9
Ambitious for the Church
AMBITION FINDS EXPRESSION IN
A SURPRISING PLACE

What would compel a man to go to the following lengths to “force” himself into a church?

I well remember how I joined the church after my conversion. I forced myself into it by telling the minister, who was lax and slow, after I had called four or five times and could not see him, that I had done my duty. And if he did not see me, I would call a church meeting myself and tell them I believed in Christ, and ask them if they would have me.¹

Okay, so “lax and slow” I understand. I’ve had more of those days than I care to admit. Just today I asked my secretary to investigate why my new cell phone hadn’t been ringing for days. She asked me if the mute button was on. It was. These things come with mute buttons?

I know lax and slow.

But how do you live down almost refusing Charles Spurgeon membership in your church? (Yes, those are Spurgeon’s words quoted above.) I think that’s a memory you just permanently delete—then you make sure your secretary doesn’t find out.

But the focus here isn’t the lax and slow pastor; it’s the earnest young man trying to join the church. The man who would become known as “the prince of preachers” was repeatedly rebuffed in his attempts to join a church. But Spurgeon wouldn’t be deterred—and he was no fool.

You might say, “Of course Spurgeon was interested in the church. After all, didn’t he want to be a minister?” But this experience and his ambition for the church came before he ever pursued being a pastor.

When it came to the church, apparently Charles Spurgeon was neither lax nor slow. He understood something many Christians miss today: God’s purpose for our ambition is connected to the local church.

It may seem as if we’ve taken some unexpected turns in this book in our exploration of ambition. And this may seem the oddest turn of all: I believe every Christian’s ambition must include meaningful participation in the local church.

Why Is Ambition for the Church Important?

We’ve talked a lot in this book about aligning our ambition with God’s purposes. Christ has rescued us from our lifestyle of gloryhoarding. Now we’re free to prize what he values and to pursue what he treasures. So if Christ tells us what his goals are, we’d better listen up.

When we do, we discover something that might be surprising: Christ didn’t come just to save sinners; he came to build a community of saved sinners. They’re called the church. Ambition for the church isn’t particular to Charles Spurgeon. His vision is simply an echo of the great salvation plan of the Savior.

CHRIST’S AMBITION IS FOR THE CHURCH

In Matthew 16, Jesus grants his disciples a peek into the future: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18).

As we read these words, we’re listening in on a pivotal conversation. Peter has just made the ultimate confession on behalf of the disciples: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). In response, Jesus informs Peter that this understanding of Christ’s identity was not an original thought with Peter—the heavenly Father had revealed it to him. The content of Peter’s confession had colossal implications for the future of all believers. When Christ says, “I will build my church,” he isn’t just letting his followers in on his future plans. He’s giving the resolution to the relational catastrophe that occurred way back in the fall of man.

Sin separates. That was the first and most devastating effect in Eden—alienation from God followed by conflict between man and woman. Sin corrupts creation and destroys relationships. But the Old Testament resounds with the promise that division and estrangement would not always define God’s people: “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33).

In other words, a new covenant was coming, one that would restore us to God and bind us to one another in love and truth. Those set apart to experience this supernatural grace would be called “my people”—the church. This is the promise Christ is fulfilling when he says, “I will build my church.”

So the church represents Christ’s reconciled people. As we live in community, we exalt Christ’s purposes. Though sin once isolated us, the cross now unifies us. As citizens of a new kingdom and members of the household of God (Eph. 2:19), we’re no longer merely individuals, concerned only with ourselves. We’re now “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9). We’re the church universal, the sum total of all the redeemed everywhere for all time.

The individual Christian simply cannot understand
his ambition in purely individual terms.

Christ’s promise introduces us to a radical, countercultural idea: the satisfaction of individual ambition is linked to our collective identity as the people of God. The individual Christian simply cannot understand his purpose, and therefore his ambition, in purely individual terms.

This community Christ is building is something he loves—and not in a merely abstract way. He cherishes it as a husband cherishes his wife. He prizes it as his greatest possession. And he pursues it, even to the point of sacrificing his own life for the church—for us.

If Christ displayed such a love and ambition for the church, shouldn’t we also? Should we not prize and pursue that which Jesus himself prizes and pursues? Shouldn’t our ambition be modeled after his?

