What’s Boston Legal got to do with Church?
At the start of this season, John Larroquette joined the show I love as “Carl Sack” (that’s him on the far left). As always, when a new cast member is added to a show I watch regularly, I went through some worrisome times. What was going to happen to the relationship between Denny and Alan? How was Shirley going to fit into all of this? (especially once I realised that Carl and Shirley were in a serious relationship).
You see, I regard the people at Crane, Poole & Schmidt as part of my family and I worry about things happening that may cause changes.
In a comment on an earlier post of mine, Rebecca made the following comment about Salvation Army small corps (local churches):
We just don’t seem to think like that in the Army, for good or for bad. From a divisional perspective, most of our corps struggle to accommodate a small handful of new people in their corps, let alone large growth. And for many of our 30-60pax congregations, growth beyond these numbers means a considerable change from familiarity to not as much (ie you might not know everyone’s name on a Sunday).
Regrettably, I think Rebecca’s right on this, people are thinking exactly this way, scared of change because that may upset their comfortable family life.
Here’s the catch though. The network that owns Boston Legal knows that they can’t think of the show and its cast as a family. They’re there for a purpose (to entertain and thereby make money) and the decisions made around the show reflect this strong mission orientation.
In the church, I believe we’ve got to start basing our decisions and behaviour on a strong mission orientation. The first aspect to this is for everyone in our congregation to realise that:
- The church belongs to Jesus, not to the individual congregational members; and
- That Jesus stated the church’s mission as being there for those who are not yet in church (see the great commission).
Then and only then will we overcome this struggle of people being resistant to changing from being a comfortable church that meets members needs but doesn’t reach others, to being a church that honours Jesus instructions to make disciples of all nations.
God bless
