Here's Chris Nye with a potent, simple reminder of the power of ordinary. – Paul
My friend John and I were putting Christmas lights on my mother’s mammoth tree one December. His whole life was changing. He was going to be a parent, had to cut back volunteer time with our church, and focus on new responsibilities in his work. As we talked, his struggle was similar to the tension many Christians feel: How do I live the life Jesus has asked me to live when I have all of these responsibilities within ordinary life?
We want to live the type of life that Scripture wrote about: miraculous, adventurous, and worthy of reporting over social media, but we still need to take the trash out.
How do I make disciples while trying to succeed in college?
How can I join the mission of God with all of these diapers to change and meals to cook?
We want to live the type of life that Scripture wrote about: miraculous, adventurous, and worthy of reporting over social media, but we still need to take the trash out.
I was in full-time ministry and could have excused myself as being one of those “extraordinary” ones who devoted more time a week to the kingdom than any of my friends. But that didn’t feel honest. I really didn’t feel that way. I felt like most of my ministry was ordinary, not special. Most of my time was spent eating meals with people, calling them back, praying for them in my office or over coffee. I spent time teaching my church or writing and preparing for weddings and funerals.
I decided to investigate our common notion that all of our biblical figures were constantly living radical lives of preaching, healing, and ministering amidst riots and revivals and shipwrecks. What I found was very helpful—and possibly more challenging than a lot of the radical rhetoric that fills our hearts and media.
Glimpses of the story
When it comes to the people of the Bible, we only get little glimpses, moments of their lives. Amidst the many genres of Scripture, “biography” is not one. We never receive an exhaustive account of one person’s entire life—not even Jesus. Instead we get to see small moments where God interacted with that person in a special way to show his glory, truth, and grace. Because of this, we really do not know as much as we think we know about these great “pillars of faith”. In other words, people are not the protagonists in Scripture, God is. He is at the center of each store, history, poem, letter, parable, and law.
This is why we have strange verses like the one at the end of Acts. Paul has been in Rome meeting with church leaders, preaching, and planting some churches—doing the stuff we call “radical” or “extraordinary.” As the timeline goes, it’s only been a number of weeks when Luke wraps the whole story up in two verses: “[Paul] lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.”
There it is. Two years of Paul’s ministry can be summed up in one sentence: he rented a house and when people came in, he told them about Jesus. For two whole years. Sounds quite ordinary.
Two years of Paul’s ministry can be summed up in one sentence: he rented a house and when people came in, he told them about Jesus. Sounds quite ordinary.
But there’s more to Paul. Remember in Galatians when he’s telling the church his story? It’s in chapter 1 and there’s one sentence that we just pass over without thinking about. “I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.” That’s the end of verse 17. Then, we get verse 18: “Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days.” Wait, hold on—three years before he started connecting with ministry leaders? Three years where? Arabia? What’s in Arabia?
Before Paul planted churches, before (it seems) he even shared the gospel in any significant way, before he wrote letters to church leaders and made disciples and consulted with the apostles and became an apostle himself, Paul just went away. What do you do in the desert for three years after you’ve murdered people and been an enemy of the very God you now worship? Cry, for one thing. Repent, probably. Confess. Pray. It probably wasn’t that interesting and it probably wasn’t anything to write a book about, but it was absolutely essential to Paul’s formation.
The closest genre to biography we get is the gospels. Certainly, through these narratives, Jesus of Nazareth is our protagonist, and yet we still know very little about most of his life. Jesus lived the kind of life we always talk about for three years and then he died. We, of course, only have one story of Jesus between the age of eight days and 30 years and we all know it well. Jesus was lost, Home Alone style, and when his parents finally found him Luke tells us he was, “sitting amongst the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” At the end of the story we get this one line from Luke in verse 52: “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
That line alone summarizes 30 years of the life of our God in flesh. Perhaps the conclusion to be drawn is this: one of the great and extraordinary sacrifices to be made in God’s kingdom is years of obedient, often ordinary faithfulness to him. Growing. Learning. Teaching. Fasting. Welcoming. Eating. Drinking. Praying. Forgiving. Doing all of these things in secret before the Lord, is what he has asked us to do in the Sermon on the Mount.
Perhaps the conclusion to be drawn is this: one of the great and extraordinary sacrifices to be made in God’s kingdom is years of obedient, often ordinary faithfulness to him.
Unfortunately, I find very little room for this in my own ministry. In fact, I’ve had to make room for this and slowly create a culture of ordinary obedience. I work with students, and if you know anything about the last 20 years of youth ministry, I wouldn’t use the word “ordinary” to describe it. Instead, we’ve done everything to prove ourselves to be spectacular: iPad giveaways, eating contests, marketing campaigns, zany preaching, bait-and-switch programming, video games on large screens, and let’s not forget all of the cool names we’ve come up with for the midweek gatherings. We want to call “the next generation” to a “revolution” and a “revival” of extraordinary obedience. All of this hoopla to what end?
I’ve had to learn the slower way, to commit to a few people and teach them what it means to obey Jesus. To trust ordinary adults in my community to make relationships with young people and show them the way of Jesus. It is always easier for me to share a message than it is to share a meal. But I wonder: which matters more in the kingdom of God? In his economy and timing, is it more important that I open my house than opening my mouth?
What makes most of this come full circle is that many of the mouthpieces for the “radical” movement actually live pretty ordinary lives as a beautiful picture of what I’m talking about. These authors and speakers, more often than not, are misunderstood. We view them as “bestselling authors” and “prophets in our generation,” but they’re really just faithful men and women who are doing what God has asked of them—nothing more. Maybe the way they speak to their wife and help their children with rides to practice is more important than any book they write.
If Paul and Jesus lived the majority of their life in ordinary obscurity, shouldn’t we be happy to obey God in the same fashion?
There is Biblical evidence and practical experience for what Eugene Peterson would call, “a long obedience in the same direction.” If Paul and Jesus lived the majority of their life in ordinary obscurity, shouldn’t we be happy to obey God in the same fashion? It seems to me that if we wish to be like these men, we need not worry about being “faithful with much,” before we consider the weight of being “faithful with little.” If a “biblical life” is what we want, we cannot skip the processes it lays out.
For some of us, the most extraordinary biblical thing we can do is actually pretty ordinary. We need to learn, grown, repent, weep, work, pray, and parent. Let us lovingly obey God whether in the loneliness of the desert, the monotony of the temple courts, or exciting streets of Jerusalem as a revolution unfolds.
All is for him, our protagonist.
Chris Nye is a pastor and writer living in Portland, OR, with his wife, Ali. Connect on Twitter: @chrisnye
