But it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant. (Matthew 20:26)

Many years ago while in my first post-seminary pastorate, I pulled up to my church office one day to see a car in the parking lot with an intriguing name on its door. “Dare to be Great.”

I wondered if that were a company or if someone wanted to say that line to the world so much they had magnetic signs printed up for their car doors.

The car pulled off and I was left wondering.

Then, a few weeks later, I began to hear of a sales movement that had that as its name and mantra:”Dare to be great.” People were aggressively signing up their friends to sell some kind of “greatness programs” for thousands of dollars. Those who signed up were entitled to sign up others.

It did not require a Ph.D. to figure out someone was running a Ponzi scheme here, and that’s what it was. Eventually, the Florida team that put it together had their mansions and planes and bank accounts confiscated by the feds and were carted off to prison.

I confess to being disappointed that the idea of greatness these people were promoting was strictly financial. Furthermore, their definition of greatness involved manipulating and using more and more people beneath them. Eventually, as happens with all such pyramid schemes, all the “little people”–that is, those late to the ball–were left holding the bag.

Jesus said, “He who would be great among you should be your servant.”

Here are three fascinating things about that statement….

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Every pastor I know worries about the newcomer to his church. Will he/she receive a warm welcome or be frozen out as an intruder.

What started me thinking about this was something Elizabeth Gilbert said in her book, “Eat Pray Love.” As a farm boy, I was intrigued by this.

When I was growing up, my family kept chickens. We always had about a dozen or so of them at any given time and whenever one died off–taken away by a hawk or fox or by some obscure chicken illness–my father would replace the lost hen. He’d drive to a nearby poultry farm and return with a new chicken in a sack. The thing is, you must be very careful when introducing a new chicken to the general flock.

You can’t just toss it in there with the old chickens, or they will see it as an invader. What you must do instead is to slip the new bird into the chicken coop in the middle of the night while the others are asleep. Place her on a roost beside the flock and tiptoe away. In the morning, when the chickens wake up, they don’t notice the newcomer, thinking only, “She must have been here all the time since I didn’t see her arrive.” The clincher of it is, awaking within this flock, the newcomer herself doesn’t even remember that she’s a newcomer, thinking only, “I must have been here the whole time.”

And that, Elizabeth Gilbert writes, is how she came to India, which is the point of her barnyard story.

What a pity we pastors can’t slip new church members into the flock that way. Bring them in at midnight, add their names to the rolls, make them members of the finance committee or choir, then slip out and hope no one notices they are new and different.

There is, however, a great way that is probably just as effective in incorporating newcomers into the Lord’s congregation.

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The football team had not won a game all year. The coach comes in and finds the team arguing. “What’s going on here?” “Oh nothing much, coach. We were just discussing which one of us is likely to win the Most Valuable Player award for the conference this year.”

The company vice-president crawled the sales manager for low sales last month. Unless something is done, heads are going to roll. A half-hour later, the sales manager walks in on his sales staff right in the middle of a brouhaha. “What are you arguing about?” he asks. “Not a big thing,” one of the men says. “We were wondering which one of us is up for Salesman of the Year.”

The Lord Jesus arrived at Capernaum and entered the house where He and the disciples stayed. Now that He had them aside from the crowd, the Lord had a question for them.

“What were you discussing among yourselves back down the road?”

As if He didn’t know.

No one said a word.

What this ragtag bunch of disciples had been discussing was which one of them was the greatest. Who would be given the place of highest honor in the new thing Jesus was planning. Who was the MVP.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Consider the context of this little incident.

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My friend Bob says, “There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can’t.”

I suppose there must be a million variations of that joke. However, this is not meant as a joke but a serious commentary on modern church life: There are three kinds of people in every worship service: the browsers, the customers, and the shareholders. Nothing tells the story on us like identifying our group.

Briefly, the browsers say, “Nothing for me, thanks. We’re just looking.”

The customers say, “We come to this church because we like the music/youth/Bible/whatever program.”

And the shareholders say, “This is my church. It depends on my faithfulness.”

Let’s explore these a little deeper and see if we can figure out a way to move people through the labyrinth into the last category.

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It sounds so good to call ourselves perfectionists. We have higher standards than others. We go for excellence. We don’t tolerate mistakes. Nothing mediocre about us. Nosirree. Only the best is good enough for us and our Lord.

It sounds good but it may be as self-destructive as anything you can do to yourself.

