Well, it's been over three months since my last post and I can hardly come up with a new title. I've been thinking a lot about church lately, about how to reach young families and the "emerging church" in this day and age. Frankly, I've been stumped. We've had events, planned classes, tried new material and studied the issues, but in the end we still have the same people on the fringe and the same people at the center; it's a little depressing. I hear that my tradition (The Church of Christ) is not growing and Christian churches in general are not growing and I began to wonder what's happening.About a month ago I had the opportunity to participate in an event to feed the needy. My family and I went to the dinner before hand to raise money, then we went to the event itself to help serve the food. We had 20+ turn up to help feed the hungry at our church building; it was a great turnout...well, unless you count the number of needy people that were there. In the end we did have a few, but most, if not all, drove themselves there and texted on their cell phones while they enjoyed their meal (not the mental picture I had created). The majority of us helpers started visiting in various places around the building and before you know it, it was over. I wondered where all the hungry people had gone? As we started talking about the night, someone in the group suggested that maybe we should do the next dinner at a nearby labor camp, or in layman's terms, take the food to the hungry. What a novel idea?
Not one to let a good idea pass me by, I've been ruminating on this for some time. It occurs to me that what we are doing in our discipleship efforts is trying to bring the "hungry" to the church. We offer new programs, new classes, new series. We advertise, promote, and spend our tightened budgets. Everyone rejoices when that "fringe" family shows up, only to be disappointed when they are not at church the next week. Now I'm wondering, what if we take the church to them? What if we stopped having more events, more programs, more classes, and started encouraging our members to spend time together, attend one another's events, take church to the activities they are already participating in? What family wouldn't enjoy being let of the hook to attend their regularly scheduled tee-ball or swim meet. What child wouldn't love having his cheering section multiplied by other church families who showed up to offer their support? What if that burnt-out mom could feel like dinner with her girlfriend was enough church? What if we stopped trying to compete with all the events in the lives of our members and just started bringing the church to those events? What if we freed people from the obligations of programs and offered them a relationship with Christ instead? What if we began to model Christ by what I'm calling, "meet the need and plant the seed?" Does this make sense to anyone?
