A job interview or a doctor’s waiting room? How should we think about the church

Steve Midgely asks in Evangelicals Now whether our churches are more like “a group of people waiting for a job interview or those waiting in a doctor’s surgery.” He reminds us of Jesus’ statement that:

 ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners’ (Mark 2:17).

I wonder though. Jesus certainly did come for the spiritually sick, for sinners.  Yet, allowing for the now and the not yet, remembering that there is ongoing sanctification and that we are called to put to death sinful desire, is the doctor’s waiting room a helpful or unhelpful analogy to go to when thinking about church.  Jesus clearly uses the imagery of doctor and diseased, a GP’d waiting room is in any case anachronistic but aren’t those who have come to Jesus saved, healed, cleansed, forgiven.  Are we till queuing up to see the doctor in that kind of way?

I agree that the job interview image is one to avoid.  However, I can’t help that the waiting room image draws us into some of the same errors.  Ultimately, if it is about waiting to see the GP then, whilst passive, we are still queuing, waiting as individuals, it’s still primarily about me. It’s not that the analogy goes too far, it’s that it falls woefully short.

I wonder if we would do better to stick close to the images, analogies, metaphors that Scripture uses for the church.  The church is the bride of Christ, it’s a royal priesthood, it’s an army at war, it’s a temple that’s being built, it’s a flock of sheep.  How do those images affect our approach to gathering together? The church is a household or family, in fact, it’s a household coming together for a meal, needing food.

Sticking with that last example, this is important because no, as a family you aren’t seeking to impress in order to get a job but you are coming together to eat, there’s a sense of being looked after but there’s also opportunity to contribute.  

To often we have modelled church on businesses and institutions.  It’s good to move away from such models but we might do well to move straight to the images, analogies and models already offered.