert Fulghum, but I’ve never read it so I can’t really recommend it. It was on the New York Times best seller list for almost two years, but who really knows why that happens? All I can say for sure is that it’s a great title that can alter your perspective on life even if you never read the book.

And there’s another book I’ve never read – I find books much faster than I can read them – called The Upside-down Kingdom, by Donald B. Kraybill. Its title is almost as good. One glance at the cover and suddenly you realize what’s wrong with you, with the church and the Christian life, and perhaps even with life in general. We just keep turning it “right-side” up, when it’s not intended to work that way. It’s like those new ketchup bottles where, after generations of stupidity, some genius figured out that the stuff at the bottom is where it’s supposed to be, and it’s the top that’s in the wrong place, or rather the opening. And still we keep putting it back in the fridge “right”-side up. Crazy eh?

Luke 9:46-48 An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. (This is one of those disturbing little scenes where Jesus’ disciples are being so petty that even we are embarrassed for them.) 47 Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. (It’s interesting, and perhaps instructive, to note that Jesus had immediate access to children when he was teaching his disciples. Apparently he was doing it in the midst of life, and not off in a seminary somewhere.) 48 Then he said to them, "...he who is least among you all — he is the greatest ."

Some say that everyone is equal in God’s sight, but the Bible suggests no such thing. God is well aware that we are safe and vulnerable, rich and poor, strong and weak. It’s not that we’re equal, but that God loves and cares for every one of us; something the little ones should always remember, and the big ones dare not forget.

In the Kingdom of God, in any good church, or in any family or community for that matter, people need to grow down, not up. As we get older, richer, stronger, we need, increasingly, to put others ahead of ourselves. We need to watch out for the little ones and be less and less concerned with having our own way.

In many of the churches I have pastored a significant number of the “mature” members do not seem to grasp this basic biblical truth. They believe that their seniority means getting more attention and consideration than others. They think that because they give more money, or do more work, or hold an office, or have a title, they should get what they want. And nothing destroys a church like this fundamental confusion.

When God became a human being he did not go to Rome or Athens or Alexandria to be born, but strait to Bethlehem because, on a world scale, it was a little place; which is to say, it’s where the little ones were. And he grew up with no title, fame or influence, in Nazareth, on the backside of nowhere. You see, Jesus was building the upside-down kingdom, where the big ones are on the bottom, and the little ones come in at the top and work their way down.

If the “big” people – I mean the ones who have caused me the most grief during my ministry – were real disciples, most of them would have learned all this from Jesus long before I ever met them. But, come to think of it, if they were teachable at all, they would probably have learned it in kindergarten.