Sure, we say, but what does this look like on the ground? The reality of the universal church is a wonderful, profound truth. It is glorious and grand. And it’s easy to let it stay out there with all those other great, inspiring, abstract ideas, like justice, beauty, the wellbehaved child, and the empty in-box. But Christ is talking about real people, in real community. That’s why we must move beyond abstraction and learn to love a specific local church.

Simply put, anyone who claims to be a part of the universal church must express that identification in a local church community. Edmund Clowney describes the local church this way: “The church is the form that Christ has appointed for the community of those who confess his name; in the church alone, the body of Christ is made visible in this world.”² Suppose I told you I love Scotland. In fact, I love Scotland so much that I change my name to Dave McHarvey, begin speaking in a rich Scottish brogue, wear a kilt, and learn to play the bagpipes at parties. My friends might suspect I’ve left earth for unknown planets, but it’s no matter to me, I love Scotland.

Naturally you would ask me, “So how many times have you been to Scotland?”

“I’ve never actually been there,” I reply. “But I’ve heard a lot about it and read about it. I’m really quite fond of it.”

“Do you have friends who are Scottish?”

“Not exactly, but I hear they’re cool.”

“Have you ever done anything for the Scottish people?”

“Nope, never had time. Life’s busy. Besides, my love for Scotland is a private, personal thing. It exists in my heart. I don’t ask anything of any Scots, and they don’t require anything of me. Things would get too complicated if I had to deal with the people. I just love the idea of Scotland!”

There’s no way you’d agree I had a genuine love for Scotland. Yet it’s not uncommon for Christians to speak in a similar manner about their love for the church, their belief in the church, even the priority of the church—all while having little to no meaningful involvement with the church.

The reality is, the only way we can express a love for the universal church is to be tangibly involved in the local church. Yep, that might mean the church you’re thinking about right now, the one that meets in an old brick building or the local school’s gym, where the people can sometimes be a little annoying and the music too loud. A local church.

Those very people—the Christians in your town who sometimes delight and sometimes annoy you—are part of what Christ is talking about when he says, “I will build my church.” If our ambition is to align with Christ’s, we must be ambitious for our local church.

OUR AMBITION FOR THE CHURCH IS TOO OFTEN
“LAX AND SLOW”

When I was growing up, my neighborhood was a community. If I did something wrong, I was yelled at by six neighbors before going home to be yelled at by my parents. But I knew they were all looking out for me. I was one of them, and they wanted to make sure I stayed that way. One time a neighborhood mom talked the police out of taking me away because of some, umm, “mischief.” Her reasoning was unassailable; I was “one of the neighborhood boys.” (And she didn’t even like me.)

Things nowadays are different. Our sense of community has been largely lost, or maybe overwhelmed by the power of self. We’re a culture committed to self-fulfillment, self-expression, self-esteem, self-preservation— self, self, self. “To a great majority of Americans,” says David Wells, “self has become the source of all values. The pursuit of self is what life is all about.”³

The pursuit of self-spirituality has replaced the idea
of Christianity in community.

The church didn’t escape the tornado of individualism that swept through our world. The winds of “I, me, and mine” pummeled evangelicalism, leaving a landscape of private, personal, customized faith. The pursuit of self-spirituality—a highly personalized vision for religious quest—replaced the idea of Christianity in community.

This sets us up for the mirage of virtual community. The virtual community in its rapidly mutating forms feeds on self in two ways: it’s a logical outlet for individual spirituality and also a primary shaper in how we view relationships with others. In the online world it’s possible to have at least some sense of what we call “church.” We can listen to the best sermons on the planet, listen and sing to cutting-edge worship music, share our spiritual experiences, organize our religious activities—all without ever getting out of bed. In fact, the only things that have yet to be replicated online are the fundamental sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, though I’m sure somebody somewhere is trying to figure that out.

Last summer we rented a place at the beach for a few weeks, and I did some writing there. While there, I met a Christian surfer who invited me to a surfers’ Bible study on the beach. It was cool—and the first time I ever heard the word gnarly used in a message. About forty or so young people were there, turning out to study God’s Word. That was truly gnarly, but was it a local church?

Today many groups unite around a common interest, sprinkle in some Scripture, and view it as their church. My surfer Bible study was a mixed bag. Some were involved in local churches and saw this as a great way to connect with other surfer believers and reach out. But I know that for a few there, this was their “church.”

