Broken for Blessing: Embracing the Pain of Subtraction for the Joy of Multiplication

Illustration by Kip Henderson

“Jesus took the loaves and fish, gave thanks for them, broke them and distributed them to the crowd.” John 6:11

When I read the story of the feeding of the 5,000, I still see it in vivid flannel graph images stuck up on a room divider in our Sunday school classroom. I can smell the salt and flour in the play dough and hear my teacher ask, “What would you say if Jesus asked for your lunch?”

Anyone who knows me knows I am great at meal bartering. As a kid, I was always looking to swap my cheese and chutney sandwiches for something better from one of my schoolmates. Not much has changed. I still try to barter when I go out to eat with my wife, because what she orders always seems better than mine. Needless to say, this miracle spoke to me back in that Sunday school class on a visceral level.

This was more than swapping a sandwich or dinner plate. In John 6, Jesus has compassion on the hun- gry crowd and asks His disciples, “‘Where are we to buy bread, so these people may eat?’ He said this to test them, for He Himself knew what He would do.”5 Andrew, one of the disciples, finds a boy with five loaves and two fish and Jesus seems to think this lunch will do the trick. So, the little boy with the five loaves and two fish is asked to hand over his whole lunch. John writes that Jesus took the loaves and fish, gave thanks for them, broke them and distributed them to the crowd. The food was multiplied so that all 5,000 men, as well as women and children, ate their fill (the whole crowd was likely closer to 20,000). What a stunning catering miracle! Jesus was a homeless man who provided a meal for a multitude with a little boy’s lunch.

But I have some questions about the story. First, was the lunch given willingly or taken? There are no details of the exchange, simply, that Jesus took the loaves as well as the fish.6 I have to give Jesus and the disciples the benefit of the doubt here because they don’t seem like playground bullies. Still, I imagine the little boy must have been a bit reluctant to part with his lunch, don’t you? Another question. Why a boy? Why someone who had no easy way of replacing the re- sources he gave up? That seems unfair. But my biggest question is, why did Jesus need all five loaves and two fish for His multiplying miracle? If He was powerful enough to multiply loaves and fish for 20,000 people, why couldn’t He just have done it out of one loaf and one fish, leaving the boy with the rest?

That’s the rub for me in this passage. For some rea- son, Jesus requires the boy to hand over his whole lunch. He seems okay to leave him, for a moment, with nothing to eat himself so that others can be fed. That moment must have felt like a lifetime on an emp- ty stomach. Jesus seems comfortable invading the boy’s margins in uncomfortable ways. This was not just a sandwich barter. This was a sandwich takeover for the sake of others. The miracle was made possible because the boy was willing for his whole lunch to be broken for the blessing of the crowd.

This is the very heart of what it is to be used by Jesus for the sake of others, isn’t it? We say, “Jesus, use me to bring Your life to others.” And He does. Yet very soon after we come back to Him saying, “Jesus, I feel used! I feel empty!” He takes all we have; blesses it, breaks it, and multiplies it to bless others. There is no bless- ing of the crowds without the breaking of our loaves. Many people want to be part of the blessing, but few want to take part in the taking and the breaking.

This is the story behind our multiplying story. It is the story of every small or medium-sized multiply- ing church. We have never felt that we’ve had enough resources to feed the crowds but we’ve wanted to be involved in Jesus’ feeding miracle. We know that ulti- mately Jesus, not our churches, is the Bread of Life. And yet we believe that planting churches is the most effective distribution system to get the Bread of Life to hungry people. So we’ve said, “Lord, we are putting our bread in Your hands, even though it’s not that much. Take it, break it and multiply it for the sake of others.” It has been stunning to see many hungry souls fed with the Bread of Life because of this.

I must warn you, though, that this is a dangerous vision. We recently walked with a Southern California church of around 100 adults who felt called to plant a church into Washington, approximately 2,000 miles away. They sent twenty of their best people includ- ing two prominent leadership couples. The send- ing church didn’t just drop to eighty. They quickly dropped to sixty adults because some who were left behind felt like the church just wasn’t the same as it once was! A year later the church had shrunk by a fur- ther twenty people and the lead pastor resigned, feel- ing distraught by the decline of a church that had felt so healthy just a year prior. Eighteen months into the new church plant it had grown steadily, seeing people coming to faith, new leaders installed and disciples being made. It has now reached around eighty adults. But the sending church, tragically, has closed.

The truth is that there can be no multiplication without subtraction, and multiplication feels like subtraction for quite some time before Jesus restores the margins of our resources. The gap between subtraction and restoration can threaten the life of a sending church. I don’t know about you, but I like resource margins. Yet multiplication means Jesus invades those margins of finances, leaders, volunteers and energy. We find ourselves feeling empty and used in the process, even

though there is joy in seeing people nourished with the Bread of Life in a new place. We feel the pain of subtraction amidst the joy of multiplication.

