Several weeks (months?) ago I was asked to speak to a group of churches about what makes them unique. I had been assigned to study the question with a group of colleagues and after various conversations we had what I thought was a decent set of things that made this particular church group unique. As I prepared the presentation, this was the opening slide that I used.
The thing is, these churches were unique in certain ways that I considered to be very important. It was what they believed that made them stand out amongst the larger community of protestant Christian churches. Without going into much depth, one of their fundamental beliefs is similar to what this blog is about: the sovereignty of a good and creative God over all aspects of life. This particular group of churches had a rich history of encouraging families, building schools, health care facilities, and elderly residences, taking care of people from birth through death. The view was that the Christian life didn't just encompass a particular "doctrine", but that whatever that doctrine was had to actually work when it came into contact with real life. The challenge, however, wasn't their uniqueness, it was their usefulness.
One of the reasons that many of these churches were no longer particularly useful is because they had strayed away from their fundamental beliefs. There's an old turn of phrase, "methods are many, principles are few; the methods always change, the principles never do." The fact is that many of these churches had attempted to change the principles and keep the method. In cases where they did hang on to their principles, the method was outdated and irrelevant. In both cases, they were no longer useful.
It's possible to o good things but have a poor method that leads to a lack of usefulness. One of the big problems with a lot of well-meaning non-profit organizations is that while their work appears to solve a particular problem (let's say hunger), it actually fosters a greater dependency so that the person receiving the food never learns where to get it for themselves.
The reverse is also true: we can say and do the right things but if our hearts aren't in it, the whole thing crumbles. The sports news cycle has been filled for a couple days with the story of an excellent linebacker who decided that the reasons he was playing weren't worth the risk, so he retired after one year in the NFL. He was still excellent at the sport. His methods were good. But his principles (or reasons for being in) no longer made the sport useful for him. So he walked away.
There is a sweet spot in everything that we do where the reason or purpose behind what we do is in harmony with what we are actually doing. That's the position of being useful. Not only is our method or our work relevant and impactful, but it's actually making a meaningful difference at the same time.
Unique is not all it's cracked up to be. Usefulness is where it's at.