The Speedometer Verses the Gas Guage

A parable: #

Imagine for a moment that you and I were on a road trip together. As I’m driving along you notice the fuel gauge is getting low and suggest that we pull over and get some gas. In response I say to you, “We don’t want to slow down now we’re doing 60 MPH. Look at that Speedometer will you.”

Perhaps a little perplexed, you watch as we fly right by a gas station and keep heading down the road. A little while later, there is another opportunity to fill up, but when you mention it, I get this look of consternation and you begin to feel a little concerned as I point out to you that we are now doing 70. “Don’t worry about that silly gas gauge,” I say. “This thing has plenty of horse power”

But things really get dicey when the fuel low light on the dash comes on. Again you express significant concern that we might run out of fuel. “Look,” I reply. “The purpose of a car is not to just put gas in the tank all the time. If all we worry about is stopping for gas we will never get anywhere. Cars are meant to take people places, and right now this car is taking us someplace at 100 mile per hour. Why do you have to keep harping on this one thing that doesn’t even measure how fast we’re going! Its like you don’t even care about what the car is here for.”

A few minutes later you and I find ourselves sitting by the side of the road. The car has run all the way out of gas, and even if we could find a way to put more into it, it wouldn’t go very far. The engine has overheated, and won’t run without thousands of dollars of work. I turn to you and say, “It just goes to show that this road just isn’t good for cars anymore. Too many minivans, you know. I gave it a great shot though. I had that pedal all the way to the floor there at the end. Nothing held back. I guess I just need to find a car that can go a little faster on a better road somewhere else”

Reflection: #

This is the conversation I feel like I’m having over and over when it comes to healthy churches. Congregations keep shrinking, but it’s ok because that are really living out the Gospel in “big ways.” That as may be, but without a few more committed members, they are going to find themselves on the side of the road with an empty tank.

So often when someone points out that a churches fuel tank is running low (Shrinking attendance, financial insolvency, deferred maintenance) the response is to try to distract from the problem by pointing to the speedometer. “But look at how much fill in the blank ministry we do. We are a healthy church doing the work of the Gospel, and to prove it to you we will do even more.”

The problem is not that good thing are not happening in these congregations. I would venture to say that a lot of the little sports-car congregations that I know of are doing a whole lot more ministry then the lumbering 18-wheelers at the other end of the spectrum. The problem is that a lot of them are running on fumes and can’t see why they need to stop for gas.

Too many well meaning people in the church have confused their speedometer with their fuel gauge and refuse to accept that they will soon be out of fuel. When they do, they will blame it on an increasingly secular society instead.