There is great testing of faith in the “feeding 5,000” miracle, both the disciples’ faith and that of the boy. Being a multiplying church will test your faith to its limits, too. Is Jesus able to feed the multitudes with the little we have in our hands? Will He just take what we have to bless others and leave us empty-handed indefinitely?

When Jesus requires something of us that seems un- reasonable, it is a test both of our faith and our pain threshold. C.S. Lewis wrote about this when his wife was suffering from cancer. “We are not necessarily doubting God will do the best for us; we are wonder- ing how painful the best will turn out to be.”7

John’s insight into his best friend in this miracle is stunning in verse 6. “He said this to test them, for He Himself knew what He would do.” In other words, when Jesus’ multiplying miracle tests our faith because it seems so mysterious, we must learn to give Him the benefit of the doubt. He knows what He is doing, even if we don’t understand it.

While Jesus seems to require everything the boy has, He uses it to feed the multitudes. “He Himself knew what He would do.”8 While the boy must have felt the pain of subtraction, the disciples are able to gather up twelve baskets full of leftover fragments. The crowds didn’t get just enough—after they gorged themselves on the fish and bread, there were twelve baskets of leftover fragments. The phrase leftover fragments im- plies both abundance and change. When we surrender our resources to Jesus to be broken and multiplied we can be sure He will restore them abundantly, but we are also surrendering the form in which they are restored to us. He restores fragments. Multiplication brings with it a new normal. Our lives will never be the same.

Jesus has never restored our comfortable, self-serving vision of the church to us. We are permanently ruined with a new vision of brokenness for the sake of blessing. For some people, this way of doing church is too unsettling. They have left Southlands to look for a church with a less disruptive vision. But Jesus has restored and continues to restore baskets full of fragments—finances, properties, investors, leaders, servants and friends, though not necessarily in the same form as they were given.

In summary, I want to suggest three ways of think- ing that can catalyze a movement of medium-sized multiplying churches:

A willingness to let Jesus invade our margins

Southlands began multiplying under my watch in 2012 when we had around 500 adults and 100 kids in average attendance. We sent three pastors, nine- ty adults and fifteen kids down the road to start our first multisite community. It was a shock to the sys- tem to send just under twenty percent of our church to a neighboring city; so much so that after a month I asked one of the three pastors to come back! Four years later though, by God’s grace, we’ve multiplied four times. One of those was an autonomous church plant into Thailand. The other two were multisite communities into neighboring cities. It’s been incred- ibly costly because every time we’ve multiplied we’ve had to yield our margins of leadership, people, fi- nances and ministry. And in a medium-sized church, they are margins you can ill afford. It can leave you breathless, but to see Jesus’ life in these new gospel communities is breathtakingly beautiful. We feel that we’ve been an integral part of Jesus’ multiplying miracle of the five fish and two loaves. We’ve had to put the loaves and fish we have into His hands to be bro- ken, and He’s blessed that. It’s then that subtraction begins to turn into multiplication. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus used every bit of that little boy’s lunch for His multiplication miracle? He could have left the boy with a loaf or a fish, but He used it all. Of course, it’s easier for large churches to multiply without invading their margins too much, but apparently, that’s not the only way Jesus works.

When we surrender our resources to Jesus to be broken and multiplied we can be sure He will restore them abundantly, but we are also surrendering the form in which they are restored to us.

The call to be a multiplying church is a costly one whether you are small, medium or large, but it will help your church to avoid self-preservation and self-promotion, as well as passivity.

Ultimately, the call to be a multiplying church will involve you in the faith adventure of seeing your resources multiplied for the sake of others’ blessing.

Jesus knows what He is doing.

So what are you going to say when He asks you for your lunch?

What God has Joined: towards a more compelling complementarity part 2

Last week I posted the first in a 2 part blog here. I suggested that husbands and wives were created to complement eachother in marriage and ministry, which should liberate us because equality of dignity does not come from equality of role. Having written about the liberation that should come from this view, I want to explore the motivation that should come from this view. 

Motivation: Putting the Complementary back into Complementarian

My main concern here is not to try and convert Egalitarians into Complementarians. Kathy Keller does a much better job of that than I could ever hope to do in her book, Jesus, Justice and Gender Roles.  My real concern though,  is to motivate my Complementarian brothers and sisters to put the complementary back into Complementarian ministry. With this in mind, Gavin Ortlund writes a very insightful article entitled 4 Dangers for Complementarians, in which he warns against trying to live this view out faithfully but not beautifully, among other dangers.  

When God created male and female in His image, he envisaged that Adam and Eve would be like two complementary colors creating a more compelling and beautiful image together than apart. When God said that Eve would be Adam’s helper, (Genesis 2:18) the word is ezer, which carries no connotations of weakness or inferiority at all. In fact, God uses the same word to describe how He helps His creation when they cannot help themselves. (Psalm 46:1) The term means complementary strength. The essence of our Complementarian conviction is that Adam needed Eve’s complementary strength in order to fulfill the call to be an image bearer of God in every sphere of life.

