My brother was the consummate story teller. He could captivate an individual or group of people with funny story after funny story. While nearly every story would have the listener laughing hysterically, often those stories would have a lesson, either obvious or obscure.
[featured-image single-newwindow=”false”]Courtesy © istock.com/vladimir_vahrin[/featured-image]
Interestingly, years later as I think of some of those stories, I find new applications for those lessons. Here is one such story.
There was a man who took a new job painting the yellow lines down the center of the local roads. He was given his tools: paint and a paint brush. He was shown the stretch of road where the lines were to be painted and left to do his job.
He set a record that first day by completing over five miles of lines. You want to talk about a great first impression! Setting a record will do it!
The next day, he still completed an impressive amount of lines, but he only painted four miles. The next day resulted in over three miles of lines, but it was obvious to his supervisor that the man was falling off his pace.
It was not until after the end of the fourth day when the man only painted half a mile of lines that his supervisor began to question his productivity. “How could you paint a record amount of lines on the first day, and by the fourth day you only painted a lackluster half mile?” asked his supervisor. The man replied, “The first couple of days were easy, but the more I painted the further I moved away from my paint bucket. Today I spent too much time running back to the bucket to replenish my brush.”
You may be laughing or simply shaking your head. Either way, it does paint (pun intended) a picture of how we view church sometimes.
- We cannot get too far away from the church building because it is seen as the source of our daily and weekly encouragement.
- All activities must take place at the church building.
- Every time the doors of the church building are open, we expect all members to be there.
While I do not want to diminish the importance of gathering together, what we must not do is promote the church building above being the church. Do we spend more time during the week traveling to the building that we are too tired to BE the church in our neighborhoods?
Technology exists today that allows church leaders unprecedented presence in the lives of people while they are on the daily journey of life. In a sense, we need to unchain the church from the building and put into place a ministry infrastructure (minfrasTructure) that allows the people of the church to be the church in the world and still gain the encouragement and discipleship.
Be creative. Go where they are. Take advantage of digital discipleship tools like:
- blogs
- podcasts
- video [click for related posts]
- social media [click for related posts]
Go ye everywhere and make disciples!
[reminder]What are ways we can disciple people outside the walls of the church? What other lessons do you get from this story?[/reminder]