In a recent reply to a denominational leader asking for money, I signed off saying, "Great to hear from you, even if it was about my second least favorite topic." Since inquiring minds want to know, the follow-up question may never come: "What is the least favorite topic?"
For me, it's a tie between church growth and golf. I've played golf twice and though my golf christening was handled by nice friends who took pains to make it a good first experience, I found it stupefyingly boring. Boredom was relieved only by predictable tedium. Lovers of the game talk about the skill, reserve and control that make it the ultimate challenge. Green guilt is heaped on with the 'but at least you're in a beautiful setting' argument designed to keep people coming back to nature who don't really care for the activity. At the end of the day though, it's still golf. I don't care for it on any level.
The ecclesiastical-industrial complex that is church growth runs neck and neck with golf. In the world that is my mind and along the uneven, rock strewn Sylla and Charybdis archipelagos that are my own mental synapses, it appears to me that a lot of church growth experts are simply social engineers advocating their new and improved brand of social engineering. It looks to me like packaging and re-packaging predictable tips on moving groups of people around. The brick and mortar boys, program advocates, whiz kids and success story guys may tout different approaches and strategies, but they are a genetically distinctive and clever breed with a dominant characteristic. All of them are from-the-womb indenticals in their faint, passing or absent mention of Jesus' claim "I will build My church."
As with golf, I'll skip the tedium and predictability found in most church growth strategies. I think I'll let Jesus do His job. In spite of centuries long opposition from some truly despicable people, corrosive ideologies and albatrossing herself with the bad ideas and behaviors from some of her strange friends and fellow travellers, the church has defied all odds and survived. Genuine ekklesias - assemblies of the called out ones - can still be found behind, within, next to or at some distance from the big box worship centers and the airless and aging orthodox bastions of a by-gone era.
The church will survive because Jesus does the building and He builds to last. Golf may be around awhile longer too, but I'll be doing something else.
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