When it comes to the family, we know that having an absent mother or father makes the raising of children a very difficult task, and that a husband and wife who parent as a united, yet diverse team, create parenting synergy in the home that is beneficial for children. They’re better together. Yet when it comes to the family of God, we seem to downplay this principle of synergy because of our conviction that men and women play different roles. Many elder’s wives in Complementarian churches seem absent in the name of having distinct roles. It seems to me that when it comes to ministry in the family of God, we Complementarians are more prone to have conversations about what women can’t do than what they can do.

I realize that for many wives, investment in ministry with their husband is expressed in a myriad meaningful, yet invisible ways. Prayer, encouragement, hospitality and keeping the homes fires burning are all vital ways of providing complementary help. It seems that the Apostle Peter's wife was this kind of pastor's wife. We know that she traveled with Peter, which must have been very costly to their family, but we don't hear anything more of her except that Peter saw her as a 'co-heir in the gracious gift of life.' ( 1 Pet 3:7) She might have been invisible but she was certainly invested. 

However, there was another pastor's wife called Priscilla in the early church. Aquila and his wife Priscilla had a church that met in their house. (1 Cor 16:19) They also owned a business together that employed Paul during his tent-making years and were ministry companions with him on his apostolic travels. When Paul left them to care for the church in Corinth, both Priscilla and Aquila brought the young preacher Apollos into their home and taught him the way of God more adequately. (Acts 19) They were a formidable team, but Priscilla was more visible and vocal than Peter's wife. 

A spacious complementarity avoids gender stereo-typing, making room for both Peter's wife and Aquila's wife on a team. Some wives are happier playing a supporting role behind the scenes and they should be honored as such. Other wives may have more visible gifts of leadership, administration, speaking, worship leading or prophecy, and they should be celebrated rather than held at arms length in case their gifting makes men feel insecure. We need to avoid a patriarchal view of women that caricatures women as weak and resists their strength as un-submissive.  

The key though, is to find how husbands and wives can complement each other as a team. Again, Lewis speaks of the mutual submission and synergy between him and his wife in vivid terms. "For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was Joy not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more. If we had never fallen in love we should have none the less been always together, and created a scandal."

Complementary Rhythms

A shift towards greater synergy cannot be done out of obligation. It must be done out of conviction and felt need, because it is costly to all parties involved. However, if there is sufficient motivation, here is how we have pursued it as a team at Southlands. This is by no means prescriptive to any church or eldership team. It is how we function at this point in time with our wives and may be a good place for you to start.

a. Prayer together for the church. Finding a regular opportunity to share and pray for people and situations that are praise-worthy or burdensome is a great place to start for husbands and wives.  Although a wife may not necessarily feel burdened for the church in the same way as her husband, she can empathize and help with the burden in the same way that a husband can empathize with and help his pregnant wife while not carrying the baby himself. Prayer together halves our burdens and doubles our joy, honestly.   

 b. Counseling married couples together. In some ways this is obvious. An elder counseling married couples by himself may be able to offer wisdom but will not be nearly as effective as when he is with his wife. The ability to share their own personal challenges and lessons in their marriage as well as have a wife’s unique perspective will generally serve to untangle difficult marriage situations much more effectively.

c. Providing perspective on major decisions. Our elders meet together every week to discuss and pray for pastoral, operational and visionary matters in the life of the church. Every second week our wives meet together with us. This is costly, especially for those with young families or busy careers, but proves effective in maintaining team chemistry and building a culture of shared ownership within the church. Beyond this it has proved invaluable in hearing our wives perspective, often intuitive and sometimes strategic, as we seek God on significant decisions we face as elders. Our wives have never assumed the role of governing the church, but we are aware that on many occasions they have had wisdom from God that has greatly enhanced our ability to make wise decisions for the sake of the church.

d. Public Mothering moments in a meeting. At times there are moments in a gathering that seem more appropriate for a mother’s voice than a father’s voice, just like some songs are better led by a woman than a man. Giving room for an elder’s wife to speak on marriage and parenting from a women’s point of view, do a call to worship, or to share on an aspect of God’s character like selflessness, faithfulness, or kindness. This may include prayer or prophecy or a word of encouragement that causes the church to feel the wisdom and tenderness of a mother.

 The proof of the pudding is in the eating

We are in the process of adopting a church that comes from an Egalitarian denomination to become a Southlands community. Our Complementarian position was one of their sticking points until they met our elder's wives, saw how strongly invested they were in the church and observed how their voices and ministries were celebrated as an integral part of our leadership team. I was saddened to hear their impression of Complementarian churches was that women were kept as silent servants in the background, rather than empowered to be vital ministers in the life of God's family. At the end of the day, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. A Complementarian view of men and women should give dignity to both men and women and produce synergy as they work together as a team.   

Let's ask God for his help to move us from together alone to better together.