The call of our church...

Mariners children ctr.Sometimes I lust after other churches.

After watching the videos from Andy Stanley's Drive Conference 05 (free on-line thanks to their generosity and the power of the Internet), my gut was swollen with desires: "Wouldn't it be great if the environment of our church would be as appealing as their, so that we could create an attractive place for people to come to Christ?"

My cousin Josh recently visited a few other mega churches in the region: Mariners, Saddleback and came back raving about how plush is their campus, and how prominent is their children ministry center. And I felt my gut swolen again.

Even my neighboring Vietnamese church down the freeway from us is doing a big building drive to add a gym onto their campus as they focus on the next generation at their church. I was drooling after the floor plan: "Nice!"

And here in our ghetto church, we sit - sometimes lusting after other churches.

If church was like business, the other churches would be our competitors, going after the same market for souls.

If church was like business, you want to differentiate yourself in the highend target audience and be the Nordstroms and Sak Fifth of the churches, where you could attract wealthy clients so that you could have better profit margin and more stable growth no matter if the economy was up or down.

If church was like business, you would draw more clients by give them what they ask for and pay attention to their needs, providing excellent experience according to what they are willing to pay for.

But church is not like business.

The body of Christ is here on earth to do the work of Christ. Some parts of the body seems to be highly esteem, and some parts seems to be lowly. But regardless of their different perceptions, all the parts would work together to serve a common purpose, directed by the head - Christ. Each church has its call to fulfill. Mariners church were surrounded by multi-million-dollars home; give it a ghetto's look and no one from those neighborhood would step through its door. In contrast, the previous owner of our church property wanted to expand the church to take up the whole block, complete with underground parking - and that plan was met with much resistance from the neighbors living around.

In our planning session a week ago between An and I, we realized that we won't be a "successful" church (in the 3B term of buildings, bodies and bucks). Have you noticed the recurring theme of people who God brought into our church? People who were broken and hurt, and people who were seeking hard after God.

I asked Hai last night in our career small group about why did he leave Mariner; after all it has everything a parents would want for their kids: top of the line children ministry complete with its own Disneyland style theme rooms. On top of that, they have great teaching and preaching and multitude of other programs and activities too.

And he said that God was leading him on his quest to serve Him in a community focus environment, and that's why he came back to our church.

We won't be big and we won't be plush. Somehow it pleases God to have us continue to be a community that care for one another and minister to the broken world around us. That's our calling even though it may not be an exciting vision.

Sometimes I lust after other churches. But that's not right.

I pray that God will help us grow in our faithfulness to our church own calling. At least until He call us to somewhere else.