spanners in the works

Sometimes I start to feel just a little bit like a machine.

A service-conducting, sermon-producing, meeting-directing, visit-compiling ... machine.

But I'm not. And I'm not meant to be that at all. Jesus is not a machine.

It's just that sometimes, and really very easily, a guy like me can get sucked into that sort of life. The life of a machine.

Except machines don't have a life. They simply produce the goods.

You oil them, maintain them, and give them a regular check. Look after them well, and they'll serve you well. Producing the goods for years.

There are 'products' people look for from their ministers.

Services. Sermons. Succour.

I mean there's more than that that they look for, obviously, but three alliterated points is a helpful way to summarise it all. The machine comes up with these neat little three-point packages.

A machine.

I don't want to be a machine. I struggle each day to avoid getting sucked into simply being a machine. Producing the goods folk require.

Church is never a sanitised factory floor. A minister's not a machine.

I live in the wilds. Like Jesus. Unpredictable. Troublesome. Wild.

I'm not a machine-like producer of goods.

I'm more a crazy creator, a dangerous dreamer; a risk-taking man on the run with a message and mission from God.

The only thing God ever really does with a spanner is put it in the works. Of the machine.

Because when 'church' becomes little more than a well-oiled machine of religion ... well, we've totally lost the plot.

And it's probably time for God to come out with his spanners.