Be The Fruit

Have we Quarantined the Message?

by Bill Blair on 17/04/09 at 5:30 am

If you have been to a pediatrician’s office lately, you have probably seen that most have two waiting rooms.  One waiting room is for “well kids” and the other is for “sick kids.”  The obvious reason for separate waiting rooms is to keep the sick kids from making the well kids sick.

Did you see I am Legend with Will Smith?  In that movie there was a drastic outbreak of a virus (or whatever it was) that caused people to be transformed into vampire-like creatures.  In the story, the epidemic spreads so fast that people attempt to isolate it to New York City.

Both of these are examples of a quarantine.  The idea of a quarantine is to simply shut an illness off to the outside world so it cannot spread.  If the sickness can be isolated it will not affect others.  If the sickness is isolated it might just die.

In Christianity, it seems as if we have bought into the idea of the church as a building that sits on a specific property somewhere.  In that building events are held every week that some people attend regularly.  The building is where things happen, the building is where we “do church.”  As many good things that happen in that building, there is a whole other world out there that will never even think about coming inside.  But we are proud of all the things that go on at the location.  Some are proud of their casual clothes, catchy sermons, cool music, and coffee bars while others are proud of their old time religion, but both stay focused on the central location.  The people inside the building think that is where the action is too.  You can tell this because if you ask them about their lost sibling, cousin, or neighbor they will ultimately respond with something like, “They need to go to church.” 

Could it be that the reason we think lost people need to “go to church” is because that is where we have isolated the message?  Let’s go back to the opening example.  At the doctor’s office, the only way for the well kids to be infected by the sick kids is for the well kids to leave the “well waiting room” and enter the “sick waiting room.”  It is only there that the infection can spread and affect well kids.  In the church that focuses everything on the building and central location we have the opposite problem.  Inside  the church are the well kids, while the sick kids are outside.  Inside the church, the well kids have a cure for the sick kids, but the sick ones don’t know it and don’t even think they need it.  Inside the church, the well kids hope and hope that more sick kids will come inside and be affected by the cure.  They work and work to add better toys, bells, and whistles in hopes that more sick kids will come inside, but few come.  Why don’t they come?  Because they don’t even know they are sick.

By confining church to a central location we have effectively quarantined the message of God that can heal the sick kids outside.  Do you remember what happens when something is quarantined?  Whatever is quarantined will not affect others.   Whatever is quarantined might just die.  If we really want to affect others and we don’t want the church to die, we must turn outward and let the message of salvation spread where we live, where we work, and wherever we might be.  The church was never meant to be isolated to one location, but was meant to be communities of believers that take up God’s mission in this world.

Jesus said the Kingdom of God was like a mustard seed in that something very small could grow into something very big (Mark 4:31-32).  But how will the tree begin to grow if we don’t get out and find fertile ground to plant the seeds?

Inspired by a young man with a heart for the mission Jesus has put before us.