I’m going to give Sam Barrington a big (err bigger) head. This is the second time in a month I’ve referenced a sermon of his.
As it turns out he preaches a similar sermon to this every year. A history of the church he leads. Where it went from an non-instrumental Church of Christ to barely being able to be classified as a restoration movement church (not saying that is totally bad, just stating a ‘fact’). So he shares this story every year to remind the church, himself, and the rest of the leadership about where they’ve been and how they make the decisions about where they are going.
During the sermon this year, he said something that struck me. Slight paraphrase.
If you try to reach out to everybody, you reach out to nobody.
I’ve set back and seen churches try to be everything to everybody, and people got frustrated. Because, honestly, you just can’t be. Money, time, and people just don’t allow for it. So to take care of people x, you have to take away from opportunities to take care of people y. Then what happens is people y are upset because they aren’t getting the tools they need to ‘do their job’.
So a church should say we are reaching for ‘people x’, inform the church that they are reaching for ‘people x’ and then make every decision based on how to reach them. The more specific ‘x’ is the more successful your church will be. Because you can do a few things. First you can measure how your evangelistic efforts are doing. Secondly the people of the church can get behind a specific purpose and goal and make it work.
I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. I really am rethinking church and I think this was another of those ‘ah ha’ moments. I’ve seen churches try to be ‘the’ church that people go to. So they build the church looking at becoming that regional church, while ignoring the people in their back yard.
Sam had a similar revelation himself in regards to this when he turned 30, so he has a six month head start on me. He was praying about a church building project his church was about to undertake and he felt God say to him:
What makes you think you’d be a better steward somewhere else then where you are presently at?
To me this is building more and more upon my other ‘ah ha’ moment I’ve had this year regarding church. If I were to phrase it in a question like the one above it would probably go like this:
What makes you think you’d be a better steward of the people not at your church then you are with the people inside your church presently?
It builds upon a scripture I’ve referenced several times recently.
Matthew 23:26 – Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
While I am slightly twisting this scripture, I think the principal applies. You have to take care of the inside before you can even think about being able to appropriately take care of the outside.
[Initially Written 1.28.2009]