She has no title. There was never a meeting. Nobody has ever said the sentence.
But when the room is thin, they look at her.
She noticed it properly in June, at a Sunday where there were nineteen instead of the usual thirty odd because of half term and a wedding, and the mood in the hall afterwards was low, and three separate people came to her with a version of the same thing.
Do you think we should try something.
Not to each other. To her. And she gave three thoughtful answers and did the tea and went home, and it was in the car that the actual question arrived.
When did this become mine?
She could not find a moment. There was no conversation and no appointment. What there was, going back about five years, is a slow accumulation: she is capable, and she cares, and when something needed doing she did it, and each time she did it the doing of it became slightly more hers.
Nobody was scheming. Every single one of those handovers was innocent and most of them were grateful.
And she is now, somehow, without a title and without having agreed to anything, the person who is responsible for whether that gathering grows.
She has never said this to anybody. There is no way to say it that does not sound like she wants a title, and she does not want a title, and that is the whole problem.
Not by constraint, but willingly
Sit down in that circle a minute, because Peter gives an instruction to people looking after a flock and he attaches a condition that most people read straight past.
Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind.1 Peter 5:2
Not by constraint, but willingly.
That phrase is doing something specific. It is not about how cheerful your attitude should be while you do it. Constraint means compulsion, being pressed, carrying a thing because it has come to you rather than because you took it up.
Peter is warning shepherds off a burden they did not choose, in the same breath as he tells them to feed the flock.
And of a ready mind, which is the same thought again from the other side: a mind that has actually decided, rather than a woman who looked round one day and found something in her hands.
Hear this in your own hall. You are not being asked to stop caring, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts willingly and constraint side by side in the very verse that hands out the work, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put the capability in you that everybody in that hall has been leaning on for five years.
Now let me name what happened, because nobody in that building has done anything wrong and I will not let this become a grievance.
Responsibility flows to whoever will take it, and it never announces that it is moving.
You did a thing because it needed doing. It went well. The next time, somebody thought of you first, which was a compliment. By the fifth or sixth time it was not a request any more, it was an assumption, and an assumption does not have a moment where anybody could have said no, because it was never a question.
Five years of that and there is no meeting to point at and no one to be cross with.
Hear this too, and let it land where the chairs are. You have not been quietly ambitious, and Scripture is what says so. What is written warns a shepherd off a burden that came by constraint rather than by decision, and the Spirit of God has never once handed anybody responsibility without also calling them to it.
And let me be plain, because this is where these pages go wrong. Nobody here is promising you that room will grow when you put this down, and nobody is telling you it should be growing. A gathering of thirty odd that shrank to nineteen on a half term Sunday has not failed at anything, and none of this article is about the number.
It is about who is carrying it, and about the fact that nobody ever asked you.
So this week you say it out loud to one person, and you name what you will carry.
Both halves, because the first half on its own sounds like a resignation and would frighten people, and the second half is what makes it true.
Say something like: I have ended up carrying whether this gathering grows, and I do not think anybody meant it to happen, and it is not mine to carry on my own. What I will keep doing is this, and this. And whether the room fills is not something I am able to be responsible for, and I do not think it belongs to any of us.
Say it to the one person there who is most likely to hear it without turning it into a meeting.
The written word warns a shepherd off a burden taken by constraint in the very sentence that gives out the work, and the Holy Spirit put the capability in you that everybody has been leaning on for five years, so nothing about five years of doing what needed doing was ever you grasping at anything.
You never took this. It arrived, one innocent handover at a time, and nobody noticed, including you until a Sunday in June. What arrives without a conversation can be put down with one.
Declare this over yourself
Say these in the hall with the chairs half out. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit put that capability in you according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of what other people handed you. Whether that room fills or thins, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a woman who did what needed doing for five years.
- Job nobody ever offered me and I never once accepted, you are not mine and you are being put down. Scripture says feed the flock of God, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, and constraint means a thing carried because it came to you rather than because you took it up.
- Five years of innocent handovers that never had a moment where I could say no, get out of this hall, in the name of Jesus. The written word never handed anybody responsibility without calling them to it, and the Spirit of God put the capability in me that this room has leaned on the whole time.
- Lord, You warned the shepherds off a burden taken by constraint in the same breath as You gave out the work, and Your Spirit has kept me doing what needed doing for five years, exactly as it is written. I am saying it out loud to one person this week, and I am naming what I will carry and what is not mine.
1 Peter 5:2
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
