No half measures

HT: U.S.S. MarinerIn bringing the 777 to production, Boeing took the pursuit of perfection to its logical extreme: to make sure the wings were as strong, and as capable of enduring severe weather, as the design team wanted them to be, the company built an entire airplane (just the structure, not the interior equipment) just to break it, and then they took that plane and bent the wings until they snapped. The hope was that the wing would withstand at least 150% of the stress it would ever have to endure in the air; it did, breaking at 154%.There is, I think, a lesson here for the church—and no, it’s not “stress your volunteers until they break,” which too many churches already do. Boeing didn’t break people, they broke stuff; the church should always be able to tell the difference (which means, among other things, that we really shouldn’t get into the world’s habit of referring to people as “resources” and “assets,” because those are stuff words). Specifically, Boeing put the mission ahead of the stuff, and if they needed to break stuff to get the mission done right—to be sure they’d built a plane that was at least as good as they wanted it to be—they went ahead and broke the stuff. Indeed, they built it for the express purpose of being broken, just so they could be sure.The American church, I think, could stand to profit from their example. We have our mission statement direct from the mouth of God:

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

We need to make sure that that mission—which is completely antithetical, be it noted, to using up and burning out the people we already have in an effort to attract more people—is the driving motivation behind everything we do, to the point that nothing else is allowed to hold us back. If concern for those outside the church means that some of our stuff gets broken, then so be it. (Indeed, if concern for those inside the church means that we focus more on feeding and discipling them than on prodding them to contribute to the building fund, then praise God.) Certainly, we should be good stewards of the things we have; we should invest the time and money to take care of whatever buildings we own or use, and to do everything to the best of our ability to the glory of God. But we don’t exist to have an attractive building—or, for that matter, a large building—or to have great music, or to have a well-produced worship service, or to have lots of programs. We exist to make disciples of Jesus Christ, including each other, and all those other things exist to support that mission. If that means allowing some disorder and some breakage, we need to be willing to let that happen; if it means not having the big building and the big budget, we need to embrace that. We can’t be about the stuff; we need to be about making disciples—all about making disciples, nothing held back—and let the stuff fall where it will.