On my summer breaks as a young boy, I used to help out in my dad’s construction business. Dad built houses, and he also owned a house-moving company. I was always working each summer.

Dad would assign a project to me and then go elsewhere on the job site. When he returned, he would often say, “Son, you got that one ‘bass-ackwards.’” That famous line meant I was doing something opposite to how it should be done. He would show me my mistake and then share the remedy. He wouldn’t do the work; he simply showed me how to undo the “bass-ackwards” nature of my first attempt.

If Dad were here today, he would look at how some of us pastors do ministry and say we are turned around. He would say to return to Ephesians and read chapter four again, recognizing that our job is to “equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church” (vs. 12), not to do all the ministry ourselves.

In fact, Dad would go on to say that the growth of the Church is never the pastor’s responsibility. God grows things that really last; we don’t. The people we have equipped and built up are the ones who will share their faith and help lead others into a living relationship with God. They will be the ones who invite people to our community of faith to experience spiritual growth and maturity.

I think Dad’s view about the “bass-ackwardness” of a young boy’s construction job applies to church leadership. We should do our best to train, equip, and build up God’s people, and then rest and wait for the fruit to come. The seeds of our investment in people need time to germinate.  It’s in the restlessness of waiting that we can become impatient and begin to reverse God’s order of discipleship.

When we make the decision to properly reorder how we see the Church, our levels of stress and performance will diminish greatly. The issues of life and our calling will naturally reposition themselves in a healthy God-order that won’t be so “bass-ackwards.”