Acts 15:36

"After some days Paul said to Barnabas, 'Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.'" 

Reflection by Donna Schaper

There is nothing like an evaluation to shake things up.  Paul and Barnabas are doing a review.  They are taking the risk of looking back.  If you love something, like the gospel, enough, you won't dare be unaccountable to it.  You will count. You will count new members—and whether they're still around a few years after their arrival.  You will count pledges—and whether any of them increased over time.  You will count attendance and be aware of who came and didn't come back.  You will notice if the parents who trusted you with their five-year-old still trust you with their seven-year-old

Evaluation and accountability often have bad reputations.  We dread them, mostly because people who don't have our best interests in mind so often use them against us.  Imagine something more joyful.  Imagine welcoming a review of your congregation or yourself.  Imagine being a partner in setting the criteria for that review with someone you trust.  Imagine the faith it takes to try something different and to say, by the grace of God, "what we're doing isn't working."  "What I tried, failed."  "What I thought would happen didn't happen."  Imagine the freedom that comes from really committing to something, so much so that you wouldn't think of failing at it.  Or knowing that if failure came, you had the permission and the responsibility to try again a different way. 

One of the things that Paul and Barnabas were spreading around was good news.  It was the good news that, in Jesus, we could trust God's love to surround us.  That surely means nearly constant assessment and reassessment of how things are going for us and for our communities.  As a person, many of us would like to become more free over time, even more joyous.  To do so, we have to be less afraid of mistakes than we are of accountability.  As congregations, many of us have seen numbers that shout that something we are doing isn't working.  As people and congregations, we often need new criteria for success.  Numbers tell us one story, the spirit in the conversation in a coffee hour tells another.  When we make the important journey that Paul and Barnabas undertook, we may do so eagerly.  We may face whatever we have to face.  Then we recommit to a spread of love and freedom and joy.  And next year, or at our next evaluation, we see how far we got towards those gospel goals and gifts.

Prayer

O God, if we are fried around the edges by too many reviews that were too trivial, re-engage us in the kind of review you would want for us.  Show us the way to a joyous accountability to your promises.   Amen.

About the Author Donna Schaper is the Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City. Her latest work is 20 Ways to Keep Sabbath, from The Pilgrim Press. Check out her work at www.judson.org.

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