{"id":25567,"date":"2025-07-29T10:46:37","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T14:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25567"},"modified":"2025-07-29T11:06:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T15:06:52","slug":"25567","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25567","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Worthiness is Not the Way<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Leonard Cohen - Anthem\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mDTph7mer3I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>It is in the process of embracing our imperfections that we find our truest gifts: courage, compassion, and connection. \u2014Bren\u00e9 Brown&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard shares how the teachings of the 19th-century French nun Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux have supported his own spiritual journey:\u202f<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se humbly trusted her own experience and taught the spirituality of imperfection which was so radical in her time (and our own). Th\u00e9r\u00e8se may be one of my favorite saints because I tend to be a perfectionist. In the popular personality typing system known as the Enneagram, I\u2019m a Type One. [1] The trap for the One is the ideal of perfectionism (for which we are responsible). This makes us dissatisfied and disappointed by nearly everything, starting with ourselves.\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se has helped me to embrace my own imperfection and that of others. When her sister C\u00e9line was saddened by her own faults, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se advised her to seek peace even when she felt displeasing to herself as she \u201chits against the stones in the night.\u201d [2] If we pay attention even for an hour, we observe how hard it is to be \u201cdispleasing\u201d to ourselves! To resolve this problem, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se teaches us to let go of the very need to \u201cthink well of ourselves\u201d to begin with! That\u2019s our ego talking, not God. [3]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Worthiness is not the issue; the issue is trust and surrender. As Th\u00e9r\u00e8se understood, \u201cJesus does not demand great actions from us but simply&nbsp;<em>surrender&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;<em>gratitude<\/em>.\u201d [4]<strong> Let\u2019s resolve this once and for all:\u202f<em>You\u2019re not worthy!&nbsp;<\/em>None of us are. That worthiness road is a game of denial and pretend. We\u2019re all saved by grace. We\u2019re all being loved in spite of ourselves.\u202fThat\u2019s why I can also say,\u202f<em>\u201cYou\u2019re all worthy!\u201d&nbsp;<\/em>But your worthiness has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the goodness of God. <\/strong>[5]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Author Dr. Bren\u00e9 Brown teaches about the gifts that come with embracing our imperfection:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness\u2014the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from<strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"> the parts<\/span><\/strong> of our lives that don\u2019t fit with who we think we\u2019re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving\u2026.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a line from Leonard Cohen\u2019s song \u201cAnthem\u201d that serves as a reminder to me when \u2026 I\u2019m trying to control everything and make it perfect. The line is, \u201cThere is a crack in everything. That\u2019s how the light gets in.\u201d\u2026 This line helps me remember the beauty of the cracks (and the messy house and the imperfect manuscript and the too-tight jeans). It reminds me that our imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that <strong>we\u2019re all in this together. Imperfectly, but together.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.parrott.ink\/r\/88b8645f?m=184244d7-8d70-4554-8fdd-8882b47eebdc\" target=\"_blank\">Let There Be Gaps: A Ministry Philosophy<\/a>.<\/strong> By Anthony Parrott \u2022&nbsp;29 Jul 2025&nbsp;<br><br>I caught this image at Westminster Abbey in London. I thought it was wonderful that the seat of the Church of England can also have technical issues. They chided me for taking this picture.<\/td><td>&nbsp;<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td>&nbsp;<\/td><td>One Sunday, the slides didn&#8217;t work. Or, more accurately, there was no one to run the slides.   I watched from the back as the congregation fumbled for their phones, squinting at tiny screens to find the second verse to &#8220;How Great Thou Art.&#8221; A few people just sang from memory, their voices carrying the melody while others hummed along uncertainly. It wasn&#8217;t polished. It wasn&#8217;t seamless. It was beautifully, messily human.  And it was exactly what needed to happen.  A Theology of Imperfection&#8221;Let there be gaps&#8221; has become one of my core ministry philosophies\u2014<strong>a deliberate choice to prioritize people over performance, souls over systems. It can sound nearly heretical in a church culture obsessed with \u2728excellence\u2728, where we&#8217;ve bought into the lie that God&#8217;s love somehow depends on our ability to deliver a flawless Sunday morning experience<\/strong>.<br>       But ministry is too precious, too holy, too sacred to treat volunteers like cannon fodder. As my old boss Pastor John Messer used to say, &#8220;We don&#8217;t throw people into the breach\u2014and yet that&#8217;s exactly what happens when we prioritize institutional perfection over human dignity. We create a system where the same faithful few run slides every single week, make coffee every single Sunday, staff the nursery until they&#8217;re running on nothing but fumes and resentment.We might tell ourselves it&#8217;s for the good of the congregation. We convince ourselves that gaps would hurt people&#8217;s experience. But what we&#8217;re really doing is participating in a <strong>consumerist theology that says the church exists to be purveyors spiritual goods and services rather than to form a community of mutual care and shared responsibility.<\/strong><br>           The Crisis of False Abundance.  Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve learned: when the same two people handle the slides every week without fail, the congregation assumes everything is fine. They hear announcements about needing volunteers, but their eyes tell them a different story. The slides are up. The coffee is hot. The nursery is staffed. Clearly, they don&#8217;t&nbsp;<em>really<\/em>&nbsp;need help.This is where some HBR change management wisdom intersects with Gospel truth\u2014<strong>sometimes you have to let the status quo reveal its own unsustainability<\/strong>. When people show up and there are no slides, when the coffee station sits empty, when childcare isn&#8217;t available because we&#8217;re giving our volunteers the sabbath they deserve, suddenly the invisible labor becomes visible. The need becomes real.          <strong>Sometimes you have to let the status quo reveal its own unsustainability<\/strong>.  I&#8217;m not talking about manufactured crises or manipulatively withholding care. I&#8217;m talking about an honest acknowledgment that we cannot and should not expect a handful of people to carry the entire burden of communal worship. When gaps appear, they create space for new voices, new hands, new hearts to join the work.    <br>    Beyond the Consumer Church The resistance to this philosophy reveals how deeply we&#8217;ve internalized a consumer model of faith. We&#8217;ve divided our communities into producers and consumers, where a dedicated few work tirelessly to provide a five-star spiritual experience for everyone else.<strong> It&#8217;s Burger King theology. Have it your way\u2014fast, convenient, consistent, and utterly devoid of the messy beauty of authentic community.<\/strong>But the early church looked nothing like this. In those house churches scattered across the Roman Empire, everyone contributed something. Everyone brought their gifts, their resources, their presence to the common table. The community&#8217;s wellbeing was a shared responsibility, not the burden of a pastoral staff and a small group (usually 20% of the congregation) of the loyal volunteers.<strong>This is&nbsp;<em>koinonia<\/em>\u2014the kind of fellowship that says we are all producers and consumers simultaneously.<\/strong> We all contribute to and benefit from the community&#8217;s life together. It&#8217;s a radically different vision from the church-as-vendor model that has infected so much of American Christianity.The Art of Sacred DisruptionLetting gaps show can be an (albeit risky) act of prophetic imagination.&nbsp;<strong>It disrupts the fantasy that churches run on pastoral magic and volunteer martyrdom<\/strong>. It forces us to confront the question: what are we actually here for? Maybe folks&nbsp;<em>aren&#8217;t<\/em>&nbsp;coming for your artisanal coffee or your perfectly timed slide transitions. Maybe they&#8217;re coming for something deeper\u2014connection, meaning, a place to wrestle with the holy mysteries. When you strip away the non-essentials\u2014 what my Old Testament professor called the &#8220;butt-naked essentialism&#8221;\u2014you discover what actually matters to your community.I&#8217;ve seen churches panic about nursery coverage, only to discover that families are (occasionally!) happy to worship together, children included. I&#8217;ve watched congregations survive electricity failures and realize that singing together, voices mingling without the crutch of perfect technology, actually created more intimacy than any polished presentation ever could.<br>        Sabbath for the Servants  At its foundation, this philosophy is about extending sabbath rest to those who serve. It&#8217;s recognizing that everyone\u2014including your most dedicated volunteers\u2014deserves to sit in the pew, to receive rather than give, to be ministered to rather than always ministering.If I as the pastor refuse to let the gaps show, I&#8217;m essentially saying that the comfort of the many matters more than the wellbeing of the few who serve. I&#8217;m prioritizing institutional appearance over individuals. I&#8217;m perpetuating a system where faithfulness is rewarded with endless obligation. Ew.But what if I trusted that God&#8217;s work doesn&#8217;t depend on my ability to maintain perfect systems? What if I believed that the Spirit moves just as powerfully\u2014maybe more powerfully\u2014in the spaces&nbsp;<em>between<\/em>&nbsp;our carefully planned programs?<br>       The Beautiful Breakdown.    That Sunday when there was no one behind the iMac keyboard, something beautiful happened in the breakdown. People looked up from their phones and made eye contact. They listened more carefully to the words they were singing. They helped each other find the page numbers in hymnals we hadn&#8217;t used in months.And by Tuesday, three people had volunteered to join the tech team.The gap had done its work\u2014not through manipulation or manufactured crisis, but through honest acknowledgment of our limitations and trust in the community&#8217;s capacity to respond. It was a tinsy-tiny resurrection, <strong>the kind that happens when we stop trying to control every outcome and start believing in the church&#8217;s ability to be the church.<\/strong>&nbsp;<em>What gaps might your community need to see? What would happen if you trusted your congregation with the truth about your needs rather than maintaining the illusion of perfect systems? Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is admit we can&#8217;t do it all\u2014and create space for others to discover their own calling in the work of love.<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Worthiness is Not the Way It is in the process of embracing our imperfections that we find our truest gifts: courage, compassion, and connection. \u2014Bren\u00e9 Brown&nbsp; Father Richard shares how the teachings of the 19th-century French nun Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux have supported his own spiritual journey:\u202f&nbsp; Th\u00e9r\u00e8se humbly trusted her own experience and taught the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25567"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25567"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25571,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25567\/revisions\/25571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}