Incubators are for chicks, not chickens. And Jesus calls us to be children, not adults.
Somehow these twin insights seem particularly obvious to me at the moment. I have spent the last few hours taking a second look at an age-old situation: a congregation that is not going anywhere. This was not, of course, the age-old problem for the particular congregation I've been discussing with my father- and brother-in-law. THAT congregation was, like all congregations, a vibrant, growing one at one time. All congregations BEGIN at some point, and that point is usually rich with energy and ripe with growth. That is, all mature chickens start out as chicks. The difficulty with growing the kingdom of God (or at least OUR difficulty) is that most pastors are tending to chicken houses filled with mature chickens rather than establishing incubators filled with chicks.
Chickens in chicken houses seem like a good situation, because chickens lay eggs. And the kingdom of God needs mature Christians to disciple new ones.
The problem is that we have employed pastors in tending to chicken houses, where egg-laying is the responsibility (and sole ability) of chickens. As a result, there are a lot of still-born chicks (read that, eggs) which are seen as the goal by the egg-eating pastor (stay with me now) rather than seeing within the egg a future chicken and a suite of future chicken houses. Every congregation seems to reach the point of settling into an 'enough is enough' production capacity for eggs. And by NOT incubating them into new chickens and rehousing them in new chicken houses, we are essentially sitting down to a enjoy a perpetual egg dinner where the chickens supply US rather than US supplying THEM (with their own offspring and new houses to grow in).
If we ever want chickens--er, Christians-- to take over the world, we'd better stop eating eggs and start building incubators.
So now let me return to the impetus for the insight.
As I said at the outset, I have just spent a few hours talking about the challenges facing a non-numerically-growing congregation. In doing this, I had the LUXURY of having two mature fellow-Christians with similar experience and passion for change to banter with. As we talked together, iron sharpened iron (as Proverbs says) and our focus became sharper; our ideas clearer. To the point of actually generating excitement and new desire for change within the three of us. One of the three is the current pastor of the congregation under discussion. Could he have generated this energy alone? From his very words in our conversation, he was eager to see some of these new ideas plied toward his struggling congregation. That is, he'd love to have this kind of incubation happening on an ongoing basis to help his church recapture a vision for growth rather than mere survival. Ideally, his denomination's structure would provide this kind of thing, but realistically, leadership tends toward egg-eating rather than incubator-building, just like pastors do.
What the mission field of the kingdom of God needs is an impetus to incubate. We need something from OUTSIDE to enter into the inert mix of going-nowhere chemicals to FUEL a new REACTION. Something that generates ENERGY. A catalyst to create incubators. It's what we need, but not something we naturally want. We naturally want more eggs to eat, not more eggs to incubate. Incubation requires that our energy go into the new thing, whereas we're used to the status quo of getting energy out of the new thing by eating the eggs. (As I write this, my four year-old son is wailing in the kitchen, "Mama! What can I eat?" He seems to be making my point rather demonstrably.)
And I realize that I need an incubator that will catalyze me, too. I need an impetus to incubator-creation, rather than an organization that will teach me how to prepare eggs for the table. I need this because I believe the organization I am called to lead must itself be an incubator for the kingdom to grow.
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