There is a powerful instinct in most people who want to honour the Lord Jesus and do thing as excellently as possible for his glory. This isn’t done, that isn’t working, someone has failed to do their duty. If that thing isn’t sorted, it’s bad for people, bad for the church, bad for our witness. So, what will we do? Because we love the Lord and want him to be honoured, we want things to be as excellent as possible, we’ll jump in and fix it.

For what it’s worth, I appreciate the impulse. I think it is a fundamentally good impulse. It just also happens not to be the most helpful one. In the end, we have to let people drop the ball. We have to let people see that their not doing something means that thing does not happen and it has not happened specifically because they have no done what they ought.

Before you accuse me of shaming people, that really isn’t the purpose here. Rather, if we are quick to leap in and fix what someone else was supposed to do, all that person learns is that when they do not what they ought to do it still gets done anyway. In other words, it really doesn’t matter if I do this thing or not – someone will do it.

Others, who are more oblivious, trundle on assuming that all the things which usually happen on a Sunday morning happen by magic. The tea and coffee is always done, the sound system always works, the room is always clean, the children are always taught, on and on. If everything always works and is always done, what reason is there to assume that there might be any need to help or volunteer? We can end up hiding the fact that we need more helpers in different areas of church life by leaping in to resolve what has been left undone.

But I think it helps to see what actually happens when people drop their duties. For example, what happens if we arrive one Sunday morning and there is no tea and coffee? Ultimately, nothing. It just means there is no tea and coffee. Is it ideal? No. Does it ultimately matter? No. The church will not implode because nobody boiled the kettle or laid out some biscuits.

Nevertheless, everybody can see there is no tea and coffee. Everybody now learns that if the person on duty (whoever it was supposed to be) doesn’t do their duty then the duty does not happen. It highlights that there may be needs in the church, that duties need doing and we need to volunteers to ensure they are done.

Moreover, the person who was due to do the thing may realise – upon arrival and seeing no tea and coffee – that they have dropped the ball. This helps to reinforce that if they don’t fulfil their duties the duty does not happen. It may lead to some profuse apologies (which isn’t the point of leaving it undone) but is more likely to cause them to take extra care to ensure they are on top of their duties next time. Experience tells me that most people who publicly drop the ball once are less likely to do it again; those who are consistently bailed out repeatedly fail to do it.

None of this means we should be graceless about it. There are all sorts of reasons why things might not be done. Some of those reasons are not matters of personal failure but a victim of circumstances beyond our control. But let’s not ignore that sometimes we, being fallible people, just forget to do what we were meant to do. It happens. This isn’t about publicly shaming people and making them feel bad. We can have grace i.e. ‘the thing isn’t done, it doesn’t matter, we’ll all live!’ whilst letting people see that the duty isn’t done because they have failed to do it. It doesn’t hurt for people to learn that lesson.

The reason for this approach is a matter of discipleship. We help people learn how to serve, we help people remember to serve, we help people see that they are burdening other people with more service when they can actually see that their lack of service has caused a problem. If all we ever do is bail them out so that nobody notices the error, they will never see or learn that this is a problem and so they will see no need to rectify it. And so, rather than jumping in, often it is better to let the ball be dropped, let the issue surface and let people see the results. That way they are more likely to take care to do it in future.