I think that happens a lot today for some believers. Rather than fostering a Christianity lived out in the church, some Christians unintentionally replace the church and encourage detachment. That’s not biblical Christianity. And it’s certainly not gnarly.

An individualized faith makes us “lax and slow” regarding the local church. We’re like choir members who don’t see any real point in actually standing together and singing the same music. Instead we mill about, occasionally forming duets or trios, but the power and passion of the entire ensemble is never heard. And the cause of Christ suffers for it. Joshua Harris calls it “dating the church.”⁴ Donald Whitney calls those who do it “spiritual hitchhikers”; they want “all the benefits but no responsibility; all take and no give; no accountability, just a free ride.”⁵ They’re really just drifting.

As a pastor, I’ve seen my share of spiritual hitchhikers. My heart always goes out to them. Bundled with dreams but lacking Christ’s ambition for the church, they’re ever traveling, never building.

It’s not that their lives don’t bear fruit. Trees can bear fruit under all kinds of conditions. My neighbor once planted a fig tree in the only small patch of dirt available on our shared driveway. It spit figs on my car like an old trucker with a good dip. Trees and Christians share that similarity—they can bear fruit in almost any space. But the most fruitful Christian life is one spent loving the local church.

The New Testament declares the essential place of the local church in the Christian life:

• The very first believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. . . . And all who believed were together” (Acts 2:42, 44).

• Teaching and preaching were experienced publicly. Timothy, as a pastor, was commanded to devote himself “to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13).

• Believers were exhorted “to meet together . . . encouraging one another” (Heb. 10:25).

• They were repeatedly called to “serve one another” (Gal. 5:13; 1 Pet. 4:10).

All this was possible because Christ’s passion became their ambition. People gather around their passions. If our passion is the church, the church is where we’ll gather.

Join the Church Jesus Loves

It’s no secret that churches are filled with sinners. Yep, it’s true. Your pastor, a sinner. Your Sunday school teacher or small group leader, a sinner. The person writing this book and the one reading it, both sinners. Though redeemed by saving grace, the church won’t be perfect, because it’s a community of sinners. As you apply your ambition to be part of a local church, you can be sure you’ll see flaws.

But that’s not the point, is it? Ambition for the church compels us to join our imperfect self with other imperfect selves to form an imperfect community—all for the glory of God.

If you’re already a part of a local church, I want to commend you for that. But if you’re like one of my surfer friends who has an epiphany as he’s carving an epic wave—“Dude, I gotta find a church!”—let me offer some brief pastoral advice for what to look for in a church you would consider joining.

What are the church’s values and vision? What does the church teach? Is it sound, biblical doctrine? Is the gospel at the heart of what the church is about? And how is this doctrine applied in the church’s values and vision? Does the church practice what it preaches?

When we join a church, we don’t join a static organization. We join a people heading in a direction. It’s good to know what that direction is.

How is the church pastored and governed? Is the governing structure of the church one that can be supported by the Scriptures? Are the leaders (elders or pastors) qualified to hold the positions they have, based on the biblical qualifications found in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9? Are the teaching, preaching, and pastoral care of the church done with faithful and gracious application rooted in the hope of the gospel and consistent with God’s Word?

Our lives are profoundly influenced by the leaders of our churches. Our confidence is in God, but we should also have confidence in his delegated leadership.

Is there true fellowship among the people? Do you see evidence that membership in the church goes beyond attendance at meetings and acts of service? Though these are important, church membership should lead to developing relationships and deepening fellowship. Each person should find a spiritual family and home in the church (Heb. 10:24–25).

Does the gospel move the church toward those outside the church? A great evidence of a good church is that they see beyond themselves. We don’t turn inward and construct church cocoons. Nope, the Great Commission is real, it’s potent, and it moves us toward the lost.

Those are four ways we ask visitors to evaluate our church. Notice that a lot of things we might think are important—size, worship style, socioeconomic makeup, denominational affiliation—don’t make it high on the list. I’m just trying to keep it simple for all you surfer dudes out there.

Build the Church Jesus Loves

Just adding our names to a church’s membership roster isn’t sufficient. A holy ambition for the church finds delight in building it. Joining is the entrance to the freeway, not the rest stop.

