I was at Starbucks this morning and noticed a few "regulars" who never leave. Yesterday I stopped there to get an ice tea and saw one of the morning guys in his place, surveying the traffic. I asked him, "don't you ever leave?" He smiled and replied, "no".
We all long for a place where everyone knows our name (kinda sounds like T.V. lyrics for a show doesn't it?) and we want to have a place to "belong". We want a place where we matter, where we feel that we are seen by someone, by anyone!
That is the role of the church. It was never meant to be a show, a concert, a gathering of thousands...although that is what is popular in my country today. It was meant to be a community of people living, loving, caring and sharing life together. In most of the world the church is usually under 100 people. That's about the perfect size to know the family and really care for one another.
In the church today we have a culture of people who don't want to be known, don't want to be accountable, don't want to serve, to care, to help, to give....and so they go to a large church so they can hide, check it off their list and get on with "real life".
But the great value of the body of Christ is the community we find as we meet and care for each other. We need that! We wither without community....without people who know us and who we know. We need each other.
So what is to become of church in America? What is ahead? It seems to me, although I'm not a prophet, that the thriving healthy churches in the days ahead will be much smaller. It's in a community where I'm know and loved that I will grow and thrive.
Healthy church will look completely different than we think it does today.
I wonder....will we see it as failure when it will be the healthiest we have ever been?
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