Finding and Doing Our Priority
Lenn Zeller, Volunteer Director of Conference Care
During our morning devotions recently, Janeen and I read an interesting comment from Mr. Bill Pollard about successful business practices that applies equally well to the church. Mr. Pollard wrote: “The problem for some of us with establishing priorities is not that we have too few but that we have too many! Remember… it’s not a question of priorities for the business; it’s simply finding the priority and doing it.” 1
In fact, the author also said that the very word “priority” came into the English language in the fourteenth century, but it wasn’t until the twentieth century that it was pluralized. Until then, it was recognized that a person can have only one true priority, only one thing that truly drives and organizes their life. Or, to put it in more Biblical terms, a person can truly serve only one master.
Perhaps a good deal of our inner anxiety and discontentment in life comes from seeking to serve too many masters, from striving to honor too many “priorities” at once, and thereby serving none well. Our lives are too scattered, stretched too thin by too many competing responsibilities and desires to experience anything resembling peace and satisfaction.
And perhaps this is a major part of most conflicts in the church. My priorities for the church may be different from your priorities for the church. My desires for the ministry and fellowship differ from yours. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote in his New Testament epistle… What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:1)
Too often churches erupt into conflict over competing desires, plans and agendas. People don’t get what they want in the church, so they quarrel and fight. It becomes a sometimes devastating battle for control to determine whose agenda for the church will be followed, and who will have the authority to lead. And isn’t that the point? Jesus is the Head of His church — He should have the ultimate authority to lead. The question should not even be: What are my desires and priorities for the church? The question should be — What does Jesus want from us and how does He want us to serve His kingdom?
Maybe if we spent more time and energy prayerfully discerning Christ’s priority for His church, and less time deciding and fighting for our own goals and agendas, we might find the unity for which He prayed. Maybe if we set aside our own competing priorities and submitted to His plans and purposes, we would be able to join together around one common purpose — His. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. (John 17:20–21)
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1 Pollard, C. William. Serving Two Masters?, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006, pp. 67–68
