The Door

At the culmination of several decades of ministry, it seems that my calling has become church transformation. In a nutshell, church transformation is transforming dying churches into the growing, impactful, dynamic entities that God intended them to be. Church transformation calls for climbing out of the box we have, for decades, called church and rethinking the how and the why of doing church. Transformation doesn’t necessarily call for changing everything we do, but it might.

Last week in a ministerial staff meeting I mentioned to my associates that as we look around and note what other churches are doing, if a majority of churches are doing those things, they are probably the wrong things to do. I know that sounds cynical, but it also is very near the truth. There is so very little that the “normal” church does that is consistent with what God has called the church to do and be… so little we do that empowers and completes the mission of the church. That is if you see the mission of the church to be: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

Unfortunately, most church members act as if they believe the purpose of the church is to make sure they are comfortable and happy. We seem to think the church is a fortress that protects us and our loved ones from those big, bad, evil, ungodly people out there who don’t go to church. (This is a common attitude among evangelicals – people who claim to care about people who don’t know Christ.) With that attitude, how do we ever think we are going to attract the unchurched into the Kingdom of God? We act as if the church exists to provide us place to hang out with friends; enjoy a certain style of worship we enjoy; marry us, bury us and take care of us if we are ill. The church exists for us. The people who don’t come to our church are welcome (If they look right and act right and smell right.) to come to our church. But we won’t make the effort go out and engage them and invite them into the life of the church. Why should we, they know where we are?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why churches are not growing… are not attracting people into the Christian faith. We have become ingrown and self-centered and have completely lost sight of the basic reason for our existence. The “normal” church in America today reminds me of these telling prayers: "Lord, bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more." A childless couple prayed: "Lord, bless us two, and that will do." An old bachelor prayed: "Lord, bless only me, that’s as far as I can see." The church has spent decades being inward focused, navel gazing and infighting and has lost its way. The church of Jesus Christ began as a movement of people set on following His command to change the world for good and has, instead, become an institution focused on self-perpetuation. God forgive us.

As obvious as the need for the church to change seems to me and others who are involved in church transformation, change is often a hard sell to church members and leaders. This is especially true for a group that has never seen or experienced the church in any way other than as a self-perpetuating institution. What I say to these folks is news and often not welcomed news. Much of it makes little sense to them. It calls for climbing out of the box we call church and looking at ourselves with fresh eyes. We are not only accustomed to what we have always done, we are comfortable with it and it makes sense to us. And even if we do see the need for change and make a change, we struggle with long term implementation of those changes.

A great example of the difficulty of the process change is the workroom door where I work. When I first arrived at Lindenwood Christian Church I noticed that the most used path from the lobby to the staff offices was through the workroom. The workroom, like most church workrooms, is not a particularly attractive area. It is populated by several copy machines, a postage machine, some cabinets, paper cutters, a work counter and a coffee pot. It is a very functional work area. It is a wonderful workroom. But it is not an area I want to parade each and every visitor to the church through. It just seemed like a bad idea to me. It looked trashy, sloppy and unprofessional to me. So I pointed that out to our business manager and within two weeks we had a new entrance into the office area.

He, and others, went to quite a bit of trouble to reroute the traffic. A storage closet was emptied, a wall was removed, the area was painted and decorated, new doors were hung and furniture was moved in. And soon we had a very nice new entry hall into the office area. All we had to do was close the door to the workroom, quit using it as a passage way to the offices and reroute ourselves and our guests via our new, beautiful entrance. And then we did the typical, normal thing. We continued to use the workroom as a “shortcut.” The first day our new entrance was open I closed the door to the workroom more than a dozen times. And every time I found the door open, I clearly verbalized my displeasure. That was the first day. Each ensuing day, I found it open less often. After a few weeks it was a rare occasion when if found the workroom door open. Either the staff had stopped using the workroom as an entrance, or I was catching them less often. After two months it seemed that this small change had taken root and was now a part of how we do things.

And then I got the flu. I was off work and out of the office for almost two full weeks. My first day back was a Thursday afternoon. As I turned the corner to head into the office area, guess what I found. Yep. There stood the workroom door – wide open.

If we have that much trouble closing a door and rerouting some foot traffic into the church offices, can you imagine how long it is going to take to change many of the other things we need to change to make the church healthier, more mission minded and community impactful and make that change stick? It looks like we will working on it for awhile.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved