stop making the church the destination

It happened to me again.  Yesterday.  Just like it did last Monday.  Just like last week.  In fact, like every week so far this travel year since January.  I fell victim to an airport’s confusing of the scorecard.   This happens when the airport thinks that it’s ahead when all the planes are on the ground, close to the hub, and the concourse is crowded with people.  When the airport substitutes itself as the destination it really screws up peoples’ lives.  Like mine.  We’re stuck like flies on fly paper unable to lift off or get to where we want to go.

Obviously, the airport is supposed to serve as a connector, to get me to where I want to go.  While I never wake up hoping to experience the ambiance of concourse C somewhere, I am completely jazzed to get to where I can be with people I want to spend time with.  So I go to the airport.

For me this serves as a striking analogy of what happens when the church confuses the scorecard.  Churches frequently think they are winning when the planes are on the ground, close to the hub, and the concourse is full of people.  This is the church-centric thinking that has made the church the destination in Christianity.  Problem is, this isn’t biblical.  The church is not the destination; the kingdom is.  And every time the church substitutes itself as the destination, it keeps people from getting where they want to go.  And that preferred destination is LIFE—that’s where the kingdom plays out.  Lucky for us, Jesus didn’t come with a promise: “I have come to give you church, and give it to you more abundantly.”  Yet that’s what’s in store with the program-driven church experience. 

The missional church not only realizes that the church has to engage the culture with service and sacrifice.  It also realizes that the scorecard has to change.  Since kingdom life is the destination, it’s time we quit fooling ourselves with statistics about how much church activity we’ve got going, and start thinking about our capacity to help people with the central drama of their lives—their lives.

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Reggie McNeal, Missional Leadership Specialist for Leadership Network