Years ago, I preached regularly at a little church north of Toronto around Canada’s Wonderland. At the time, farmers’ fields that once surrounded the theme park were being transformed into cookie-cutter subdivisions. From Highway 400, motorists glimpsed large advertisements of this future community. The signs, complete with architect’s drawings of families playing on quiet cul-de-sacs, were a stark contrast to the muddy fields beside the highway betraying how much work still had to take place in order to bring this future to life. The only other hint of the new life to come was found in the corner of the development—a model home. On my way to a church meeting one day, I pulled off the highway and went inside that show home. Taking my muddy boots off at the door, I entered a totally different reality than the fallow fields outside the temporary sales home. A company representative warmly greeted me and offered a short tour complete with sparkling stainless steel appliances and an invitation to sit by the gas fireplace in a spacious living room. As I sank into a ridiculously plush leather couch my eye was drawn to a nearby window and the muddy, uncultivated field beyond. As if reading my mind, the sales representative said, “It’s a little hard to picture how all of this will one day be different but hopefully this glimpse is enough to tease your imagination.”
That line was still ringing in my head a few minutes later when I pulled into the gravel church parking lot. I wondered whether our congregations might just be show homes of God’s future development plans we call the Kingdom of God. Could it be that when people enter our churches they catch just a glimpse of what God in Christ is doing to redeem the world? What if the way we treated each other as sisters and brothers in Christ was so different than the world outside that people were curious enough to want to find out more about who Jesus is for us … for them? If our show homes were patterned appropriately to give even just a glimpse of God’s plan for this world and mirrored just enough of that self-giving, mutual, selfless love we know in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, how might that change a sin-sick and cynical world?
I raise the question and offer the image of the church as God’s show home for the Kingdom of God in this Leadershift column aware of the anxiety that’s brewing about the upcoming General Assembly. We are so excited in Vancouver to welcome brothers and sisters in Christ from across the country. We’re especially pleased that commissioners will be in our St. Andrew’s Hall neighbourhood of the University of British Columbia. But I am also aware that there are debates and discussions coming that will be a test of our ability to listen to, and love, one another. The thing is—like people watching Jesus eat at the table of sinners—others will be watching and wondering how the Presbyterian Church family will treat one another.
Imagine how powerful our church’s witness to the gospel could be if we offer the wider world a “show home” model of how followers of Jesus Christ can pray, talk and discern God’s will together with gentleness and respect. What leadership that would be for Christ’s global church to embrace St. Augustine’s classic statement that on “Essentials: Unity. Non-essentials: Liberty. All things: Charity.”
A large sign proclaimed the future development but the farmers’ fields behind declared a different reality. I passed the little show home each week on the way to church. When you entered that show home, with its sparkling floors and upgraded appliances, you got a glimpse of what was promised in the future subdivision. I wonder, can each and every congregation be a show home for the Kingdom of God? In a healthy church community, might we model what it means to participate in the mutual, self-giving love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Might the church be the place where people measure their effectiveness based on the quality of our relationships, the depth of our compassion and the trustworthiness of our grace-filled actions? Ministry may be like sand through the fingertips but at the end of the day our congregational “metrics of grace” can point to the muddy, uncultivated fields of the world and offer a glimpse of the kingdom that is coming … the kingdom that is already breaking into our lives.
