“We need to bring the hope and healing of Jesus to a lost and dying world.”

I seriously just made that up. Pretty good, huh? Sort of. I’ve got no bones to pick with a ministry that has this tag line, in fact, if I googled it, I’d probably find some amazing ministries with a pretty similar mission statement. I’ll try. Yup, Billy Graham shows up third, and he ain’t exactly a slouch.

But I want to think about a problem with statements like this. It’s way too much for me to handle! If I can bring the hope and healing of Jesus to my screaming two year old and maybe not snap at anyone in the office today, I might be doing well, let alone a lost and dying world.

An important moment in leadership is to find your smallness. You know what happened a couple years ago? The two richest guys in the world basically gave away all their money to try to solve the world’s problems. If they were in my church when they did it, I’d call that a win. You know what happened? Some cool stuff, but last time I read nytimes.com, there were still some pretty good problems cooking.

We are all of us small. We can’t change the world, as James Davison Hunter points out. And wait a minute before the rejoinder, “I can’t change the world but Jesus in me can!” On one hand that’s true. At the same time, in theory, Jesus is living in something over a billion other people on the planet. What makes you think you’re the only one who is open to him?

Let yourself be relativized. Let yourself be small. It takes so much pressure off. And what really happens is that you live in the power of the present moment. Your sermon this Sunday, your small group next week, your business meeting this afternoon- they’re all small potatoes, no matter how big you think they are. The sun will keep going around the moon, baseball will still be played, and Jesus will still love you.

And then you can really focus in on what you’re doing. Because you don’t have to do anything more and anything less than what you are actually doing. The pressure is off, the fun is on.