When One Size Doesn't Fit All

What Dogs Taught Me About People, Church, and the Expectations We Place on One Another

For many years, dogs were an important part of my life. My wife and I operated a kennel, bred and showed dogs, and for a number of years I ran my own dog-training business. During that time, I learned a great deal about dogs. But looking back, I realize that dogs – and the people who lived with them – also taught me quite a bit about people.

One of the simplest lessons was this: dogs are not all the same.

That sounds obvious. A Labrador Retriever is not a Siberian Husky. A Border Collie is not a Scottish Terrier. Different breeds were developed for different purposes, and even within the same breed individual dogs differ in temperament, sensitivity, confidence, drive, ability, and the way they respond to the world around them.

That matters when you are trying to train one.

Suppose I wanted a dog to accompany me hunting and retrieve birds from icy water. I would hardly choose a breed developed to pull sleds and then become disappointed when it didn't perform as well as a Labrador Retriever. The sled dog might be intelligent, willing, strong, and exceptionally good at what it was bred to do. It might even learn to retrieve. But it isn't a Labrador.

If I forget that, eventually I may blame the dog for failing to become something it was never intended to be.

Over the years, I have begun to wonder whether we sometimes do something remarkably similar in the church.

There is Christianity, and then there is what I sometimes think of as churchianity — the habits, expectations, assumptions, and patterns that develop within church culture and can gradually become confused with Christianity itself. The distinction matters because sometimes what we expect from another Christian comes clearly from Christ. Sometimes it comes mostly from us.

Christian communities inevitably develop expectations about what a serious Christian should look like. Some of those expectations come directly from Scripture and should never be discarded simply because they are difficult. Christians really are called to love one another, forgive, serve, grow in holiness, care for those in need, remain faithful, bear witness to Christ, and put the interests of others ahead of themselves.

But other expectations can quietly attach themselves to those biblical commands.

We can develop a fairly standard picture of the committed Christian. Perhaps such a person is outgoing, comfortable praying aloud, eager to attend every group activity, able to speak easily about faith with strangers, emotionally expressive during worship, confident giving a testimony, and comfortable visiting people he hardly knows. Well – for some Christians, many of those things come naturally. For others, they don't.

The danger begins when we confuse a biblical expectation with one particular way of fulfilling it. The command may apply to every Christian without requiring every Christian to respond to it in exactly the same way.

And this is where something else I learned from dogs becomes useful.

Imagine that I own a large farm with hundreds of sheep and need dogs to help gather and move them. I would probably look for Border Collies or another breed developed for that purpose. I would not assemble a group of Scottish Terriers and then become angry because they wouldn't herd sheep like Border Collies.

The terriers might be excellent dogs. They might be intelligent, courageous, persistent, and exceptionally capable of doing what terriers were developed to do. But none of those qualities would make them Border Collies.

Suppose, however, that I didn't understand that. At first I might assume the problem was training. So I train harder. When that doesn't work, I increase the pressure. Then I might begin comparing my terriers with the Border Collies on the neighbouring farm. Look at them. Why can't you do that?

Eventually I may conclude that my dogs are stubborn. They simply won't do what I am asking.

But what if “won't” isn't the problem? What if they don't understand? What if my method is wrong? What if the task requires abilities they simply do not possess? What if they could accomplish part of what I am asking, but in a different way? And what happens if I keep increasing the pressure because I have mistaken inability for unwillingness? Worse yet, imagine the terrier himself could somehow come to believe that he really ought to be able to do what the Border Collie does.

At some point, I may damage the very animal I am trying to train.

I wonder how often something similar happens to Christians. They see another Christian doing easily what they themselves find extraordinarily difficult. Perhaps that person prays beautifully in public. Perhaps he can walk up to a complete stranger and begin talking about Jesus. Perhaps she thrives in groups and seems to know exactly what to say when someone is hurting.

And somewhere, explicitly or implicitly, comes the message: This is what a committed Christian must look like.

So the person tries harder. When that doesn't work, the thought may become: I must not be trying hard enough.

Later, perhaps discouragement and: There must be something wrong with my faith.

Eventually that might become: There must be something wrong with me.

But perhaps somewhere along the way a different question should have been asked: Was the expectation itself ever right?

That question does not mean there are no expectations in the Christian life. Quite the opposite. It asks us to distinguish between expectations that actually come from Christ and those we have created ourselves.

That distinction matters because Christianity is not merely about producing individual converts. Jesus did not simply tell His followers to go and get people saved. He told them to make disciples – to teach people to obey everything He had commanded.

That requires people. It requires relationships, teaching, correction, encouragement, patience, example, and time. And because one generation eventually gives way to another, what Christians learn must be passed on. The mission therefore involves more than reaching people. It involves forming people and communities capable of carrying the life and teaching of Christ forward.

