Shrink-Wrapped Vision

Reggie McNeal in "The Present Future" ( I hate the title by the way.) writes, "This is what life in the church bubble can do to you. It shrink-wraps your vision down to the size of your church."

He is talking about what happens when we get all of our church people involved (tied up, overworked, stressed out) in ministry in the church. This is a common strategy. I like how he puts it in regard to gift tests. "Many church members have come to see spiritual gift inventories as a recruiting tool for the nominating committee and church staff to use in 'mining' church members' talent to fill church jobs." How true.

What he is calling for is for the church to allow people to become engaged in the world. The problem is we can't see, and more importantly, can't count the results of this. So we insist on doing everything in the church.

Obviously this decentralizing of the church is also, or should also, be taking place on the denominational level as well. But for the same reasons it is regarded with deep suspicion. I wish I could convince people that we could actually develop stronger relationships if we did this. Then we would see others as fellow workers rather than competitors or even overlords. As it is I think a lot of people would rather keep quiet and duck because they are afraid that no one will understand their ministry or see any validity in it. I also think this mentality causes us to focus on what our denomination can become rather than what the Body can become through us.

I don't know if this counts but I'm trying to get our church to focus more on being a giving church. Not giving to the church but giving to other minitries. Maybe its working. Yesterday we gave our church van away to a ministry in Kentucky and then a quartet in our church gave away a keyboard to a church planter who was speaking at our church. I tried to give him our organ too but he wouldn't take it.