A tough word that might stir up a hornets nest. It is part of our 12 week training in community life. Les Brickman, Strategic Cell Ministries International, handed this devotional down to me... ouch.
“Eddie Didn’t Leave No Vacancy!”
Henry G. Bosch tells the interesting story of what happened when a customer in a small store discovered that the slow-moving clerk was not around one morning:
“Where’s Eddie? Is he sick?”
“Nope,” came the reply. “He ain’t workin’ here no more.”
“Do you have anyone in mind for the vacancy?” inquired the customer.
“Nope! Eddie didn’t leave no vacancy!”
There are quite a few “Eddies” in most churches today. They leave, no one even notices. Why? First, because there is no real sense of the Body of Christ in which members are involved in a functioning manner. Second, many, by their own decision, have chosen to sit on the church bench on the sidelines of the action." (What’s Gone Wrong With the Harvest, pl56f, H. G. Bosch, “He Left No Vacancy,” Our Daily Bread (May, 1974), the devotional for May 6, 1974.)
“Eddies” are not effectively involved in what it means to be the Body of Christ. They don’t leave any vacancy because they are not doing anything to effectively add to the life and ministry of the church. They are parasites rather than producers. Their contract with the church is to be pampered, ministered to, entertained for the exchange of which they will be counted in the numbers and will give from time to time to support the system. They are part of the 85% of the members who are supported by and ministered to by the other 15%. If they leave they leave “no vacancy” in the ministry or work of the church. They just leave an empty spot on a pew on Sunday morning and a little less change in the offering plate.
Who is at fault? Not Eddie! He is a victim of a system that forces him to be a consumer rather than a producer. There is no context in the traditional church through which Eddie can be trained to produce instead of to consume. It is the small group context as designed by Christ through which Eddie is trained and given the opportunity to be productive. That context no longer exists in most churches. Most Christians will find little productive they can do on Sunday in a large group setting. Therefore, Eddie becomes what the church system says he should be: a statistic, a spectator, a pew packer, a contributor to a system, a minor spectator in a game played by the professionals.
We see few Eddies in the New Testament; Jesus’ system was designed to turn out producers not consumers or parasites. In the New Testament small groups Eddie couldn’t hide. The group might be meeting in his home. He had to contribute and be productive. It is the context that has made the Eddies that fill our church pews, and it is church leaders who are satisfied with that system that doom Eddie to a non-productive and parasitic spiritual existence.
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