Maybe we got it wrong

Like someone dying of thirst, we will drink salt water – even when it worsens the thirst. We cling to the conviction that ‘mission’ is the answer to our malaise, even as the pursuit of it (or at least a commitment to the idea of it) is killing us. It’s something we talk about – and don’t do much of. Perhaps it’s simply keeping us focused in the wrong place.

After meeting with a significant group of Co-operating Venture leaders recently, I was challenged with being myopic. The church needs to be ‘looking outward’ to ‘those beyond its walls’, I was assured. Yet the story of one parish, in particular, has left me wondering if this accepted wisdom is fundamentally flawed.

I refer to a small parish of older people that has a Somerset retirement village being built next door. Yes, you know who you are. This parish has not had paid presbyteral ministry for many years. They run a warm, engaged, delightful service on Sunday mornings with their rituals and ways of doing and being. Is it perfect? No, of course not. It is a people who want to be together, to engage and worship. And as people wander in from the village next door they sense that this is their kind of place, and these are their kind of people. Their tendency is to return and stay. This church is growing. I’m not aware of any considered and intentional mission plan. They’re simply being themselves doing their best to love God and one another. Are they engaged in mission? Yes, they are. It springs from who they are. They run activities they will enjoy and benefit from, and invite their friends to join them.

As I said in last month’s offering, the early church grew along the trade routes, where Jewish Christian followers of the way of Jesus sought out people like themselves, in familiar places – the synagogue. Was their primary goal proselytization? Most likely not. My hunch is that they would have been looking for places of belonging - ‘safe’ places - with people who shared their culture, language, world view – and to whom they were bound by familial ties.

I’ve been consistently badgered with the mantra, ‘The Church needs to be looking outward, in mission to the world’. This surely will result in church growth. Yet, where do we see it happening?

Perhaps, instead, we could focus inward – in meeting the needs, enriching the lives, and imparting joy - to the people we already have. Unashamedly, instead of continuing to make one another feel guilty with a constant diet of ‘try-harderism’, the church might once again be an attractive place – a community of people we’d all want to be part of. Warm, rich, loving, authentic – seeking the way and presence of Jesus. How hard can it be?