"Do your job"

I have a coworker whom I have often heard use this phrase in frustration when he hangs up the phone after talking to someone. "Do your damn job!" he'll say with feeling. It's kind of funny. He apparently has wanted to inform several people (or, maybe, one person many times) that this is their responsibility. Implied in his exclamation is "Do your job, so I can do mine."

This phrase came to mind after I heard Christian's teaching at church yesterday. Christian gave an impassioned teaching on evangelism. I'm sure that you can get it the VCF Barn site later this week, so I won't review the whole thing, but I found it unusual because it was so very personal. Christian didn't just give a theoretical discussion of why we should tell people about the Gospel; he clearly talked about his own passion for and struggle with evangelism. In his teaching I clearly heard from him "I need to share the Gospel more; we need to share the Gospel more."

The teaching was also unusual in that I didn't feel guilty while listening to it. See, evangelism and I have a long and not very pleasant history. In fact, when I first heard teachings at the Barn (in the early '90s) on evangelism, it was a trigger that started me into a long, terrible depression. I know that it wasn't the cause of my depression, but it was a trigger. So it was fairly remarkable that I wasn't overcome with guilt while listening to this teaching.

Instead, I felt affirmed in something that I have felt for a while: that bringing people in to the church isn't my job. However, I love to talk and teach about the fundamentals of the faith, so part of my job is to teach young or not-quite believers. So I was led to pray that the Father would send laborers into the harvest so that I would have some to teach. In other words, I prayed that the Father would help other people to do their job, so that I could do mine.