As the new Premier League season bears down on us, news (as ever) has focused on transfers and youth. The pre-season games feature many of the under-18s and eyes are always on the new signings. Who will make the step up? How will new players slot in? Where are the gaps that need filling and how well will we manage? Time will inevitably tell.

For my team, much news has focused on Rio Ngumoha. Ngumoha broke into the Liverpool senior squad last season, writing himself into the record books as the club’s youngest ever goal scorer. He earned himself a call-up to the England squad (pre-world cup, playing in some of the warm-up matches). With Mo Salah having left the club at the end of last season and limited wing options, it is looking as though Ngumoha will play an even more significant role this season.

This is often how progress is made and people are caused to step up to more responsibility. A star leaves, a significant senior berth is left vacant, and everybody needs to make a step up. Other senior players suddenly need to take on more responsibility and younger players need to move into the supporting roles. Sometimes bigger jumps are required. Essentially, necessity forces people to step up and often leads to progress.

It is true for many things. We don’t have the saying ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ for nothing. It is certainly true in the case of sports. Necessity often leads to players stepping up, taking on responsibility and generally progressing as well as often leading to tactical innovations too. At a minimum, necessity forces adaptation and adaptation often leads to progress.

I think something similar happens in the church too. When the church is manned by a visionary pastor, scores of able elders and a dynamic staff team, church life may seem excellent in many ways but also as though nobody has much need to take anything on. Everything is essentially covered. The trained pros, the dudes being paid, they’ve got the ministry stuff sorted and we can sit back and bask in the benefits. It is very easy to set church life up so that our members don’t have much, if anything, to do.

That all changes when a pastor leaves, several elders retire or you just don’t have anybody willing to come and work on staff (or, more likely, the means to employ those who will!) Suddenly, you have a whole set of gaps that need filling and a whole lot of work that nobody is being paid to do. The only people there to do anything are your members.

Now, if your pastor, elders and staff team have been doing what they ought, they won’t just have been running everything so everyone else can sit back and do nowt. They will have been seeking to build up the members of the body for works of service. As they have built up the body for works of service, some of those members may find themselves able to move on to other works of service that bear a bit more weight and responsibility. As some of those members step up, there will be members who should be able to step into the gaps they leave behind.

It can often be viewed as something of a disaster when a pastor leaves, or elders step down, or particularly active members move away. But what it really presents is an opportunity. There is an opportunity for members to consider stepping up, doing more, taking on responsibility and growing into new areas of service for the kingdom. It may be an opportunity that presents itself less out of growing desire and more out of necessity, but just as necessity is the mother of invention, it so often gives birth to progress of all sorts too.