Are We At the Point of Know Return?

This past week I happened by a church house.  I stopped and looked around.  It needed some deferred maintenance, but all in all it was in good shape.  There was plenty of educational space, a large fellowship hall with kitchen, a nice enough auditorium and in a good location in a beautiful town.  One thing that didn’t need to be here was the real estate sign out front.  The church building was like a ghost town, it was as if one day everyone left and never came back, which is most likely what happened.  Looking in the windows on this particular Wednesday afternoon it was as if at any moment someone would show up to start preparing for the mid week events.  But they would not on this Wednesday or the next Sunday or any day at all.  They day they left was not the day the church died.  It happened long before the last time the lock tumblers engaged. 

Remember the song from Kansas, “The Point of Know Return”?  Some where in the history of this church they passed the point of Know Return.  At one level they didn’t know they passed that point, but at another level they knew about the change.  At some point in the life of the church the primary focus shifted from Vision to Management.  It happened so gradually that it would be all but impossible to affix a date but it happened as sure as the building is for sell.  If we had a time machine we might go back and discover the change of their dominant internal question.  When the dominant internal question changed they were entering the Point of Know Return.

Each church has one of two internal dominate questions.  The first is “Why has God put us here, and what are we doing about it?”  The other dominate question is “We are here so what are we going to do?”  As each church deals with these questions  over the life of the congregation.  With out fail those two questions surface and resurface over and over again.  To be fair both questions can be answered with the same behavior but will have completely different motives.  For example a church might say, “What should we do about the dilapidated condition of the kitchen and fellowship hall?”  One answer is “We need to spend significant resources to refurbish and update the space” (so we will have a nice place to enjoy our time together).  A different answer is “We need to spend significant resources to refurbish and update the space” (so when we invite the community in it our facilities will not be a hindrance).  That is the difference between a church and a religion club.  A church is about the business of the Master seeking the lost and recovering the lost sheep.  A religion club is about meeting regularly with people of like mind and opinion whom they like (most of the time) to discuss religious topics and to make them feel good about themselves.  

One is like the Good Shepherd “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”.  The other like Little Bo Peep as far as lost sheep are concerned.  “Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them. 

But leave them alone and they’ll come home wagging their tails behind them” Religion clubs look and parrot the true church but when it comes to outsiders they are at best indifferent and in some cases hostile.  The shift from mission to management is natural.  It is only by the supernatural power of God that we can hope to not to drift from the church into a religion club.

Bonus Material:  Look at your calendar/bulletin and count how many announced events are primarily about members gathering and how many are about going outside of the church to the lost in your community?  The higher the percentage of events scheduled primarily for members the further over the falls you are!