When I first stepped out by faith to pursue God’s call to write, I heard many people say, “That calling is not for everyone,” as if the call to follow Christ on a faith adventure were reserved only for the Christian elite—not the rest of us who should “bloom where we’re planted” in the Christian minor leagues.
You can discover more of my story and the resistance I encountered in my book A Story Worth Telling. But the idea that there are two classes of Christ followers—the Major and Minor Leagues of Christianity—is not new.
The Apostle Paul addressed this urge to create an upper class of Christians when he said, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:5-6) The Church unintentionally reinforced this thinking with the idea of sainthood, setting up icons to commemorate ordinary Christians doing what God had called them to do. And for many centuries, everyone knew the best Christians, those most serious about following Christ, secluded themselves in monasteries. The major league faith took place behind those walls, while the rest of the rabble settled for being minor league disciples.
share an account of how he has often posed the question, “How is your relationship with God?” to men in his discipleship groups. He often gets answers such as, “Well, I’ve been traveling for two weeks so it’s been really hectic. I haven’t read my Bible as much as I should. I probably am not in a good relationship with God right now.” His response in those situations essentially is to ask, “What does that have to do with what I asked you?”