I've been thinking about stop signs. Stop signs have a purpose. They help to regulate traffic and keep us from running into each other. Many a person has been badly injured or killed as the result of someone running a stop sign.
In relationships we call these boundaries. To have healthy relationships we learn to set up appropriate boundaries to ensure our physical and emotional safety. We know that it is best to honor the boundaries others have set. The concern I've had over the years, however, is when these boundaries result in limiting healthy relationships between the church and its community. These stop signs have often become barriers to relating instead of boundaries.
Take for example churches that make no effort to communicate to their visitors they are expected and welcome in their church by offering poor or no signage in the parking lots to direct their guests to the church entrances and preferred parking spaces. These churches do not have anyone at the church doors to be on the lookout for visitors and are not prepared to welcome them when they do find their way in. These are stop signs to the person looking for a warm church community to become a part of.
There are many other stop signs churches use to actively prevent their church from being challenged to consider their neighbor's needs and, therefore, having to change in order to minister to these needs. These come in the form of "concerns." For example, "How are we going to fund that ministry," or "Where are the workers going to come from to lead and teach and manage that new program?" These concerns become stop signs to developing outreach efforts that stop the church from impacting it's community for Christ.
Worse, I believe, are the barriers we have erected between our community churches to working together to reach our communities. We are stopped by our fear of loosing members to other churches, by our concern over theological correctness, and by our prejudices about other church styles and traditions.
Instead of being stopped from relating altogether, we might consider removing some of our barriers, our stop signs, and replacing them with "caution" signs to make sure we are not foolishly tolerating behaviors and practices our Lord would not tolerate and "yield" signs where we adjust our efforts so we can "merge" with others going in the same direction we are headed.
Let's talk about this and make the effort to find ways of relating for the good of the unchurched and hurting of our communities.
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