Life Scribbles is a new blog category I’m launching today to jott down quick notes about various topics and personal interests. These notes (including questions) are meant to be short, thought-provoking, relatively open, and purposefully unresolved. I’m hoping that these Life Scribbles will challenge or refine perspectives, create meaningful conversations, and lead to further inquiry about the topics presented.
(Side Note: Quite honestly, you may never really know where I stand on some of these areas of thought. In fact, I may put on several different hats while engaging people’s comments. Nevertheless, I promise that it will make all of us better thinkers. The purpose is to think more clearer about topics that are either overlooked or not engaged because of our preconditioned biases.)
Let’s get started…
Life Scribbles Topic #1: Which Metaphor Best Describes Your Church?
You’ve probably heard the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I’m sure many would agree that images often communicate in more dynamics ways than words. So, here’s the question and topic of the day:
Which metaphor would you use to describe your home church and why?
At our church, we’ve used this question from time to time to gain a clearer picture of how people perceive our ministry and mission. Although traditional survey questions can be helpful in gathering information, we’ve found that these kinds of questions produce a clearer picture of who we really are.
For example, one person described our ministry as an airport since our desire was to refresh people and release them to pursue their God-given passions for Kingdom purposes, whether or not it was at our church. I think this person was right on.
If you’re a leader within a church, please consider the following follow-up question as well:
Which metaphors do you think people outside of leadership would use to describe your church and why?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
This post is tagged Church, Life Scribbles, Metaphors, Perception, Perspective, Questions
5 Comments
I couldn’t resist…… A pyramid scheme… Just kidding.. sorta..
We are a Super Target, we offer everything from ground beef to toilet paper to lamps. We talked about at our last staff retreat that we need a target, not be a Target.
Charles, as long as “church” = attractional services (stage-centric, lay-clergy duality, monlogical, etc..), the metaphors will always find their roots in models of centralization, empire, commerce, power as leadership vs. power in serving, etc..
Please allow me to share something I read recently which might apply here, re Vaclav Haval. (via Mary Jo Leddy)
“Czech president Vaclav Havel and other dissidents began to ask, ‘How can we live the truth in a culture based on a fundamental lie, especially since the lie is in our heads? How can we begin to live into the truth? We desire so much more than just things. We want something to hope in, a reason to believe.
So in his country as in other iron-curtain countries, people began to set up what he called ‘parallel cultures.’ They had underground study groups. They studied Plato. They had drama. They had music groups. They wrote novels and poetry, and published them underground.
It was not a counterculture because, he said, it was impossible for us to live totally outside the system. You cannot live outside a culture. But you can create within it zones and spaces, where you can become who you really are. It is in such places that one can speak the truth, where one can gather with others who share that truth. This went on for years, not without difficulties, but for years. Over time, the truth became stronger and stronger, and at a certain point people began to walk in the streets and to say to the system, ‘We don’t believe you anymore.’ And the system fell. It fell, not because of the power of Western nuclear equipment, but because the people said within the system, ‘We don’t believe you anymore.’ It was a vision that had been nourished within those parallel cultures.”
- Excerpts from essay in Confident Witness – Changing World
I think it’s really interesting that you consider metaphors to offer a “clearer picture” than more literal language, which (to me) seems less open to misinterpretation. Perhaps it’s simply that metaphors are more artful and can incorporate a much wider range of experiences and emotions into a description than literal language can; or perhaps it’s that your metaphor question is just more interesting than other kinds of questions, and therefore it encourages people to think better or more imaginatively before answering. Whichever it is, I like your direction of thought and I think your question will inspire some interesting answers.
Thanks for sharing Jonathan and Sandy…You’re metaphors communicate a lot
John, great thoughts! There is no doubt that our current system often dictates even our metaphors and descriptions. You articulated that really well. Also, thanks for the excerpt.
Thanks for the note Jenn. It’s true that sometime words can be clearer. I guess my point here is that metaphors allow us to think more creatively and broadly about a topic.
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