When the Lord said, “I will build my church,” it wasn’t just flowery prose. Jesus was announcing an extraordinary ambition—to remain devoted to his church and our endurance in it. His ambition must inspire our action. Being added to a church should mean we’re serving, sacrificing, sharing, connecting . . . living in a way that augments the strength and health of the church.

In today’s affluent societies, the church faces different challenges than the churches did in the New Testament. Persecution for us doesn’t come in a threat of death but in the trauma of someone not liking us because we’re Christians. It’s when coworkers don’t invite us to hang out after work.

The real danger most of us face today is not persecution but distraction. As John Piper said, “There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning.”⁶ Sometimes that great gulf swallows our ambition to build the church.

Let’s face it. Even committed, longtime church members can become lax and slow in their ambition for building the church. When church is not an ambition but only a place, the real ambitions of our lives inevitably crowd it out.

There’s nothing better to set your ambitions to
than building a good church.

There are a lot of good things Christians can build—good families, businesses, reputations, houses, memories, lifestyles. But there’s nothing better to set your ambitions to than building a good church. “Ambition that centers on the glory of God and welfare of the church,” says J. Oswald Sanders, “is a mighty force for good.”⁷ So does your involvement in your church contribute to its welfare? Do you help strengthen your church, or are you just another body that shows up on Sunday mornings? Is Sunday morning the day you get to gather with God’s people to celebrate what he’s doing and to hear what he’s saying? Or is it the day you have to get up too early, drive too far, sit too long, hear too much, then try to make it back home before the game kicks off or before the meat overcooks?

The church is “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15, NIV) in our world and the center of God’s redemptive activity. It’s the one human institution that will shine brightly throughout eternity.

If we’re going to build, let’s build the church.

Commit to the Church Jesus Loves

Have you ever met someone whose face was split with a smile because of how long they’d been members in their church? I’ve met some in my travels. In fact, we have some in our church. In fact, I’m one of them. I’ve known only two churches in my entire Christian life, and the current one has been my home for twenty-five years. I’m smiling even as I write this.

But apparently my experience isn’t the norm. It was recently reported that “Protestants are about as likely to be loyal to their toothpaste or bathroom tissue as they are to their denomination.”⁸ I must confess I’m glad no member of my church has expressed their loyalty in those terms—“Dave, I just want you to know, this church means even more to me than my toothpaste.” Gee, thanks. I wonder if there are some who like their church less than their toothpaste but more than their toilet paper? Seriously, it’s tragic if our brand loyalty trumps our loyalty to the people of God.

For a church to go forward, its members must be ambitious to commit to it over time. But commitment like this isn’t popular in our consumer culture. It’s not just that we’re mobile and therefore apt to move around more. There’s been a fundamental change in the way we relate to institutions. We see it in marriage, in the workplace, in friendships, and in how we spend our money. Sadly, we also see it vividly in the church. Choice and need have replaced sacrifice and faithfulness. The migration of believers from one church to the next has become common and expected. David Wells describes the situation: “Commitment—actual commitment, real bonds, a real sense of belonging, not just the idea of commitment— has become a precious stone, rare, much sought after and, when found, treasured.”⁹ I want to be careful here. I realize that if you use the evaluation criteria I suggested above for finding a church to join, you might find your local church lacking in some significant ways. If that’s the case, please consider talking graciously with your church leaders to see if they think these issues are important. I’m acutely aware of where my own church needs to grow and change. It benefits me, as a pastor, to have faithful church members communicate where we might do better, especially in areas where our proclamation and application of the gospel are concerned.

If you’re in a church where the gospel is not central and biblical doctrine and practice are not pursued, perhaps you should consider finding a more biblically founded church. But please don’t be divisive or rebellious toward those who lead the church or who want to remain there. Division in the church and disrespect of church leadership are roundly condemned in the Scriptures (1 Cor. 1:10; 3:3; 11:18–23; Titus 3:10; 1 Thess. 5:12) and must not find their way into our words or actions.

But I’m going to assume your church, while not perfect, is solid and deserves your biblical commitment. You see, every believer eventually begins to ask, “Should I stay or should I go?” These are the defining moments in church membership.

When a culture moves self to the center,
ambitions entrench in the individual,
not in the church.

