Good Ideas v. God Ideas
So I arrived in Jerusalem. Three days later, I slipped out during the night, taking only a few others with me. I had not told anyone about the plans God had put in my heart for Jerusalem. We took no pack animals with us except the donkey I was riding…The city officials did not know I had been out there or what I was doing, for I had not yet said anything to anyone about my plans. I had not yet spoken to the Jewish leaders—the priests, the nobles, the officials, or anyone else in the administration. Nehemiah 2:11-12, 16
We are still reading through Nehemiah as a primer for finding, casting, and implementing God’s ministry vision for a church. See the first posts here and here. Chapter 2 of Nehemiah begins to introduce us to the distinction between a good idea for ministry and a God idea for ministry.
So Many Good Ideas
In this new era of information overload, there is no shortage of good ideas for churches. We can “scout” what other churches are doing (or at least what they aspire to be doing) via their websites. We can read any of the thousands of books written and published every year by pastors all around the world. There are podcasts and blogs (like this one) galore to provide church leaders with good ideas for ministry. Moreover, every pastor I know is “blessed” to have plenty of congregants saying or writing to him/her, “you know what we should do…”, and by that they almost always mean, “you know what YOU should do.” Suffice it to say, when it comes to looking for good ideas, it has never been easier for us.
There are even lots of good ideas from the business world or the world of academia or even the sports world which could find application in the church. In my particular church, the military world is particularly relevant and provides some helpful perspectives for ministry. All of these worlds, of course, are the very worlds from which most of our lay leaders come. It should not surprise us, then, that many of the good ideas they bring to the table carry with them the “scent” of these worlds. That is not a bad thing. It is just a reality.
But Nehemiah demonstrates for us that, while all God ideas are also good ideas, not all good ideas are God ideas. It is incumbent upon church leaders to help us all discern the difference.
God Ideas follow God’s Schedule
In response to Nehemiah’s four months of prayer and fasting, God opened the doors wide for him to proceed. Nehemiah received the full power and authority of King Artaxerxes himself to make the journey to Jerusalem and to rebuild the walls around the city. Nehemiah had great clarity around this one reality: this ministry vision was a God idea. So he planned and he carefully counted the costs and when the King asked him what he needed, he answered with specificity. And then he QUIETLY made the journey to Jerusalem…well, as quietly as could with an armed escort from the King.
When he arrived in Jerusalem, he went quiet for three days. No meetings, no applying for permits, no social media campaigns, no rallies in the streets…not yet, anyway. He rested and he prayed and he continued to quietly plan. Additionally, He went out by night to survey the wall he would be rebuilding. He assessed the damage and quietly planned the work. And during all of this praying and planning, he mentioned the vision to nobody, because it was not yet time to do so.
When we are exploring a good idea, we mention it to all of our trusted confidents. We talk with all our leaders about it. We may even put it out on social media for input. The best practices for cultivating good ideas teach us that more input is always better. We may call it brainstorming or crowd-sourcing. When it comes to good ideas, two heads are always better than one.
But God ideas are different. They come with a sense of stewardship, i.e., it is an idea that doesn’t belong to me; rather, it belongs to God. And, as such, it comes with God’s ways of doing things, with God’s schedule for doing them, and with God’s list of people to bring into the project. There is a sense that we talk to whom God says, when God says, and in the way God says. We simply do not ever want to get out in front of God (fill in the blank here with your favorite story from the Bible of what happens when God’s people move ahead without God).
Casting Vision for a God Idea
In 2:17-18, Nehemiah puts on a clinic in how to cast the vision for a God idea. He did it in three sentences (at least in the English translations).
But now I said to them, “You know very well what trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire. Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and end this disgrace!” Then I told them about how the gracious hand of God had been on me, and about my conversation with the king. Nehemiah 2:17-18
Casting vision for a God idea for ministry has three components. First, it has a clear description of the problem we are being called upon to address. Second, it has a clarion call to action, i.e., what exactly I should do in order to address this problem. Third (and this is the part that elevates a good idea to a God idea), a description of how God is already at work in this area. In other words, don’t ask the people to go and do something for God; rather, ask them to join God in what He is already doing.
That third part of the vision (that we are merely joining God in something He is already doing) will become important as soon as we hit our first road block in the work. When we are pursuing what is merely a good idea, that first significant set-back will invite us to ask whether it was really a good idea after all. But when we have a clear understanding that God is going ahead of us, no set-back will slow us down.
Be Careful with Power
At the end of chapter 2, some of Nehemiah’s enemies (external) begin to oppose his God idea. They employ worldly powers (in this case, political and social) to push against him. Specifically, they accuse him of rebelling against the king. As political appointees themselves, they had a degree of political power to bring to bear. How easy it would have been for Nehemiah to swing back at them with his own political power. After all, he had specific permission from the King to do this work. He even had the King’s material support for the cause. Had Nehemiah been pursuing merely a good idea, that might be exactly how he responded: with political power of his own.
But this was not merely a good idea. It was a God idea. And, as such, it did not require political power to proceed. Indeed, it required no powers of this world at all; because it had access to God’s power. Why would Nehemiah ever want to exchange God’s power for the lesser powers of this world? And why would we? When we have the luxury and the privilege of doing work WITH GOD, we do not have to rely upon the powers of this world in order to proceed.
We do not need to employ social powers by staging a social media campaign or a protest. Nor do we need to mobilize an army of voters in order to activate political power. We do not need to try to drown the opposition with our financial power. All we need is our prayer and the God to whom we pray. That is enough. And that may well be the biggest difference between a church pursuing a good idea and a church pursuing a God idea. It is about the world’s powers versus the power of God.