Should You Be as Strong as an Ox?: There is a Downside

By David Ryser

“Church would be great if it wasn’t for the people.”  The pastor who uttered these words from the pulpit was trying to be funny.  But I’d been a pastor for 14 years, and I suspected that behind these words was some bitterness and hostility.

And a lot of truth.

Proverbs 14:4 says that, “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox.”  Ministry is a dirty business sometimes because people can be such a mess.  More than one pastor has confided to me that they have become weary of “scooping up sheep dip” or “shoveling ox patties” (or some other such colorful expression describing the glamorous work of vocational church ministry).

Pastors do not typically enjoy mucking out the church barn.

But the mess comes with the people.  And a church without people is no church at all.  Without the people who comprise the congregation, the local church goes out of business.  Pastors know that, in their line of work, they will have to be involved with people’s lives.  And the work of an operating church has to be done by someone, so people are needed to do the work.  The larger and more successful (at least by our standards) the church, the more people there are in attendance.  And the more work there is to be done.  This requires more people to do the work.  This requires more people to attend the church.  And this…

You get the idea.

Running a church requires people.  And people are messy.  As nice as the church might be without people, this is not a viable option for the pastor.  And the pastor does not need just any kind of person to be a worker in the church.  The Bible has a lot to say about the quality of character demanded of a person who holds a position in the church.  And if someone is going to have a position in the church, that person should be committed to the church.  After all, we cannot have someone teaching Sunday School (or serving in any other church program) who does not attend the church services.

The pastor needs church workers who have the character of Christ, the commitment of Esther, and the strength of an ox.

So I’ve been thinking about oxen.  In Jesus’ day, oxen were prized as draft animals because of their great strength.  They were able to do arduous labor such as plowing and pulling heavy loads.  Of course, oxen have drawbacks as well.  Oxen, like people, are messy.  But they are strong.  The advantage of their strength outweighs the disadvantage of their mess.  So typically the owner of the ox was willing to clean up the mess made by the ox in exchange for the benefit of his great strength.

Hence, the sentiment expressed in Proverbs 14:4.

But an ox has another important downside as well.  Oxen, by definition, are males of certain large species of cattle.  Because they are male, they are stronger than their female counterparts.  But they are also more aggressive, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.  In order to harness a bull’s strength and keep him under control, the owner of the bull castrates him.  This castrated bull is called an ox.

This is the price you pay for having an ox instead of a bull.  The ox is sterile.

And the ox’s sterility is not an accident.  It’s not as if the ox had a mishap while learning to ride a bicycle as a calf and inadvertently neutered himself.  The ox was intentionally gelded by his owner in order to take advantage of his strength without the problems caused by his natural aggressiveness.  So the owner is not allowed to complain that the ox is sterile.  He neutered the ox himself!

Which brings us back to the Church.

Because pastors need church workers to do the labor of the church programs, we set out intentionally to train them.  We take people whom God intended to be passionate, aggressive and fruitful members of His kingdom and then spiritually neuter them to keep them under control.  We don’t call it spiritual gelding, of course.  We call it spiritual maturity, and we call what we do to them “covering” (a synonym for “smothering” in this case).  Instead of coming up from underneath them as servant-leaders and raise them up to be and do what they were created by God to be and do, we pastors come up over the top of God’s people and smother any “wild fire” in them.  And then we deliberately turn them into passionless worker bees (which are also sterile, by the way…but they’re female) in the church hive.

And then we criticize them from the pulpit for being unfruitful!  How stupid can we be?  They are unfruitful because they are sterile!  And they’re sterile because we made them that way!

If a farmer complained that his ox was sterile, we’d think he was a moron.  So what would we call a pastor who complains about the sterility of his spiritual oxen?

And it’s not as if the people of God do not burn to be more than they have been made to be.  I was sitting in a room listening to a frustrated church worker as he described his aggravation with trying to balance all of the responsibilities in his life.  He said, “I’m a husband, father, employee, and church leader.  And I’m not doing a good job at being any of them.”

He went on to detail how he is required by his church to be committed to the services and activities of the church in order just to qualify for ministry in one of the church programs.  He estimated that he spends about 25 hours per week in service to the church.  With tears in his eyes, he admitted he did not have the time or energy to continue on at this pace.  He was neglecting his wife, children, and work to be involved as a leader in a church program.  He was paying a terrible price to work in his church.  And, most tragically, he summed up the fruit of his service to the church by saying, “And I don’t even touch anybody.”

What have we done?

Is the so-called “ministry” of our church so important that we must destroy the lives of the people of God to do it?  Is it necessary to sterilize and enslave them for a life of drudgery on the religious treadmill?  Knowing that if they grow weary and fall to the side, there will be someone else climbing the sacred ladder who will be all too happy to take their place...until they also fall?  Are God’s people made to serve the church organization?  Or should the church organization be structured in such a way as to serve the people?  To encourage, enable, and empower them to be and do what God intended (Ephesians 2:10)?

Do we have no fear of God?  How do you suppose He feels about all of this?  We have created a religious monster that exists only to feed and expand itself.  It consumes all of the resources poured into it just to survive and grow.  Meanwhile, the Kingdom of God has not advanced at all.

So I don’t know if church would be a better place without people.  But I’m beginning to wonder if the people would not be better off without church.

Responses to this article are welcomed.  You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com