STARS IN YOUR EYES

“To boldly go where no man has gone before”

Those of you that are Star Trek fans will be fully conversant with this phrase. Every episode you watch has an introduction that finishes with this comment.

Each encounter that the Star Ship Enterprise and its crew were faced with involved a new challenge. Whilst there were ground rules to be obeyed, they had to innovate to solve the problem.

Is there a lesson here for the church? I think there is and that would be “change is here to stay” which sounds a bit like an oxymoron. You don’t boldly go where no man has gone before doing the same as you have always done.

Doing the same thing every week and expecting a different result is just not going to happen. If a golfer is having trouble with his approach shots, he examines his swing to see if there is something that needs to be corrected.

If company’s sales are falling, they don’t just go blithely on doing the same thing day in and day out hoping that one day their sales will suddenly increase. They examine why their sales are falling and then change course to prevent sales dropping any further.

The church however, seems to specialise in ignoring the obvious. It is losing people by the day, yet it blithely goes on its merry way in the hope that one day all that will change. In some cases it doesn’t give a damn that nothing is happening as their sole purpose seems to be to keep its “faithful” membership happy.

Whilst that is all very well, it is ignoring the main reason for our existence; that of going into the entire world and making disciples of all nations. If anyone is going to come into the Kingdom of God, they have to come into our domain and do what we are doing or else they can go to hell…quite literally.

There is only one reason that I can think of for the church operating and thinking like this is that Satan has convinced them that they do not have to obey the word of God. God will be just as pleased with them if they do nothing as if they do something. I know it is not God telling them this.

Unless we are prepared to change we are in for a long time of irrelevancy. Doug Mirren in his book Leadershift asks “Could it be that methods that once worked are now your greatest obstacles?”

If that is the case, it will be necessary to kill what are known as sacred cows. I know a church that used to have a children’s ministry of up to 60 children. Now it has six. Nearly all the young families have left and the congregation has gentrified. Time to kill the sacred cow.

When was the last time your church did something different? When was the last time your church killed off a sacred cow because it was obviously no longer working or needed? When was the last time your church realised that the world has moved on and that the church in its present form is no longer on its agenda?

When was the last time that your church took the challenge to boldly go where no man has gone before?