We are not capable of perfection. Maybe in typing a letter or baking a blueberry pie, we are. But not in a single one of the really big issues of life.

Men, you cannot be a perfect son, brother, husband, or father.

Women, you will never be a perfect daughter, sister, wife, or mother.

The pastor cannot be a perfect shepherd of God’s flock. The church member will never fulfill his/her duties perfectly.

A major factor of human existence which you and I must take into consideration in every aspect of life is the flaw in us.  We are flawed.  You are a sinner; I am a sinner. We were, we are, and we will continue to be so long as we live on this earth.

As if that’s not bad enough, we live in a fallen world. Among other things, that means that everyone else is in the same situation as we. “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10, quoting Psalm 14:3 and 53:3).

When Isaiah was given a clear glimpse of himself, he saw two things that rocked him to his core: he was a man of “unclean lips,” meaning an unworthy heart; and what must have been infinitely more depressing to him, everyone around him was in the same boat (Isaiah 6:5).

We are all failures in life. Starting with the first couple who arrived on this planet fresh from the Father’s hands, no one has earned all A’s in righteousness on the divine report card. As God said to the Babylonian king, “You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27).

That’s true of all of us. We have all “sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

So, where did this inner yearning to be perfect come from? And, isn’t it a noble thing to strive for the best we can give, to hit a standard of excellence?

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Somewhere in this vast assemblage of articles I’ve written over these years of blogging is one with this same title. The difference is that the earlier one was written before I knew what I was talking about. Only at the age of 70 and above is one legally entitled to speak of “growing old.”

I’m now entitled.

In his book by this title, Garson Kanin, a well-known playwright, told how Pablo Picasso walked into a hall where a massive display of his paintings was being exhibited. The artist strode into the gathering with a beautiful young woman on each arm and a smile on his countenance.

Someone approached him and after the greeting, said, “Sire, I have a question. There is something about your painting that puzzles me.”

The man pointed out that in Picasso’s first paintings, done when he was a young man, the scenes are dark and formal and according to all the standards. But, he said, “The paintings of your latter years are alive and colorful and so youthful! How do you explain that?”

Picasso said, “Oh, it takes a long time to become young.”

And that, as I say, was the title of Kanin’s book (which incidentally, I heartily recommend. It’s been around for some years so can be bought online for a pittance at any used book source. My favorite is www.alibris.com.)

What started me thinking of this today was that an online friend said, “You seem to be 30 or 40 years old,” and not the proverbial three-score-and-ten.

Now, I know flattery when I hear it and eat it up with gusto! But still. I look back at my life and realize that in many respects I have become younger than when I was in my 20s and 30s.

How does that happen?

The 92nd Psalm has the answer.

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I would to God that whether in a short or long time, not only you, but also all who hear me this day, might become such as I am, except for these chains. (Acts 26:29)

Lately, I’ve caught myself saying something similar.

“How are you feeling?” people ask me. I suppose they expect that at my seriously advanced age–I turned 70 last March, something that snuck up on me and took me totally by surprise; I had expected to be 30 again!–that I’m down in my back with the lumbago or something appropriate to the elderly. Rheumatiz?

What is lumbago? Anyway, I’m glad to say I don’t have it.

In fact, as well as I can figure, I don’t have anything. I feel great.

I’m certain it’s meant as a blessing and not as bragging, but periodically I hear myself saying, “I wish everyone in the world felt as good as I do.”

That’s true. I cannot remember the last ache or pain I had.

My wife lives with constant pain. Her arthritis and fibromyalgia keep her in constant pain. My 94-year-old mother says she hardly has a pain-free day. All around me friends of every age struggle with various ailments.

I wish they all felt good. I sincerely wish they were as painfree as I am and have been for year.

But Paul had something more in mind that just the absence of aches and pains when he told King Agrippa in his Caesarean court that except for the chains, he wished all people to be such as he was.

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(This was written for Baptist Press recently.)

New Orleans artist Sherry Francalancia has been making the rounds asking local artists for their handprints on a work she is producing. The painting symbolizes this city, Sherry says. So many people have left permanent imprints on our lives for the better.

Think of that painting as a metaphor for New Orleans in its post-Katrina existence. Over the five years since that hurricane made landfall causing the poorly constructed levees to flood the city, untold thousands of God’s people have come from the ends of the earth to bless New Orleans.

A recent ad for a law firm seeking clients in a class action suit against BP began: “When Hurricane Katrina devastated our part of the world, Louisiana stood alone.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. We were inundated with friends from every direction.

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