Five Value Choices

It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are. Roy Disney

The Germans were not invited to the Olympic Games of 1924 in Paris, the second such snub in a row for having started the last war. The Americans won by far the most medals and the most gold medals, including three in swimming by Johnny Weissmuller, better known as Tarzan in later years. But the most fascinating story from the 1924 Games concerns the "Flying Scotsman," who refused to run on Sunday.

Eric Liddell became a household name after the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire portrayed his story and that of his fellow British Olympians. As depicted in the film, Liddell, a devout Christian and son of Scottish missionaries to China, faces a difficult decision. His best personal event is the 100-meter race, but to compete he will have to run in a heat on Sunday and thereby violate his conviction against playing sports on the Lord's Day. In spite of pressure from the British Olympic Committee and the Prince of Wales, among others, Liddell chooses not to compete in the 100 meter. On the day of the race, he is shown watching from the stands. When his friend asks, "Any regrets, Eric? You're not down there with them?" He replies, "Yeah. No doubts though."

Though he was a sprinter and not expected to excel in a longer race, Eric Liddell switches to the 400 meter, which required no running on Sunday. As he sets up on the starting line, he is handed a note that an American fellow believer has written, which reads, "It says in the Good Book, 'He that honors me, I will honor.' Good luck." Liddell wins the gold medal.

Chariots of Fire took some liberties with a few details of the 1924 Games, particularly the timeline. Eric Liddell actually knew the Olympic schedule months in advance and made his hard decision well ahead of sailing for Paris. The essential events, however, are true to history. He did give up his best shot at a gold medal to live by his convictions, and the Prince of Wales and others pressured him to reconsider. And as we all now know, he did bring home the gold against the odds.

Eric Liddell made a difficult, potentially costly, and unpopular decision, but he did so with confidence. Why? Because he had made more fundamental choices years earlier about what was most important to him in life. His values were firmly in place long before the specific decision confronted him. Liddell was in every sense a winner. Churches that win, in God's view of their purpose, likewise make difficult decisions with a courage that flows from value choices previously settled. In this chapter, we will overview five such fundamental choices, each of which is further explored in a chapter of its own.

Big choices make hard choices easier

Church leaders face all kinds of decisions. Some, like which room to use for worship practice, are constant operational decisions that manage week-to-week ministry activities. Some, like which increases and cuts to make in the budget, are regular planning decisions that shape each ministry year. Some, like whether to ask dearly loved but hopelessly divisive Jim to step off the board, are gut-wrenching, urgent decisions that arise through conflict. Still others, like whether to start a third worship service or get a larger building, are occasional strategic decisions that create long-term consequences both intended and unintended. Cutting across all of these categories is the simple spectrum of easy to hard.

There is one more group of decisions, however, that has a profound influence on all the others. This group can be reduced to a single question: what is important? Or, even more powerful: what is more important than the best alternative? More on this refinement of the question in a moment. Before going into the five big value choices, there are two pitfalls that should be flagged in the process of identifying congregational values.

The trap of paper values

Publishing a set of core values is a common practice in congregations these days. One need only peruse a custom-printed bulletin cover or an "About Us" website page to find them. Unfortunately, there are at least two major problems that render many such lists under the heading "Our Core Values" nearly useless. The first problem is that the list contains what is supposed to be important instead of what actually is important. The second problem is each item on the list is compared either to a contrasting evil or to nothing at all.

With regard to the first problem, consider Main Street Gospel Church, which proclaims "helping people find Christ" as a core value. Sunday after Sunday the congregation sings gospel songs from the era of Moody and Sankey. Regardless of the sermon topic, the preacher winds it up by asking anyone who wants to "get saved today" to walk down the aisle to find out how. The weekly bulletin devotes half a page to news from missionaries the church supports financially. However, as a result of these gospel-related activities, few non-Christians visit Main Street Gospel Church, and those few who do feel that the people there are speaking a strange religious language. This strange language seems to mean a great deal to the members of MSGC but does not help the uninitiated find Christ or even want to find him. It may, in fact, help them want to find the nearest exit.

What's wrong? Is it just a matter of updating to newer church music and language? Would these newcomers be better helped to find Christ if they heard vague phrases about Jesus put to hip-hop tunes and if the preacher—no, the "spiritual director"—said, "Give God a clap offering"? Or is the problem deeper?

What Main Street Gospel Church states as a "core value" is not what MSGC treats as important in terms of its behavior. The official list says the value is helping people find Christ. The real value is helping people who have already found Christ feel good about it and sending money overseas to those who (hopefully) are helping people find Christ. If Main Street Gospel Church actually valued helping people find Christ, it might review its language to see that it is based not on whether it contains the shibboleths of our ecclesiastical tribe but on whether it clearly and graciously explains who Christ is and how to know him personally. It might review its music not for its age or style but for how it makes guests feel about the message that it conveys.

So the first problem for a congregation to avoid, in the process of identifying its fundamental values, is simply composing an attractive list of what we might call "official...