One of my favorite shows to watch on television is a Food
Network show called Restaurant Impossible. The show follows Chef Robert Irvine
as he is challenged week after week to turn around small, failing restaurants.
In this pursuit he is given an interior designer, a construction chief, a very
limited budget, and 3 days. Most restaurants he walks into stink, have
unappetizing food, and have a decorating scheme that looks like the 60’s never
left.
In the show Chef Irvine tackles about everything. With a
great amount of huffing and puffing and a little paint he takes the outdated
decor and changes the look and the feel of the establishment. After tackling
the decor he then turns and reeducates the wait staff. In the final step of the show he then turns
his attention to the most important problems in the restaurant, the lacking
leadership of the owner and the unappetizing menu. The show teaches time and
again that if the owner does not lead and the product does not excel, then the
restaurant will fail despite its new look.
I have connected with this show because God has put a
burden on my heart to pastor in established churches and see them excel. It is
no secret that most churches (85%) are now declining and are within a
generation if not less of permanently closing their doors. In a good majority
of them they have tried redecorating more than just their walls. They have
tried style, programs, and any number of things in attempting to revitalize what
seems to be a sinking ship. The problem is they have changed the paint without
ever looking at the bigger issues that keep them from turning the corner.
For the church to turn around it must go back to its menu
and ask who and what it is serving. I believe that we as churches have
forgotten what we exist to serve and have instead begun serving things that
cannot sustain us in our future. We have directed our menus at trying to
develop ministries and services that reach out solely to a saved and culturally
Christianized crowd. I believe that this applies to both the “traditional”
church and the “contemporary” one. What we have done in this is build an entire
system of churches that attempt to grow off one another’s losses.
What must change? I
think we need to overhaul our menus. We must go back to seeing growth through
men coming to trust Jesus, not men transferring their membership. We must
design our church life to put our church bodies back in contact with people who
do not know Jesus, not just plan and enjoy events that entertain us. We must
lose the concept that people just randomly come to visit church and realize
that me must go out to meet them and invite them.
The gospel is just as powerful as it always has been. The
church has a bright and glorious future ahead of it. God will not forsake his
bride. We are not looking at church impossible. That said we must change the
foundational things that have kept us busy and blind. We must get back to the
one thing that matters most: gospel centered living and church.
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