It's Hard to Have Vision if You Can't See

On a recent Wednesday evening, my wife put on one of her famous "Wednesday Night Outs." It's a full meal, preceding our evening Bible Study to help folks who might not normally have time to leave work, go home, eat supper, and then come to the building, or just make it easier on those who do. I was at the building most of the day.

During the meal, I asked one of our members: "Did you see if the lights in the parking lot were on when you came in?" She looked at me and said: "I never notice those things. I've been coming here for so long that I just don't see stuff like that."

Getting up from the meal, I checked. No lights. Evidently, our power had been off and it had put our timers several hours behind. A flip of the switch, and a twist of the timer dial, and all was well, but at the time -- when we were really trying to make things easier for people who come -- the way to an open door was as dark as pitch.

I understand, I really do. You do something long enough, and you tend not to notice the scenery. But what you and I might excuse as familiarity, others, particularly newcomers, will see as inattentiveness. When my son went to college, he spent a good bit of time looking for a church home. He went to one church, noticed the time of their assemblies on their sign, and returned the following Sunday evening at the appointed hour -- an hour late. Assembly was just ending. The members seemed glad to see him and welcomed him in, but when he mentioned that the sign had the wrong times on it, one of the church leaders said: "Really? Let me see." Confirming the inaccurate information, the leader said: "We need to get that fixed." The last time I checked, the sign had never been changed. That church is a wonderfully warm spiritual family, but it's not growing, and one of the reasons is simply inattentiveness. If they aren't paying attention to the things outsiders see first, they will never get a second chance to make a good impression.

Bob Iger is the Chairman and CEO of Disney. A while back they decided to revamp their stores and Iger called Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple), whose stores are always full of customers, to give them some advice. Jobs said: "Create a statement . . . Ask yourselves what you want the stores to say to people when they walk in."

A church is people, not a building, in the same way that Apple is a product, not a store, but the two, product and store, church and building, are inseparably linked. If your building smells of mildew, if paint is peeling, if the sign outside is in disrepair -- or, heaven forbid, just wrong -- it won't matter what the people are like on the inside, chances are, folks will just keep driving. Additionally, if the building is perfect, but folks don't seem to notice new faces, nor are they welcoming, people still won't be back.

With every meeting of the church, leadership and followship needs to be asking: "What impression do we want people to get who visit with us?" Then, leadership and followship needs to open their eyes to what might blunt that message, and do something about it.

If you cannot see yourself, or at least try to see yourself as others see you, you will be wholly ineffective at casting a vision for the future because you won't know where you are, or where you need to go. Familiarity is like blindness, and both are the enemy of a successful church.