An interesting meeting

Well, this Thursday night was one interesting meeting at West Hills. 30 of our members had filled out a survey to assess where our church is at on 8 different characteristics of Natural Church Development. An outsider came to give us the results and discuss what they showed. He started out by saying "This is really hard. I've never had to do a meeting like this." What he meant was, he'd never seen a church score so low across the boards. He said if your church average was 35 out of 100, he recommends closing down the church and doing a replant. Our average score was 28.5 . This came as no great surprise to me. Actually it, somewhat did, because I didn't know that the member of our church actually did realize the state of things.

Some people were relieved, some surprised, and some were crushed. I was...there. I'm not sure what I was. About a million thoughts went through my mind. Are we going under? Should we? Is our church doing any good for the kingdom by keeping their doors open? Am I doing any good by keeping people at this church?

What's the problem? Well, leave it to me to be reductionistic, but it seems like nobody cares. Nobody cares about the right thing at least. We care that there is plenty of food, hot dogs, and crap after the service, but fail to convey the truths of God's Word. We look out for ourselves, but aren't affecting the community one ounce. There's no sense of what the church is supposed to be, no passion for God (at least anything that's producing noticeable fruit), and nobody who's willing to lead others toward becoming God's chosen instrument to reach the world. So what's my place in all of this?