Watch!
Just had an interesting conversation with someone regarding Church growth and building church. They started developing areas of ministry which brought together both church and community assuming that as they did people would get excited about the engagement and come rushing in to be part. In fact what happened was people stood on the sidelines and applauded loudly while pointing out further areas with potential for engagement.
Leaning heavily upon 'Field of Dreams' (neatly summed up on the Japanese DVD cover as 'man builds baseball field and meets dead father') this person assumed that if they built the ministry areas then people would indeed come, just like the film. Of course they forgot that the people did indeed come, but they came as spectators, not players - the players were the dead guys!
So, perhaps a good piece of advice from a missioner perspective here - perhaps the key is to get them to build it?
This is an area I will have to go away and think about a bit = but thought I'd let you share the experience with me.
Perhaps we need to change it to, "If you build it, they will come . . . and watch!"
Pax
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