Friday

I am writing this on a cool cloudy Friday. After having near record degree heat we now have what seems to be the beginning of fall. There are some trees that are even beginning to have their leaves change. I am planning on getting some pictures for a calendar that I am going to make that will be titled the Middle of Nowhere.

Sunday is coming and I am looking forward to my sermon series on Why Church. As I was reflecting on the material and the scripture, one thing struck me. I had some conversations with a number of people who lament that we are not reaching a certain age group. Certainly this is what Re-Think Church is about. As I was thinking about this lament, I remember reading a book Good to Great. In that book, the focus was on what made companies great. One common aspect of that was that the companies that were great focused not on trying to be everything to everyone but instead focused on what they did well and put their energy into that. I am also reading Mike Slaughter's book Unthink Church. He also points out the same issue and certainly in his book Change the World discusses how he was able to take a church that appeared to be dying and put the energy in what they could do with what they had.

I have been thinking about this and about to what extent do we take our resources to try to meet the needs of everyone. Rather it may be more fruitful to focus on what we do well and put our resources, time, and energy into that. Jesus did not try to please everyone. He was not interested in building a large congregation and in fact if judged by his followers as he was crucified would appear to be a failure in church development. Instead he focused on what he did well which was loving his Father and his disciples and reaching out to those no one else wanted to claim.

Maybe church should be more like that. I believe if we are faithful to what God calls us to do we will have a plentiful harvest.