People
ask me all the time... why don’t we have a building, when are we
going to get one? Add to this my life experience of setting up
a mobile church operation every Sunday, crossing our fingers
that our volunteers will come, that the sound system will work,
that the custodian will show up, cursing the snow storm on
Saturday night so we don’t have to shovel our way in and out on
Sunday morning!
Yes I do
ask myself, wouldn’t it be great to just show up, turn on the
lights, turn up the heat and do church, wouldn’t it be easy,
wouldn’t it be convenient. Yes to all the above. Then, the
schizophrenic voice in the other side of my head, yah, the one
who was a 15 year old kid who really prayed for the first time
and sensed the presence of God on a cot in a hut in the
mountains, the 18 year old, clue-less college student who
started leading Bible Studies in a dorm room with beer-stained
carpet and watched people’s lives changed, the 20 year old kid
who baptized people in the North fork of the Yuba River in 50
degree snow runoff, and I was hooked on Christian leadership
ever since.
But none
of this had anything to do with a church building.
Fast
forward to 2007, I am a pastor of a church of a couple hundred
people who meet in a middle school gym in a suburban
neighborhood. We have a budget, and I am left holding the bag
on how that money is going to be spent. There is a part of me
that would love to just be a “normal” church and provide a
classic church experience for these very hard-working faithful
people. How about a nice church for them to marry their
children in? But there is the other side, the burning inside of
me that this wonderful couple hundred people who call this
church their home is not all there is. This there is a huge city
with a lot of people who don’t have a relationship with God.
How are we going to reach them when they really don’t care about
church in the first place?
We’ve
got a secret weapon... it’s not buildings, it’s not programs,
it’s not a polished experience. It’s people—transformed people.
And how can I, the steward of this church budget, best spend
God’s money to reach people? The answer is people. I think our
middle school facility is the greatest gift a young church can
have. It’s dirt cheap, it’s pretty new, it’s in a good part of
the city, pretty close to the freeway, close to the University
(the power curve of tomorrowland) and we have a great
relationship with the staff. I know, lets spend our money on
people, on growing people, on a team of full-time leaders who
spend their time training people to be transformed and to teach
others to be transformed by the power of God.
Sometimes I look at other pastors and see their buildings and am
green with envy. But behind most of these great churches with
great buildings is a great team of leaders, church staff. And
behind these churches are the stories of humble beginnings, of
hard work, of volunteers, of crossing their fingers, on cursing
snow storms. And to those that were part of that adventure,
they often reflect on those humble beginnings and say, “Remember
when? Those were the good old days.” Behind a young, idealistic,
mobile church with no facility there is one very compelling,
very revolutionary, very life-giving and world-changing concept
that is a stark reality that slaps them in the face every week:
The church is not a building, it is a movement of people. And
no lack of facilities can stop the power of God who is moving in
the hearts and minds of a people given to this cause. Several
million Chinese Christians that make up the Chinese underground
church can’t be wrong.
Also
behind this gift of mobile church is the built-in advantage of
developing an army of hard-working volunteers who have to set
the whole thing up and tear it down every week. I call it a
“consumer filter.” If someone wants to join us but wants the
best facilities and a Disney-World experience for their kids
then you might want to look down the road, we don’t do that
here. We might like to do that, can’t say we never will, but
right now, that’s not what we’ve got in our hands. We’re not
frustrated by it. We see it as a gift from God to force us to
build right, to lay the proper foundation of substance,
volunteerism and stewardship in our people.
The
universe is full of them: caverns, caves, empty spaces, black
holes, cold, dark and lifeless. The world is full of them:
empty football and soccer stadiums that are only filled five or
six days out of 365, and empty churches that are only filled 52
Sundays a year. They then sit empty the other six days of the
week—cold, dark and lifeless.
The
world is also full of very tired, stressed out pastors, who are
slaves to a fat mortgage payment and exorbitant power bill with
a group of MRP’s (Mean, Religious People) who would not or could
not change if you lit them on fire. Stuck, a slave to the
budget, can’t hire any more staff to lead the people because you
have to make a fat payment... stuck! I can only imagine how
many pastors, if they could, would stick a “For Sale” sign on
their smelly old religious building with a cross and a steeple
(whom to most people in our culture stands for nothing more than
racism and religious bigotry) and get a trailer full of sound
equipment and move into the new middle school down the street
and spend the mortgage on staff so they can train people to
reach their world! Sign me up!
I’m so
thankful that’s not us... I’m thankful not be stuck.
Kevin
Costner would tell you, “if you build it they will come.” Sign
me up Kevin—only if the “it” is a community of transformed
people, not an empty building.
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