Remember those elementary school days when it was time to choose up teams for kickball or basketball?  Some classmates were stoked and wanted to be team captain and others were annoyed at the thought of having to play a team sports, they aren’t athletes.  Then there were those of us who fell in the middle.  It’s not that we don’t like team sports; it’s not that we weren’t even good at it.  It’s just that there were better things to do— seesaw, swing, jump rope, slide, or climb the monkey bars.  Then you had the kids who were dying to play, but ended up just sitting the bench—the benchwarmers.  I always felt bad for them.

Even today, twenty years later, there’s still a soft spot in my heart for the benchwarmers.  I watch a lot of college basketball and there’s nothing worse than the faces of the benchwarmers after a loss.  They look so incredibly disappointed and we’ll never know If they’re playing would have changed the game for their team or not.  Those players are the ones who help to make the starters grow from good or even great players to incredible.  They show up to practice every time and dress out for every game, yet never get to play.  I doubt that even one of them dreamt their whole life of sitting on the bench.  It’s not a place that they are typically content with.  Wonder why it is we’re content with being benchwarmers in our churches and day-to-day ministry?

We get up and busy ourselves all day long, running around and making things happen.  At the end of the day, did any of it further the Kingdom?  If you’re like me, you’re busy with a lot of really good things.  It’s not like it is bad that I want to take in a baseball game or go to dinner with friends.  Some of my best heart-sharing happens when I’m in the car with someone.  The thing is though, if we’re flooring it to dinner with friends and bypass the girl on the side of the road with car trouble—what good are we?  If we show our impatience with our waitress because she asked us three times to clarify what we want and then it still wasn’t right when it comes—where’s the compassion?  For all we know, she just found out her husband’s leaving her and their three kids.  We don’t know her story, why are we getting short with her?

What about at church?  Where it should be “easy” to serve.  Why is it that the old adage “ten percent of the people do ninety percent of the work” is actually true?  Why are the people who love kids the most not signing up to help in the nursery?  The best teachers aren’t leading Bible Study.  The servant leaders aren’t on the deacon or elder board.  And the list goes on.  Is it because politics have gotten in the way?  Is it because they don’t want to commit to actually being there?  Is it because we think there are just better things to do?  Is it because we’re content with just being benchwarmers?  What happened to going and doing?  When did having faith in Jesus get separated from rolling up our sleeves and serving Him?  When did it become okay with us to just send money towards something instead of sending ourselves?  When did it become okay for us to pacify not going with “I’m not called to that”?

Anyone who professes Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is called to serve, to love their neighbor, to go.  Whether it’s across the street to mow your elderly neighbor’s grass, across town to keep a single parent’s kid(s) because they just need a nap, or just to the cafeteria table where the outcast kid sits by themself every single day for lunch (and the list continues)—we’re all supposed to be doing something that furthers the Kingdom every single day.  Jesus isn’t looking for groupies… He’s looking for disciples!  Charles Spurgeon said it best when he said, “It is the whole business of the whole church to preach the whole gospel to the whole world.”

As kids we all hated being the one who showed up to every practice and game only to be benchwarmers, but somehow as adults we are completely content with being just that in churches, in life.  Something’s really wrong with that picture! I have to ask myself constantly, am I sitting the bench right now or am I trying to make the Kingdom altering move?  What about you?  Are you just sitting the bench?

“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”  (Matthew 4:19)