Paper airplane churches

I had a lunch meeting with a pastor/friend yesterday at the lovely Sweetwater Sound food court. This is where he makes his office every Monday. He oversees a cohort of pastors in his denomination, and makes himself available there to anyone who might want to talk. We used to meet for lunch on Wednesdays, but now we're going to meet on Mondays for our coaching sessions (or griping).

Anyway, yesterday we were looking at the vision, mission, values, etc. of a church (okay, it's the church I'm part of). I had just happened across a written copy and thought it interesting. We noted the number of catch-phrases and key words, and how - on paper at least - it sounded pretty good. The problem was.... it didn't sound like MY church at all! It was somebody's DREAM of a church.

This led me to think of the term "Paper-Airplane Church." You know, a church that looks good on paper, but doesn't fly very well in reality.

Certainly this is not specific to our church - or even churches in general - but a problem with so many organizations that put a lot of effort into how they look on paper. However, if it doesn't fit with the actual operations, they're not going to be very efficient or stay afloat for very long.

Looking back, I suppose I used to pastor a paper-airplane church too. I was trained, and spent a lot of time developing the right statements and theories and tag-lines... and then tried to force them onto a group of people. I'd like to think I at least included other voices in the process, and it appeared to even work for awhile. Yet, here we are.

In the end, I don't want to pretend to know the answer. I don't. I'm not even sure I understand the question. I do, however, think I know enough to know that while you may be able to dream up the best-looking church or organization on paper, paper doesn't cut it in real life. It's not reality.

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So, all that to say, this morning I've been wondering about the possibility of a church that looks like HELL on paper (not the real hell, but figuratively speaking - I can do that now that I'm not a pastor).

I wondered aloud to Jane last night: What if we just told some people we were going to open our home Sunday morning, and anyone that wanted to sing some songs, share some thoughts, look at a passage of Scripture and chat about it, and maybe pray or something... they would be welcome. I don't know how the music would work, or what we would do with kids, or how it would work out spatially... and maybe no one would even show up! On paper it doesn't look like much. But is it really any worse than a lot of our over-produced theatrics at having the ability to make disciples?

Honestly, I have no desire to lead another church, and I'm not all that excited about micro-church or home-church or anything like that. I really would simply like to just FIND a church to be a part of. But I'm tired of trying to fit into someone's sheet of paper. Why does it have to be so hard?

It's no wonder people are leaving our churches in droves. I suppose even my idea is nothing but a paper-airplane church itself (on a sticky note, no less).

So... I don't know... I'm just thinking.