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Continuing lessons learned/observed on our Alaskan cruise, let’s think about the crew a little more. According to the fact sheet, there were 1100 of them! 

And they were all different. Different jobs. Different nationalities—as nearly as I could tell, there were no U.S. citizens on the hotel staff of the ship except, perhaps, a few of the entertainers. Men and women. Old and young. Our primary server at dinner, Nestor, about whom I’ll write later, is from the Philippines, 43 years old, and has worked for the cruise lines for 19 years. 

And what they want as individuals doesn’t matter. It’s what the cruise line wants. All were neatly groomed. All were in their appropriate uniforms. All did their assigned jobs cheerfully, correctly, without fanfare, and in English, regardless of what their native language was. 

The application to our churches is obvious:

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything…Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. (1 Corinthians 12.12 – 14, MSG)

He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, MSG)

Each soldier does what he’s told, so disciplined, so determined. They don’t get in each other’s way. Each one knows his job and does it. (Joel 2.7, 8, MSG)