Churches are always looking for ways to improve our church.  Here are some suggestions for ways to help grow our church:

·            Offer free frequent flyer miles with every visit!

·            Use “Big Gulp” communion cups!

·            Issue “Get Out of Hell Free” cards!

·            Install reclining pews!

·            Every fourth week raffle off the offering!

·            Open a Starbucks franchise in our church lobby! (and some churches have already tried something similar to this.)

·            Become a hosting member of the WWFWE (World Wide Federation

How can we have a growing church? What does it take to revive a church? How can a church that is stumbling along recapture the joy and enthusiasm that once gripped its fellowship?

I am firmly convinced that the biggest barrier confronting many churches today is what I call the “Dachshund Dilemma.”  The “Dachshund Dilemma” is derived from an old poem about dachshunds dogs that are long of body and short of legs. The poem goes like this:

There was a dachshund, /Once so long
He hadn’t any notion /How long it took to notify
      His tail of his emotion;
And so it happened, /while his eyes
Were filled with woe and sadness, /his little tail went wagging on
      Because of previous gladness.

That’s a good description of the plight of many churches today,  still wagging their tails, not because of what’s going on today, but because they remember years ago when the congregation was new and fresh and vibrant.

“And so it happened, while his eyes were filled with woe and sadness, his little tail went wagging on because of previous gladness.”

Our lesson today suggests three elements that must be present if a church is to be the vital body of Christ God calls us to be. If any of these three are missing, a church - regardless of its size, the beauty of its building or the affluence of its congregation is - in trouble.

The first of these elements is that the church must have a clear understanding of what it’s about. When Jesus began his ministry, the first thing he did was to announce his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed and announce the acceptable year of the Lord.”

From his baptism to his death upon the cross of Calvary , Jesus understood what he was here for. The question is, do we? Everyone seems to want to know “how is God doing in your church?” when the real question should be “What is your church doing for God?”

Jesus steps forward in Nazareth and declares the truth about his life: he has been filled with the power of the Spirit and anointed to bring good news to the poor. To know our mission and to understand what God has given us to do are as important to us as they were to Jesus.

In Rachel Carson’s book The Sea Around Us, she describes the microscopic vegetable life of the sea, which provides food for many of the ocean’s smallest creatures. She tells how these little plants drift thousands of miles wherever the currents carry them, with no power or will of their own to direct their own destiny. The plants are named plankton, a Greek word that means “wandering” or “drifting.”

Plankton may also be a good way to define the life of many churches – wandering, drifting, thousands of miles away from where they started as a church.  What’s our mission as a church? Why do we exist?  We exist for two reasons: to reach people with the good news of God’s love as revealed in Jesus Christ;  to influence society to the point where the kingdoms of this earth more closely resemble the kingdom of God .

Jesus called his followers salt . . . he spoke of the kingdom as leaven. What he’s saying is that we should be having an impact on those around us and the culture in which we live. A vital church understands its mission.

The second thing that a vital church must have is a sense of unity and fellowship. In Corinthians, Paul writes, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ . . .”

The church at Corinth was made up of Jews and Gentiles. Some had worshipped idols. Some were slaves, some were free. Paul knew that they could not effectively serve Christ if they were torn into little cliques.

So it is with the church today. If we are to be effective in winning people and influencing society, we need unity. We need to think of ourselves as one family. One body.

A 97-year-old lady was asked what the most important lesson was in her life, and she explained an incident she had when she was a youngster.  She and some friends decided to climb Mount Washington in New Hampshire , elevation 6,227 feet.

They went too far and before long the late afternoon fog set in so thick they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces. No one knew the way down, so they agreed they would all hold hands and they would not, under any circumstances, let go of each other.

And so they inched their way down one step at a time, all of them clung to each other in one extended chain. Sometimes they had to stop to argue about which way to go, but the key thing was that none of them let go.

“Sometimes all I could see was the hand ahead of me and the one behind me,” this woman said. “Sometimes my arms ached so badly I thought I would cry out loud, but that is how we made it at last. We found our way home by holding on to one another.”

That’s a good lesson for the church. We make it through life’s difficult times by holding on to one another. Even geese know that.  When a goose gets sick or becomes wounded, it never falls from formation by itself. Two other geese fall out of formation with it and follow the ailing goose down to the ground.

One of them is very often the mate of the wounded bird, since geese mate for life and are extremely loyal. Once on the ground, the healthy birds help protect the wounded bird and care for it as much as possible, even to the point of throwing themselves between the weakened bird and possible predators.

They stay with the wounded bird until it’s either able to fly or dies. Then, and only then, do they launch out on their own. In most cases, they wait for another group of geese to fly overhead and join them, adding to the safety and flying efficiency of their numbers.  1

A vital church is one that understands its mission in the world, at the same time caring for the members of its flock.

The final element in a growing church is that each person knows that he or she has a ministry to fulfill. As Paul tells us: “All of you are Christ’s body, and each one is part of it . . .” Some are the eye, some the ear, some the mouth, some are the feet . . . Paul speaks of the various gifts as parts of the body. But one thing is clear; everyone has a role to play, and no part is more important than another.

Simon Peter was the rock of the church at Jerusalem . Yet there would have been no Simon Peter leading the church if there had not been a humble Andrew to lead Simon to Christ.  

Paul was probably the second most influential person who ever lived, after Christ himself.  I wonder how effective Paul would have been had it not been for Barnabas, who had that marvelous gift of encouragement.

When Saul of Tarsus claimed Jesus Christ had turned him around, the disciples in Jerusalem refused to believe it, or accept him. They gave him the cold shoulder. You can understand their feelings.

The Jerusalem disciples thought Saul had joined the spy business. They suspected this former persecutor of Christians becoming an undercover agent in Christian guise so he could discover the followers of the Way. They feared he would send them to prison or to death.

But Barnabas believed the best about Saul. Taking him to the leaders of the Jerusalem church, Barnabas vouched for his conversion. He documented the validity of Saul’s transformation by reporting his public preaching of Christ in Damascus . Because the apostles knew Barnabas and trusted him, they accepted Saul.  2

How grateful I am that there are people in our church with the spirit of Andrew for evangelism and the spirit of Barnabas for encouragement. Each of us has a gift that Christ will use to build his kingdom.

This is no dead shrine. This is no mausoleum.  This is the body of the living Christ, and we are all vital parts of it.  When each of us hears that, knows that, and feels that to the very core of our being, we’ll continue to see great things happen in and through Providence .

The great hymn “The Church’s One Foundation,” states that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ.  We continue to be that kind of church - militant and triumphant - when we renew our sense of mission and ministry each week, as we reclaim the vital part we play among God’s people in the world today.

1.  God’s Little Devotional Book (Tulsa, OK: Honor Books, Inc., 1973), p. 17.
2.  Charles Mylander, Secrets for Growing Churches (San Francisco: Harper& Row, Publishers, 1979).