I've been reading Twelve Ordinary Men by John MacArthur. Thus far I've really enjoyed the in-depth look at the character and personality of each of the 12 Disciples. However, I hit a snag yesterday and today as I read MacArthur's take on Philip.

Philip was the "bean counter" of the Disciples - that's MacArthur's description. I object to that description on two levels. One he wasn't the accountant, Judas was. Second, the rest of the chapter reveals MacArthur's disdain for administrative types.

In truth there are only a few glimpses of Philip acting alone in the Gospels, actually they're all in John's gospel as best I can tell. MacArthur's interpretation of each of them is that Philip lacked faith and was too busy trying to figure out how to do things by earthly means to recognize Christ's power to accomplish the impossible. In MacArthur's words, "everything" was impossible for Philip.

I'd like to point out that there is certainly an element of creative interpretation when MacArthur starts filling in the blanks of what happened and was said to draw conclusions about the people involved. I'm not at all opposed to this type of writing, I enjoy reading a well educated author's conclusions about many of the stories in scripture. Certainly MacArthur has plenty of credibility to write in this manner.

My two objections to his slant on Philip are as follows:

1. He interprets everything Philip does negatively. Philip says, it would take more than 200 Denarii to feed the 5000. MacArthur assumes that was him trying to dissuade Jesus. And maybe he's right. As an administrative type I read that and hear Philip saying, "Lord, we can't do this with the cash on hand...if you want to feed them it's going to take something only you can do." But perhaps the original language makes it clear that Philip was telling Jesus it couldn't be done. It was Philip's job to give Jesus a status report on the physical resources at hand - my interpretation.

2. MacArthur projects everything negative he sees in Philip onto all administrative types - he makes 2 or 3 such references throughout the chapter. This is the part where I'll just go ahead and say, "John, sorry, you're wrong." If MacArthur is correct about what Philip's role was among the 12, then it is similar to what I do at CIY. I don't do the accounting, I do handle a lot of the logistics for the Conference Department. And I don't think those I work with would tell you that I see "everything" as impossible - if I find out otherwise I'll probably unpublish this post. MacArthur seems to think there are some inherent character flaws in those whose natural bent was designed for details and logistics. I suspect that his large ministry benefits greatly because he has a handful of top notch administrators ministering along-side him. I'm not aware of any enterprise of any significant size that can function without someone gifted at keeping things straight and moving on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps my objection to his statements indicate their truth, but it would concern me to work under a boss that appears to feel that a person is spiritually flawed because of the very gifts that make him/her good at what he/she is being hired to do.

With all that said, I recognize that there is a natural tendency in me to see the obstacles first. When Jayson comes in and wants to do something huge I often immediately start going through a checklist of things we'll have to do, get figured out, or overcome in order to accomplish what he has in mind. That doesn't mean I shoot his idea down, it means that my job is to figure out how to get things done. Sometimes the answer is, "This is something God will have to do, we can't on our own." Certainly when it comes to the large, long-range vision that CIY and the Conference Department has there is no way that we can reach those goals without God opening doors, providing resources we can't even imagine, and intervening in ways we don't even understand. Administrators may annoy visionaries, but let's be honest, Jesus saw fit to keep Philip around and I believe there are 2 reasons. First, He had specific plans for Philip in ministry. Second, Philip helped keep things moving and his administrative skills were valuable. Scripture is clear, it takes all types, God gave lots of types of gifts and He endowed each with value.