By Titto Thomas
On the 1st of July 2002, two aircraft were involved in one of the worst mid-air collisions over a little town in Germany, killing all 71 aboard. Watching a documentary of this accident on National Geographic Channel’s Programme called ‘Air Crash Investigations’, I was struck by a comment that one of the air traffic controllers made.
“People need to remind themselves that the little green box on the radar screen is more than a blip, it is the life of hundreds of people.”
People - real people – with real aspirations. Some might have been kids, whose parents were waiting expectantly at the destination, aspiring for a better future, dreaming of what the kids would have become in life. There may have been wives, whose husbands were waiting longingly, to have their sweetheart back in their arms after a period of waiting. There might have been men, who were returning to their jobs, returning to earn money for their family, money to feed the children and buy roses for their wives. Or there could have been people returning home after a vacation, waiting to tell their family of the wonderful experiences they had. Real people, with real hopes, with real aspirations… with real dreams.
And how easy to think of, in the daily sweat and pressure of a job, that the little green box on the radar with funny looking alphabets, as just another headache. How easy for the maintenance engineer fixing the airplane to neglect a 1 mm offset in tolerance in the mating parts.
Why do I say this? In the airline industry, there are checks to see that these things do not happen, checks to make sure that every life is accounted for. But what about the status-quo in contemporary church? Somehow every soul has come to mean nothing more than a statistic – a statistic to look at and gloat over. And in the midst of this, we come face to face with this piece of scripture from Hebrews 13:17 “…for they [pastors] watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.“
The key phrase in the verse is that church elders ‘watch over your souls’. The Bible explicitly puts this down as the role of a pastor in church. The language used here is unmistakably that of closeness and understanding. But somehow, there is a race to become mega churches, without paying attention to the fact that the people who form the mega churches are real people, with real problems.
Maybe Christian leadership itself has lost the sense of responsibility. With greater authority comes greater responsibility. This seems to be a forgotten matter in the church today. How often we find people who know just more than a couple of dozen verses quickly climb ranks and become heads of churches, little realizing the responsibility they have been entrusted with!
Unless we realize the importance of the responsibility God places on leaders, we could soon end up like the little boy in the story, who wanted to collect a million bottle caps. He found it to be interesting and spent all of his energy and life into reaching that number. But after collecting a million bottle caps, he was left with one question – “What do I do with all of these?!”
This is a sequel to Sidharth’s post on ‘True Evangelism’. I have tried to highlight the importance of one on one care within church.
This post is a tribute to leaders in my life who have seen me as a real person, especially the pastor of my home church -’Pastor Jacob Mathai (Jeffy)’. Looking back I see how he laboured with me and pressed on even when he saw no fruits. But years on, I thank God for such people who did not see me as a mere stat but a real person and in all passion sowed so much into my life. I pray that even I would be a person who stays focused to what really and ultimately counts.
Beautiful, Titto! It is indeed a truth, from which many of us hide our faces. It is important that we all stay focused on this fact and press on to see more of Him in each one of His child daily. Amen!
awesome Titto!