Metaphors of the Church

As I think about the church as a missional community, I find it helpful to identify new metaphors to help us envision what God’s intentions for our life together might be.  The Bible already has some great metaphors – the Body being one of my favorite (apparently also a favorite of the apostle Paul’s).  The idea of a building – with living stones that work together to grow upward – is a cool one, too.  But new metaphors are also helpful, especially in light of the need to counteract the all-too-dominant “church as corporation” model which has driven the church for too long.  So, here’s a couple of metaphors to explore:

 

CHURCH AS TEACHING HOSPITAL

A teaching hospital is a pretty cool idea, actually.  It’s not only a place where the sick and wounded can come to find healing; it’s also a place where young practitioners with potential can develop their skills, apply newly learned ideas, and develop into skilled healers.  The difference in the church, though, is that instead of two groups (patients and practitioners), there is only one.  The sick and wounded come to the church as a “teaching hospital community” to not only receive healing and restoration, but to themselves learn the disciplines and practice of being a healer toward others.  The church is a place of restoring the wounded and broken and transforming them into agents of blessing toward others.  Even more integrated than a teaching hospital, really!

 

CHURCH AS…

OK.  I can barely bring myself to write it, since the image seems so contradictory.  See, the band the Grateful Dead was a little bit before my time.  So, I can only speak, well, historically.  But they’ve worked their way into the consciousness of popular culture (as anyone who’s ever eaten Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia can attest).  And one thing that’s most associated with the Grateful Dead are the “Deadheads” who would follow the band from concert to concert, developing their own unique culture and community centered around the band.  While I wouldn’t want to be (mis)understood as endorsing a band like the Grateful Dead (again, before my time, I’ve never even heard their music), I find the image a powerful one:  a group of people consumed with passion for someone, always on the road following, creating a culture and community out of their shared passion.  Maybe instead of “following the Dead,” we need to conceive as the church as “following the Living.”  We would be a people consumed with passion in our devotion for the Living One, never at home, never settled, living as a people-on-a-journey, always on the road, pilgrims following wherever the Living One goes, creating a culture and community out of our shared passion for this Living One.

 

Metaphors are never perfect.  Certainly these two aren’t.  But maybe they’ll provoke some meaningful thought, new ways to view and understand the church.

 

 

Follow Your Heart?

The idea of “following your heart” is a pretty common theme in the sentimental children’s movies I grew up watching.  You can imagine the kind of thing I’m talking about:  “You don’t have to be like the other kids, Billy.  Just follow your heart.”  Maybe it’s good advice – sometimes.

 

Since one of my responsibilities as an organizational leader involves fundraising, I have come to the awareness that financial donors often “follow their heart” – they give to the projects that impact them the most emotionally.  And, certainly, there are enough heart-wrenching problems in this broken, sinful world to drive us to tears.  At least, we OUGHT to be driven to tears.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all our financial giving should follow our tears.

 

Let’s be frank, at the risk of being a bit cynical.  One of the best ways to raise funds is to start an orphanage.  The image of orphaned children is emotionally powerful, and ties into a repeated Biblical theme that these fatherless are worthy of our attention and support.  Giving to an orphanage is “following your heart.”  But is an orphanage really the best way to bring holistic transformation to these precious young ones?  Maybe not.

 

Another emotionally powerful “hot topic” these days is human trafficking.  This despicable 21^st-century slavery is rightly raising the ire of God’s people, and motivating committed response.  Both money and personnel are following this passion, and God’s people are responding to this global injustice.  Rightly so, and much more needs to be done.

 

However, what bothers me is that sometimes the most effective, long-term, sustainable approaches to pursuing holistic transformation are NOT emotionally powerful.  Imagine going to a missions conference, and hearing two presentations.  One is from an organization that trains local staff in a developing country to go out into a village and work with local village development committees who create a village development plan and implement it over the course of 5-10 years, often with significant but incremental change for that village.  The other presentation is from an organization that rescues girls who have been trafficked into prostitution and brings them to a “safe house” where they are trained with vocational skills so they can start a new life.  Both organizations are desperately in need of additional funding for their work to continue.  Which one would you give to?

 

Maybe you’re different from others, but I have a strong suspicion that the organization combating human trafficking would receive an overwhelming majority of the response.  That is a desperate, urgent situation that demands immediate action, and people, well, they follow their hearts.

 

I’m not saying we SHOULDN’T support initiatives to combat human trafficking.  I’m connected with them to some degree myself.  But I fear that if we as missionaries (present and potential) and perhaps even more so as financial donors ONLY “follow our hearts,” then there are many significant initiatives that will remain underfunded.  Programs that develop young leaders, programs that invest in building capacity for community development – they’re just too long-term, too slow-paced, not urgent, not emotionally impacting, not trendy enough, etc.  But those long-range, plodding programs may well be the foundation of long-lasting transformational change.  Maybe when communities are healthy, and leaders are healthy, we’ll see a reduction in problems like orphans and human trafficking.

 

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t give to programs combating human trafficking, or even that we should stop supporting orphanages.  I’m just saying that as you make your next missional investment, thing about long-term sustainability.  Don’t just follow your heart.