The radio operators on the Titanic were remarkably competent, busy, and focused on their technical duties. However, historical accounts reveal a haunting reality: they were so consumed with the job of managing private passenger telegrams and transcribing master’s service grams that they became disconnected from the ship's primary mission—the safe passage of everyone on board. The Thriving Essentials curriculum discusses how this "Titanic effect" can happen in the local church. It occurs when pastors and ministry leaders become highly efficient "worker bees" for internal programs while drifting from the primary mission of God's redeeming mission.
To avoid this drift, we must recognize that discipleship is not just for internal church functions. When we reduce discipleship to holy huddles or intellectual assent to a set of principles, we lose our relevance and effectiveness in a fast-changing culture. True discipleship requires a total transformation of both character and competency so that we are equipped to engage the world beyond the walls of the church.
This transformation is rooted in what theologians call union life—the spiritual reality of being joined with Christ. As Dallas Willard, philosopher and Christian spiritual formation author, defined it, discipleship is "being with another person in order to become capable of doing what that person does and to become like who that person is". For the church leader, this means our inner spiritual formation must naturally flow into outer leadership influence in our families, neighborhoods, and workplaces. If we are not being formed into the likeness of Jesus, our leadership becomes a mere enterprise focused on the politics of institutional survival rather than the sacrificial mission of the Gospel.
How do we break the cycle of meaningless internal activity and reengage the world? The Thriving Essentials curriculum explains how the church must cultivate a growth mindset through a practical rhythm for lifelong learning: the action-reflection-learning cycle. This model moves us past a static fixed mindset and into an organic process of discovery.
In this cycle, we are a “sent” people. The belief and expectation is that our faith will inform and impact how we live the life God’s given us. We reflect by asking how our faith informed those actions. We learn from our successes and failures, and we reengage with a more substantive and helpful response to God’s invitation. We are called to be instruments and witnesses of the new creation, ensuring our leadership serves the mission rather than just the "radio room" of church maintenance.
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Is the Titanic effect creeping into your church? Send an email to [email protected] to find out more information on getting Thriving Essentials at your church to help break out of the radio room.
Comments
thanks for sharing these thoughts... there are some huge gaps and a systemic shift needed to take back what we/Church have abdicated in various ways. There are glimpses, but there is also a long way to go! Keep praying and sharing!
"institutional survival" gets a lot of energy and resources at the expense of loving one another! I serve on the board of a county wide prayer center, and our philosophy is there is one church in our county, many expressions. Somehow over the ages, the Family of God has been fractured into separate groups, denoms, streams, various divisions regarding theology, etc. but we are one Family!
also, it seems gifting is often elevated over character...
these misalignments can create an emphasis on competing, comparing and controlling instead of cooperation and sharing the responsibilities together.
Here is one example of a gap / abdication to some debatable extent:
Isaiah 58:7 Isn't it to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your home, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
The bread part is easy, make a bunch of sandwiches and hand them out on the streets, in the alleys, at the encampments, churches, groups do this all the time!
The housing part, not so simple! This takes individuals and a community!
I met with someone today about housing for our unhoused neighbors. That's our responsibility as the Followers of Christ and the collective Kingdom Church. Isaiah 58 tells us to open our homes for the homeless / outcasts... The NIV and a few other versions tone down our responsibility from the Hebrew with "provide the poor wanderer with shelter"... vs "bring the poor and homeless into your home" (Berean Standard Bible) The NIV gives permission for a more impersonal, comfortable and convenient limited duty / relationship of dropping off someone at the local homeless shelter, while the Hebrew is a far messier, personal long term relationship taking people into our own homes.
It's both / and, but, like the good Samaritan, if we leave someone in an institutional place to get help first, we should also go back to follow up for discipleship and possibly take them into our homes if/when appropriate, depending on the dynamics of the situation.
There is a line in the Peter Hollen's version of God Help the Outcasts, of the attitudes of some of the more privileged toward the less privileged outcasts:
They fear them, flee them, try not to see them... God Help The Outcasts
May God's Family, His Kingdom Church, do the very opposite and love them, find them, and see how precious and priceless each "outcast" image bearer of God is!
While I appreciate Bev’s comments on taking in the “homeless”, and the call to action instead of lip service, I’d be very interested in learning how you worked out that calling. If you have an example of what you have done in answer to that calling, I, for one would be inspired to follow your example. As for me, and my journey, we (my wife and I) had a complete family of four children (two boys, two girls) but, to work out the nudging of the Holy Spirit, we adopted two boys whose previous adoption placement had broken down. These boy were almost un-adoptable because of their ages, 8 and 12. They fit in our family, as the oldest boy was not older than my oldest son, and the youngest did not displace my youngest son. That was almost 40 years ago, and they are still very much our children. Then we became foster parents to quite a number of children with varying issues. Some we cared for long term, some shorter. A particular bunch of indigenous Native children came into our care, aged about three to seven. I have to admit l truly loved those three, and really felt bad when their mom completed alcohol recovery about a year later, and instinctively I knew they would spiral back into the mess that they were hauled out of to begin with. ( that was verified when we asked to see how they were doing about a year after returning to their mom) we fostered probably about 50 children over a fifteen year span. So, Bev, that’s how we worked out taking in the homeless. How have you done?
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