Following on from The church with no programs. I concluded with the following challenge:

    What would your church look like if you stopped every single program? What would rise up and fill their space? Some of the old which was valuable may well reappear but I would bet next weeks collection it would emerge totally different, and something that honours God where you are, with what you have and blesses the community around you.

Over a period of many years I have read at least 50 books on church leadership, management and growth. They all had great ideas, some could even be used in a context apart from the one they originated. (aside: don't dig into that point, I have a big problem with church leadership books and the people who read them and try to make them work in absurdly different circumstances.)

However none of it really hit home until somebody asked be the question: "If you church disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice?"

Well, would anyone miss yours? Most of the congregation would probably be happy with a free Sunday. Now that's not a joke, I was talking to the leader of a nearby church this morning and he told me how great it was since they closed their night service. He get's to spend a lot more time with friends and family. Long lunches with friends turn into long evenings. He doesn't want to start going back to the night services.

That single question used to drive how I approached ministry (I think I blogged about it a while ago but I can't remember) until the question was redefined for me by Rob Bell.

This is not a direct quote but it's  pretty close. Rob asked: "If your church was forced to close down tomorrow, who would protest?"

I'll give you a pass on the church members (their a given except for my friend above). This question puts a beautiful spin on the original, it opens us up to consider our wider community and their needs. Would our neighbors notice that the church had been closed? Will our community miss our impact as far as social justice and helping the poor is concerned?

What are we doing in our church that will be protested if we are forced to move on?

A great deal of my time recently has been given over to the contemplation of church as an activity. In the last month on three seperate occasions, people (all couples but I don't think that's causal) have told me that they have given up going to church because to varying degrees they do not see a point in it.

These are all people who love God wholeheartedly but have been disenfranchised in congregations that see their value as their abilities and not as fellow children of God.

It gives me reason to pause when I hear something like this and it should cause you to pause as well.

Why does a congregation exist? That seems to be the root of all of this. I know that many people are not fans of the institutional church and are looking to the emerging and missional movements to find something new and exciting, I count myself among them, but surely the institutional church as we know it is not evil.

If it were evil (as defined by actively opposing peoples relationship with God) then I would be the first with the flamethrower and pitch fork calling for them to be closed down. I do not believe the institutional church to be inherently evil but they have in many cases become misguided.

This sounds a little contradictory but I'm both a supporter and detractor of the institutional church. Actually, I just don't like the institutional part. Let me unpack that a little with some more definitions.

We call pretty much any church with 4 walls and people institutional. I believe that is unfair. An institutional church in my mind is one that has become institutionalized. One that exists purely to perpetuate it's existence.

IBM, one of the worlds biggest computer companies and largest employers had this problem not that long ago. They were BIG BLUE, everyone came to them to have their problems fixed. After a while they just seemed to stagnate. Their products were no longer innovative, they did not take the industry lead and as a consequence they were overtaken by smaller rivals. IBM it seems existed just to be IBM, they were no longer a business to help people.

Sound familiar? Institutionalized churches are like IBM, they were once vibrant communities of faith and healing but somewhere along the line they looked inwards and started to plan for maintenance and not growth.

IBM seems to be back on a growth trajectory but it took many years, a lot of pain and introspection and real LEADERSHIP to turn things around.

The same is needed for the church.

One of my favorite pieces of Scripture is "Without a vision, the people perish". It is our responsibility as leaders of God's church to be focused on his mission and share with our congregation how we are going to accomplish that in our context. That is vision. All else is secondary to the Fathers mission. The building, lobbying government, the music everything is secondary to the mission. They are often important, but I will say it one more time. They are secondary to the mission.

Here are some hard questions for you church leader:

 * What is your churches number one focus?
 * Do you have a vision statement?
 * Does it fulfill the great commission?
 * Are you able to measure if it's working?
 * Are you making an idol out of anything secondary?