support

if someone is on a church staff in a support capacity, should they attend that same church?

over the past few days, i've had three different {and unprovoked} conversations regarding this question with different friends, from different areas of my life, some currently on staff at different churches, some never having been employed by a church.

there appear to be no shortage of different opinions.

in my mind, it only makes sense that i attend PORTICO, the place of worship where i spend not only my sunday mornings, but my workdays as well. it is the place where my best energy, creative efforts and ideas get used—i pray—to not only glorify God, but to encourage and inspire the people who sit in the pews around me. from an implementation perspective, why would i not want to see what works, what doesn't and what i could improve on?

from a spiritual perspective, given how much blood, sweat and prayer that i put into PORTICO, could i ever feel anything but divided by attending another church? sure, there might be days when it would be easier, not getting pulled into work-mode when my goal is to worship would be nice, but would my heart be in it? or would i even—horrors—end up comparing them?

perhaps i over-simplify the situation, but if i do, i come by this over-simplification justifiably.

for pretty much my entire childhood and adolescence, my father worked at Chrysler. everything–all the meals my family consumed, Christmas and birthday presents, back to school clothes—was made possible because of dad's pay cheque from the automaker. to go along with that, i don't ever remember my dad owning a car that wasn't a Chrysler, and pretty much every car i have ever owned was the same. to this day, if i bought a car, it would have to be a Chrysler.

did dad have to buy Chrysler? well, no, he wasn't forced to. but to him, it was {and still is} the right thing to do.

and my dad isn't the only one who feels this way. this morning i read an article about Melinda Gates not allowing any Macintosh products to enter their home. would it kill the multi-millionaire to drop a couple hundred dollars on an iPod for one of the kids? probably not, but Ms. Gates appears to subscribe to the same 'you support what supports you' theory as my dad.

last week, on a church communications blog that i read, Over-Communicate, i read this post that has helped me solidify how i feel about this. the post uses John 10:11-13 as its basis, with Jesus talking about the difference between a shepherd and a hired hand in the care of sheep. when the wolf comes, where the hired hand hightails it out of there, the shepherd stays. why? the hired hand only collects a pay cheque, he doesn't own the sheep. the shepherd, however, owns and loves the sheep, and will do all he can to protect them.

this great post has stuck in my head, and the truth is, i don't want to be just a hired hand at PORTICO.

to be honest, before these conversations, i hadn't given all this much thought. it just makes sense to me that being part of PORTICO's staff would mean that i would attend PORTICO. it is where the rest of the staff and i use the best parts of ourselves, where we work side by side the sake of the kingdom of God in this corner of the world where we live.

why would i want to be anywhere else?