"Life by a Thousand Cuts"

In one of the many novels I've read, I came across the expression, "death by a thousand cuts."

The expression describes a failure that is the result of many small problems.

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In Dr. Richardson's eNews video a few weeks ago, the final section of the video mentioned a learning he took away from a recent seminar/workshop he attended on, I think, personal discipleship.

I was touched.

Kevin's eyes lit up and there seemed to be an enlivened tone in his voice.

He talked about hearing of the concept of the "primary receiver," which is a football term.

In every football pass play there is intentionality. By design, one player is the quarterback's first choice. The quarterback can only look at one receiver at a time. The primary receiver is the player who gets the quarterback's primary attention.

In discipleship, having a primary receiver means you focus your primarily attention on one person in your discipling efforts.

(Dr. Richardson's explanation of this is much more concise and helpful than mine.)

As enthusiastic as Kevin's explanation for the concept of the primary receiver is, I don't buy it.

It's not the life Jesus taught, as I read the Gospels.

As we, here, focus our lives on the teachings of Jesus, instead of identifying a primary receiver, we see, in every moment of our lives, an opportunity to reveal Christ's love to any and every person we meet...

...and we don't care how insignificant the "cut," or the act of love or mercy may be.

I believe that a significant factor in the growth of the Kingdom in the New Testament era is that EVERY believer functioned as a Kingdom priest.

As a result, the world of unrepenting people was receiving multiple cuts because all of those early Kingdom priests we all "cutting" many times every day.

And, people were drawn to Christ through the many acts of love and mercy they received from Jesus followers.

"Life by a thousand cuts."

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It seems to me that Kevin's Primary Receiver concept can work, but not in today's CGGC. It works for people gifted by Christ to be apostles and evangelists.

The problem with promoting the Primary Receiver concept anywhere in the CGGC is that, excuse me for sounding like a broken record, the Shepherd Mafia has driven nearly all of the apostles and evangelists out of the body.

I can't see Kevin, for example, with his shepherd gifting, and all of the time he spends attending meetings and doing managerial work in his office, adding many souls to the Kingdom by making an occasional toss to his primary receiver.

Even with his gifting and schedule, he could do an occasional cut among the people of the world.

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We need to deconstruct the CGGC parish priesthood and hierarchy and empower all of our people to be priests so we can, through our vibrant and universal priesthood, draw people into the Kingdom--to life by a thousand cuts.

To do this, we must do a 180 turn from the fallen ways we've been practicing for about 80 years.

We must change our ways.

We must repent.