We see something of this immediately after Pentecost. Thousands responded to the apostles' message, but Acts does not simply tell us that thousands of individuals were now saved. Those people began forming a community. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. They ate together. They shared with those in need. They worshipped and learned together.

A community was taking shape. And communities require different kinds of people.

It is easy when reading Acts to concentrate on people like Paul, Peter, and Barnabas. They travelled. They preached. They established churches. Their stories dominate the book because Acts is telling us how the gospel spread.

But most Christians were not Paul.

Behind the prominent names were thousands of Christians whose names we will never know. They stayed home. They raised families, worked at trades, cared for one another, practised hospitality, supported those who travelled, cared for the poor, prayed, endured hardship, and lived out their allegiance to Christ in their own communities. They were part of the mission too.

That does not mean they had no responsibility to bear witness to their faith. The lives and words of ordinary Christians were themselves part of the church's witness. But the New Testament never suggests that every Christian was expected to become Paul.

The Great Commission belongs to the church, but that does not mean every member of the church performs the same function in carrying it out. Paul makes precisely this point when he describes the church as a body.

A body needs eyes, ears, hands, and feet. Paul asks what would happen if the whole body were an eye. How would it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how would it smell? His point is almost impossible to miss. The body works because its members are not all the same.

I think we sometimes reduce Paul's teaching about the body to a discussion about discovering our particular “spiritual gift.” There is nothing wrong with asking where our abilities might best be used. But Paul's point is larger than helping Christians discover their spiritual aptitude. He is teaching us how to understand one another.

The eye must not expect the hand to become another eye. The head cannot tell the feet that they are unnecessary. And one member should not conclude that because he cannot perform the function of another member, he therefore has little value to the body. Difference is not a defect in Paul's picture. It is necessary.

The fact that Paul found it necessary to say this suggests that the problem is hardly new. Some gifts were more visible than others. Some naturally attracted greater attention. Paul did not solve that problem by eliminating the differences. He placed them within something larger: they were different parts of one body, and the body needed them all. This becomes especially important when we ask what we believe the church is actually here to accomplish.

I have become convinced that something significant happens when personal salvation becomes almost the whole of what we mean by the gospel. Personal salvation is certainly part of the gospel – an indispensable part – but the gospel Jesus proclaimed was the gospel of the Kingdom.

When our understanding of the gospel narrows, the work of the church can begin to narrow with it. And when the work narrows, our picture of the kind of Christian who is most useful can narrow as well.

If the church's mission is understood mainly as getting unsaved people saved, then the activities most directly connected with that task naturally become the activities we value most.

Preaching becomes especially important. Evangelism becomes especially important. Missionary work becomes especially important. And Christians who can easily approach strangers, explain the gospel, preach publicly, or bring people into church can begin to look like the Christians who are doing what Christians are really supposed to do.

But what about everyone else?

If the mission is (as I believe) larger – if it involves making disciples and creating and nurturing communities of people learning to live under the lordship of Christ – then suddenly the picture becomes much larger too.

We need, so to speak, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.

We need teachers and encouragers, organizers and helpers. We need people who practise hospitality and people who quietly notice someone in need. We need those who care for children, those who sit with the lonely, those who provide financially, those who repair what is broken, those who study carefully, those who exercise wisdom, those who pray faithfully, and those who simply become dependable friends.

We need people capable of standing before hundreds. But we also need people capable of sitting quietly beside one.

Not everyone will be equally good at all these things. Nor, I would suggest, were they intended to be.

None of this excuses us from following Christ. Personality is not an excuse for selfishness. Temperament does not remove the command to love our neighbour. Fear does not mean we never have to grow. A Scottish Terrier can learn things that do not come naturally to a Scottish Terrier.

But growth is not the same thing as becoming someone else. Perhaps that is one of the things the church needs to become better at recognizing. When someone continually struggles to meet an expectation, before deciding that the problem is unwillingness, perhaps we should ask some questions.

• Does this person understand what is being asked?
• Is the expectation actually biblical?
• Are we confusing faithfulness with one particular personality or ability?
• Could this person fulfil the same Christian responsibility in a different way?
• And what happens if we simply keep increasing the pressure?

Those questions do not remove legitimate expectations. They force us to examine them.

Because if the church really is a body, then we should expect its members to be different. We should not merely tolerate those differences. We should recognise that some of them are necessary for the body to become what it was intended to be.

A community requires a remarkable variety of people. A narrowly defined task requires a much narrower range of abilities. And if our picture of Christian mission becomes too narrow, our picture of the “useful Christian” can narrow along with it.

Before long, we may find ourselves asking the Scottish Terrier why he isn't herding sheep.