An invitation
What makes a church great?
“One day the telephone rang in the Rector’s office of the Washington church, which President Franklin Roosevelt attended. An eager voice inquired, ‘tell me, do you expect the President to be in church this Sunday?’ ‘That,’ the Rector explained patiently, ‘I cannot promise. But we expect God to be there, and we fancy that will be incentive enough for a reasonably large attendance.’”
I like this little story because it typifies a mistake many of us make when thinking about church. Whether our participation depends on the presence of powerful people, or our best friend, we can easily make church about everything but God. For others of us, we anticipate great music and a great sermon, and that moves and motivates us to attend. And for others, we have some pretty high expectations on the community of people we are going to encounter, and we hope they really embrace us. These are all good things to hope for, they really are, but sometimes in the process we forget what makes church truly great.
I’ve experienced this forgetfulness in all kinds of church experiences. When a church is “successful” sometimes we sideline God as we appeal to people through everything but him. When a church is struggling or just starting out (like we are), we can fall into the same trap, just reverse. We hope to one day, when we have more people and more resources, appeal to people with everything but him
Then it dawned on me, (with a little conviction I might add): What makes a church great, the single factor that makes any church truly great, is the beautiful presence of a great God. God raises the stock of any church, large or small, slick or sloppy…it’s God’s presence that makes His church great! That’s why a small church in remote India, meeting under a tree, is just as great as a mega-church of thousands. The same God is present among and within his people. Now that’s worth remembering when you have little – and maybe even more when you have a lot.
In just over a week, we are gathering publicly for the first time as a new church community in Seattle. I can assure you, we are not a great church without God. We really don’t have that much to offer. Yet, we have the presence of God, and if we get one thing right our first Sunday, our prayer is that God is the one who shines bright. Not us, not our name, not even our community, but the One who makes all this possible. We can’t wait to come together.
So if you know of anyone that could use an invitation back to God, take the risk and bring him or her with you. And if they ask, “Who’s going to be there?” You can answer: “God will be there, and I fancy that will be incentive enough for a reasonably large attendance.” And if they don’t buy that, tell them the President might show up
See you on the 13th at 10:00am!
– Jeff