Churches change and grow over time, which is exactly what they should do. Some churches even go through significant upheaval. There isn’t a church mentioned in the New Testament that didn’t know some problem testing its members. My church is much different in size and feel than when I first came. Same gospel—different programs, needs, and priorities. Challenges and changes like this should not constitute an automatic call from God to leave.

Unfortunately, it’s here in our church commitment where selfish ambition can do real damage. John Calvin once wrote, “Ambition has been, and still is, the mother of all errors, of all disturbances and sects.”¹⁰ This is a provocative statement we should ponder. Calvin in his day saw selfish ambition as the origin of errors, church conflicts, and people separating. How much more that must be true in today’s culture of self. When a culture moves self to the center, ambitions entrench in the individual, not in the church. “My need” becomes the rising sun that shrivels and scorches “our church” until it’s brittle and lifeless.

When personal ambitions are frustrated in a church, Christians tend to either depart or drift. We need to fight against both tendencies.

I’m not saying you should stay in a dying church out of blind devotion to an institution. I’m talking about a heart posture that sees beyond the end of some tradition you hold dear, or the departure of a favorite leader, or the failure of a church to go a direction you think it should. I’m talking about impassioned devotion to remain in a gospel-centered church that’s so cutting-edge it loves the old, old story. A church humble enough to be semper reformanda—always being reformed by the Spirit. I’m talking about a vision for local church longevity. One that sees membership as more than “meeting my needs” or “petting my doctrine”; one with a burning passion to bring the lost and the next generation into the gospel, then into the church.

Remain in the Church Jesus Loves

There’s a disease infecting believers in many churches. When it goes undetected, it often results in disappointed believers departing for greener pastures. It’s called My-Church-Is-for-My-Ministry. The church is for ministry, but this infection carries the deadly “me” virus. Once we ingest it, what we do becomes more important than what we believe or where we are.

The psalmist discovered something eternally precious: “For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps. 84:10). A day in the right house is better than three years anywhere else. And being a lowly doorkeeper in the house of God is better than position or comforts elsewhere. I heard one guy capture the point well: “What you’re a part of is more important than the part you play.”

Shifting the accent from “my part” to “what I’m a part of” stirs ambition for the church. Free from the tyranny of managing the memaniac, we can savor the fruit that accompanies the doorkeeper’s devotion: first in, last to leave.

When their personal ambitions are frustrated in one church, Christians turn to another for a better bargain. But life’s never easier when there’s no ambition to hang on and hang around.

I thought about that when I read Randy’s letter. Randy was a member of our church for several years. He was also a student at a local seminary. Randy had dreams for impact, and he was anxious to see his gifts applied to those dreams. He joined our church, but as time went on he felt his gifts were undervalued and his ambitions would never be satisfied there. So he did what seemed right in light of his personal vision. He left.

Ten years later, an envelope was sitting on my desk with the following letter inside. Randy encouraged me to freely use it as a lesson for others.

Dear Dave,

This letter is my heartfelt apology to you and the other leaders at the church. . . . Perhaps it may be of use to help someone else.

I attended the church all during my first year of seminary. I attended the special events, the commitment classes, the leadership opportunities, the evangelism training, the small groups, etc. In my mind I was sold out. In reality . . . ?

The next year, when it was time to do my pastoral internship for seminary, the leaders at church felt I should wait on God’s timing to raise me up. In retrospect it was godly advice. Yet my response was not to wait. Instead I felt hurt and grieved over their decision. I now see it was my own pride and nothing else that caused me to leave the fellowship.

One year later my wife became involved with someone else, and I became a senior in seminary, a single parent to a seven-year-old daughter, and we eventually divorced. What a time in my life to be without real community and fellowship.

I now pastor a small rural church. God is having to cram life lessons in me that I should have learned years ago. It is not often pleasant, but I’m grateful that he has never abandoned me, and I’m learning how to embrace the pain and accept his faithful afflictions. I am now remarried to a godly woman and we have two other children. In my first year and a half here as pastor, we grew to about ninety folks. It took about two years for people to really grasp the concept of commitment to Christ as expressed through commitment to fellowship. But now people understand, and we have settled in at about forty folks. Only by God’s miracles of provision are we surviving.

