The dreaded performance review

Supervisors and employees alike dread the annual performance review.

How well I remember my first one. It was my first serious job and I had no idea what to expect. I had the lowest position possible, reading and printing credit card receipts stored on microfilm.

Being a neophyte, I didn't attach any anxiety to the process, and walked in completely unprepared.

The review wasn't horrible. My supervisor had several nice things to say about my job performance, chief am-ong them my punctuality and dependability. (I really couldn't take credit for that. I carpooled with Danny's mom, and she would brook no tardiness or absenteeism.)

However, my sense of well-being quickly plummeted as my boss began to enumerate my shortcomings (better known as the "needs im-provement" category). All I can re-call is the phrase, "lacking in proper office decorum."

When asked, somewhat pointedly, how I responded to this particular criticism I, though embarrassed, was forced to admit I had no idea what decorum meant.

My supervisor was kind enough to inform me of the meaning of the word and what his expectations were. A rude awakening into the real world.

In point of fact, the job performance review did in-deed have the desired result and I earned two promotions in the company before leaving for a warmer climate, having achieved at least the minimum amount of proper office decorum required.

Called to be "salt and light" I fear the church is due for a less than impressive performance review.

Clifford Orwin, professor of political science at the University of Toronto is quoted in "The Public Interest" as saying, "For the first time in the nation's history, religious opinion does not inhibit society as a whole ... Christianity, which once pervaded the one culture practiced by the one nation, has slipped to the status of a subculture -- we might even say a counterculture."

How could this happen?

Believers are called out of the world, to no longer to be conformed to the world, but look at the evidence -- our salt has lost its savor and our light is but a flickering flame, starved for oxygen under the bushel basket where we have carefully hidden it.

According to Ger-trude Himmelfarb, au-thor of "One Nation, Two Cultures," many mainline churches fit quite comfortably in the prevailing culture, "priding themselves on being cosmopolitan and sophisticated, undogmatic and uncensorious."

The results have been disastrous. Divorce is as common among Christians as among non-Christians. The Episcopal Church has consecrated an openly homosexual man as one of its bishops and church members are at odds on basic issues such as marriage, premarital relationships, abortion and homosexuality.

Brothers and sisters, this ought not be so. If Christianity has indeed become a subculture or even a counterculture in America, it does not change the job description given to everyone who follows Christ. Something must exist outside this prevailing culture to challenge its suppositions and actions -- there still must be salt and light in the world and we are supposed to be that salt and light.

Joseph Bottom, an editor for "The Weekly Standard" and "First Things" said that there is something in the Scriptures "that has no patience for political compromise ... throughout our history, biblical America has stood outside political America: the wayfaring stranger far away from the public man, however much the political world echoes with the words of a public God."

Perhaps our role as a body of believers is supposed to be that of a counterculture -- revealing a different way of life. For if the world cannot see any difference between themselves and us then they may never know their need of a savior and then they will never know the hope of a new life where darkness is replaced by light, where heartache is replaced by joy, where fear is overcome with hope.

I was completely unprepared for that first job performance review. I didn't know what to expect because I didn't know what was expected of me. As believers we are not unprepared. Jesus was clear. To the sinners he said "Go, and sin no more." To believers he promised his peace, even as he promised persecution and a cross. It seems each generation has its own unique counterculture -- may we be known as the counterculture of the ages.

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." I Peter 2:9 (NIV)