You know you're a political junkie when you are driving home from work and run across the governor of the state next to yours giving a political speech and decide to stay there and listen. That's what happened to me last night as the governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, was giving his first State of the State address.
In the speech he had a few good one-liners. However, the thought between the one liners quickly shifted in my head away from politics to the church, which is sadly oftentimes infiltrated with politics. So here is one of the good one-liners and how they apply to being the kingdom. I'll talk about another one tomorrow.
"Instruction before construction."
That's a great line. I think before any church builds a building there should be an organization that comes to them and explains the pitfalls of buildings. I just heard a story two days ago about how a new building destroyed a church. I've personally seen it in the past.
The building is irrelevant. If it is necessary, it will just be a by-product of being a healthy church. One of the key elements of church is instruction. If we are not training people what it means to be Christians and creating a loving body of Christ, then we are just setting ourselves up for disaster if we decide to build.
Oftentimes, a building will cause a church to be strapped financially. If this happens and prevents a church from being loving, then it is a sad, sad event. When a church can't just write a check to help out people and their financial needs because of bad decisions, they are in a very dire situation of becoming just a social club and not an example of the kingdom of God. A church, just like individuals, needs to express itself in love.
Then there is the problem of unity. I have seen buildings divide barely united people. Become one body, then decide together whether you are to build a church. The church I currently attend is in the midst of a building project which appears to be causing all of these problems, division to a lesser extent. The crazy thing about this building project is that I have asked around because I wanted to catch the vision from the person who felt called to build it and nobody knows whom the vision for the building originated with. Nobody has ever said to me that they felt called to build it.
We have stifled church growth ever since I arrived at this church almost two years ago because we have been waiting for the new building. We are crammed like sardines where we currently meet. They say you are supposed to build when you are at 80% capacity. I bet we have reached 120% capacity some days. We could've easily moved to a larger rental place at some point before the building project.
We aren't able to be financially loving because of sorely strapped finances. But I digress. The decision to build has already been made. We need to live with it. I'm just an inconsequential layman who has to sit back and watch the ship get holes and help it as much as a layman can not to sink. We should be moving to the new building by the end of February. I'm excited about it, but I'm also terrified because nobody has ever addressed the potential and actual problems that this building has and will create and how we will address them in a kingdom manner.
Watch out for potholes.
