“I alone am left” (I Kings 19:10,14)  ” have 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (19:18).

Lord, I’m the only one out here in the field doing anything worthwhile.

I’m your best hope, Lord. Mine is the best church. Our denomination is the last of the faithful.

Sheesh!

How does the Lord put up with the likes of us?

Usually I let it go, but this time I felt the pastor of that church–we’ll call him Silas–and I had sufficient history to withstand my telling him that his advertising slogan–his “church’s identity–was offensive.

“We’re going to reach Atlanta and the world for Jesus!”

In my letter–maybe I should have phoned, but that would have made it seem more urgent–I said something to the effect that, “I appreciate a challenging goal for your people, and it’s great to keep the mission of world evangelism before them. But imagine if you are pastoring a smaller church in your city (most churches in your city are smaller!) and you read that. It implies you’re going to do it all without any help from anyone else, and feels like a putdown.”

I suggested a more faithful slogan might say “We’re going to reach Atlanta and the world for Jesus by working with God’s people everywhere.”  Not as catchy or pithy, to be sure. But truer and far more responsible.

Silas was not gentle in his reply. “McKeever,” he began, always a clue that niceties are out the window. “Most of the churches around us are worshiping the status quo or struggling to keep their doors open. It does feel like we’ve got the task alone.”  He ended with a gentle reminder that I should take care of my own assignment before telling a brother how to do his.

Point well taken.

As for my friend–btw, his name isn’t Silas and his church is nowhere near Atlanta–he had never been accused of low self-esteem.  I regret to report that his super-sized ego laid a trap for him a few years down the road and caught him in its snare, bringing much of what he had accomplished into disrepute.

Defining terms.  Don’t we need a healthy ego?

My friend Jerry Clower, now in Heaven, used to say, “I’ve been accused of having an ego. I plead guilty.  My friend, go get you an ego. You’re going to be needing one in life!”

By “ego,” he meant a healthy self-esteem.

And we’re all for that.  Romans 12:3 says “For through the grace given to me, I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.”

The thing is to have a balanced self-esteem, not too weak, not too strong.  As the kid said, “I’m me and that’s good, ’cause God don’t make no junk.”

You are well-created, yes, as Psalm 139:14 says (“I am fearfully and wonderfully made”).

But you are one and only one of the Lord’s children.  You are part of a group chosen who were not mighty, not noble, not very wise, not very anything, in order that God might display His power and wisdom. “Look what I can do with nothing.”  If that offends you, take it up with Him.

But you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you (Philippians 4:13).

However, you are one part of a great team. “We who are many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:5).

Show me a football team or a baseball team where any one person–from the coach (manager) on down–thinks he is the only one doing anything, that the rest are all goof-offs, and I’ll show you trouble in the making.

You are not a one-man show. Your church is not a one-congregation missionary enterprise. You are part of a great team.

Deal with it.

God has not given you the task of reaching your city or this world all by yourself.  You were not sent as the Savior of this world.

The radio evangelist, known to every one who will read these pages, was promoting the work of his organization. I heard him say with my own little ears: “The work we are doing for Jesus Christ is the best thing He has going for him throughout the entire world.”

How’s that for a humble assessment of his ministry?

You might be surprised to know many a minister will read that and say, “He ought to feel that way. Every person ought to feel their work is the most important thing the Lord is doing throughout the world.”

It would be hard to be more wrong.

Each person should feel the work God has given them is the most important thing they can be doing for Him, yes.  But to call it “the most effective thing the Lord has going for Him” is to exalt oneself and to put down a host of brothers and sisters in Christ who are knocking themselves out–and in many cases laying down their lives–in His service.

A few weeks after that radio evangelist made his audacious claim, he self-destructed.  His ego brought him down and his ministry quickly became a shell of its former self. Everything about that is sad, and I regret needing to mention it. “Pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before stumbling” (Proverbs 16:18).

Even the Apostle Paul did not make such a claim.

Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase” (I Corinthians 3:6).  He added, “So then neither the one who planted nor the one who waters is anything; but God who causes the growth.”

No one is indispensable to the work of Jesus Christ except the Savior alone.

No disciple, no preacher, and no church does this work alone.  No congregation of any size–not a Prestonwood or Bellevue or Vintage or Willowcreek or Calvary Chapel or Shady Grove Number Two or Shiloh Number Four–has been handed the assignment to reach the world alone.

The Lord was smarter than that.

Not only is it impossible for one congregation to evangelize the world, saying you’re going to do it is impractical and silly. It’s an insult to the Lord who planned that all His children would work together (see John 17:21) as well as to the ones out there in forgotten fields who are laboring faithfully under hard circumstances with miniscule resources.

Someone asked Billy Graham another of those dumb questions of which he fielded plenty, “Do you believe you are the Lord’s most favored servant, the one doing the greatest work?”  It was all he could do to give a straight answer. “Oh no,” he replied. “God alone knows that.  I think sometimes His most faithful servant might be some little lady serving in some unknown place doing work seen only by Him and a few other people.  We will leave that to the Lord.” (Going from memory here; not an exact quote.)

Driving down a side street in Jackson, Mississippi, one day, I was amused to see a tiny residence that had been turned into an office for an insurance agency.  The sign out front read, “World Insurance Company.”  The very idea, I thought.  A tiny frame building, a single little agency, and they’re going to insure the world!

No one can fault the ambition of the agent who started that company. But unless he is tied in with some larger organization, his is an exercise in folly.

“All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

There is a sense in which every church of any size could post a sign out front identifying itself as “reaching the world.”

They’re just not going to do it alone.