I recently had to ask one of our small group leaders to step down. He was “lording his authority over the flock.” It was and is still a sad time, since this brother is my friend and we “ache” for the lack of servant/leaders here. My friend and his wife have chosen to leave the fellowship rather than work it out. I am now ministering to his small group and others hurt by the effects of unbridled ego in leadership. And, I see now firsthand the wisdom of the leaders in the church to ask me to “wait on God to raise me up.” I am certain they saved the flock there much pain that would have been caused at the expense of my ego.

So, guys, thanks for exercising wisdom. I apologize to you. I am sorry for my pride which prevented me from seeing your motivation. I’m sorry for my arrogance. I am sorry for the accusations I made. I am sorry for the lack of trust I put in God to speak correction into my life through you. But most of all, I’m sorry for the friendships in Christ with you and others that I have missed by not waiting.

With sincere humility, I ask for your forgiveness.

What a delight it was to write Randy back, extend my forgiveness, and communicate my deepest respect for his honesty and humility. But I’ve never forgotten his regret for how selfish ambition stole precious years and fruit from his life. In mercy God rescued Randy and his ambition, but he would want me to offer his example as a warning to others. Maybe to you.

Fighting the Tendency to Drift

For many of us, departing a church is a little too radical. We have relationships to keep, kids in youth group, a good thing going overall.

Maybe we were once at the center of the action in the church. What we said had influence. Maybe we were leaders. The church needed our gifts and talents. But now? There are new folks, and they seem to get the attention. The new singer who can actually read music. The better organizer. The guy with the Bible degree. The church no longer does the things we’re good at or for which we have vision. Now we’re just “one of the folks.” Yet we don’t want to pull up stakes and go—after all, why take the risk of starting all over? So we just drift, going with the flow.

It’s a flow that will inevitably take us to the fringe of the church— out beyond where we should be.

The writer of Hebrews comes at drift pretty hard: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (10:24–25). This writer is concerned that over time, some are growing cold to the church and its meetings. They neglect meeting together. Drifting toward the fringe becomes a habit. So everything in this exhortation works against drift. This passage commands us to cultivate other habits to fight the tendency to drift. In view of eternal realities, we need to draw toward the church even more, not less.

Drifters don’t always know they’re drifting.

Drifters don’t always know they’re drifting. Like the person at the beach floating on the raft, unaware the tide is taking him out to sea, we don’t see what’s happening. So we need each other. We need to stir up one another to love and good works, and to encourage one another, and to sharpen our shared commitment with a vision for the eternal value of the church of which we’re a part.

“The Church is essential to the Christian,” Elton Trueblood says, “not because it brings him personal advancement or even inspiration, but because, with all its failures, it is an indispensable instrument for the redemption of the world.”¹¹ Whenever something or someone we love fails us, we experience that failure as a deep pain. If we love the church dearly, we’ll be hurt when it fails. And it will fail. If you’re in a church for any length of time, you’ll experience its failure and weakness. It won’t live up to what it promises. Trusted leaders will make mistakes. Ministries we devote our lives to keeping afloat may be cut because of budget or other priority concerns. Someone we love leaves the church.

What rescues true ambition for the church is not the quality of the organization or the maturity of the people. The church belongs to Jesus Christ. It is his great ambition. And because we’re committed to Christ, it should be our great ambition as well.

Crossing the Finish Line Together

Charles Spurgeon, who led thousands to love Christ and his church, once said, “Failure at a crucial moment may mar the entire outcome of a life.”¹² If the church is the stage where the Christian life is acted out, then life’s “crucial moments” are the defining points where godly ambition is fed and selfish ambition frustrated.

As Christians, we can’t avoid these moments. They often come as tests—pass or fail. Selfish ambition will contest your ambition for the church. In those crucial moments, the outcome of a life is being forged.

I know because I’ve been there. I’ve heard the roar of my own selfish ambition demanding to be fed. But God is bigger than my sin, and he’s committed to pointing me in the right direction. It’s his power that energizes us to serve the ambition of Christ—his church.

The church is not meant to be an earthly Utopia, nor should it be confused with heaven. Rather, we’re called to honestly acknowledge and grow through the problems of church life—the imperfections, the offenses, the misunderstandings, and the glorious mission opportunities as well.

Our ambition should be higher than crossing the finish line alone. This race started when God joined us with his people. Let’s finish it the same way we started: together, in his church, for the glory of God.