The Terminal

By Clark Cowden

Last month, I got stuck in an airport terminal and couldn't get home.  I got to a midwestern airport two hours before my flight was supposed to leave.  As soon as we boarded the plane, we were informed that the city we were flying in to was experiencing severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.  So, we were escorted off the plane and the flight was cancelled.  I was put on a different flight to a different city.  That flight was delayed, also due to bad weather.  It finally took off, eight hours after I was originally supposed to leave.  By the time our plane landed, it was midnight, and I had missed my connecting flight home.  So, I had to find a hotel for the night, and fly out the first thing the next morning.  I ended up getting home 16 hours later than I had planned.   It was very tiring and very frustrating.

In looking back on my experience, it struck me that the church is a lot like an airport terminal.  The purpose of the airport terminal is not to get a lot of people to stay in the terminal as if it was their final destination.  The purpose of the airport terminal is to help people make connections so they can get somewhere else (to another city, to somewhere else in the same city as the terminal, to meet a loved one, or to an important business  meeting).  Because airports want flying to be a good experience for people, most try to include good food/restaurants, courteous service, and efficient baggage handling.  But every smart airport manager understands that the terminal is nobody's final destination.  It is only a stop, albeit a very important stop, on the way to somewhere else.

I think one of the problems we have in the North American church today is that a lot of people view the church as a final destination, rather than as a terminal.  We have focused on an attractional model of ministry.  We think we are being successful when we get as many people as possible into our buildings.    But the goal of the terminal is not to get as many people as possible inside their doors and to keep them there.  Yet that seems to be the mentality of a lot of churches.  Like airport terminals, the church needs to understand its  job is to minister to people between flights, and get them onto their plane before it departs.  We only have people for a short period of time. The congregation is alayover.  People may come to us because they need a break, need some rest, some food, some drinks, or some friendships. But the goal of the church is not to keep people inside the church terminal.  The goal of the church is to help people connect with their next flight, to get on the right plane,  and not to stay in the safety of the terminal, but to move out in to the world. 

The question most churches ask is how many people came to our building last week or last year?  But the question that the church terminal asks is how many people did we successfully launch out of our doors?  How many people did we send out in to the world?  How many successful planes did we watch take off from our congregation last year?  Did we have any?  Or did we spend all of our time and energy putting in a Starbucks, providing great food and great service, and think that we were doing our job?  We weren't.  The church is like an airport terminal.  If we are not launching people into the air (which just 100 years ago people thought was impossible) then we aren't doing our job.  This is a part of our missional identity that we need to recover. 

Luke 10 talks about Jesus sending out 72 people, two by two, into every town and village where He Himself intended to go.  He was launching a number of flights, like an airport terminal, and like the church is called to do.   In 2004, Tom Hanks starred in a movie called the Terminal.  He was a man who got stuck in a New York airport and couldn't get out.  The movie illustrated the fact that the terminal is not the final destination.  It is an important stop on the way to somewhere else. 

And so I'd like to propose that we reverse our thinking in the church.  Instead of asking how many people did we get to come in to our church terminals, let's start asking:
How many people did we help connect with a new flight? 
How many people did we help overcome their fear of flying?
How many people did we launch from our runways? 
How many people looked at our departure monitors and said I feel called to leave this church terminal and go minister in that destintion?
How many?

Comments

[Doug Resler]

Wow...what a great analogy for the missional church! This was an especially encouraging post in light of the day that I have had. I just returned from a presbytery meeting with our Moderator, Joan Gray, and it was discouraging to hear some of the comments both during the question and answer time and after. One of the classic lines was, "We've been talking about evangelism for years now...what is Louisville going to do about it!" Joan's response was challenging and right on point, "With all due respect, that's the wrong question...if we are talking about evangelism, the question is what are WE going to do about it." (Of course, she answered with all of the graciousness and kindness that has marked her tenure as Moderator, something which I deeply appreciate about her as a person, pastor, and spiritual leader.)

It seems we continue to struggle so much with this transition from institutional to missional. And it is hard not to get discouraged by the fact that this transition time will probably not be over anytime soon. Is there hope? Rev. Gray shared that in her travels she senses that the PC(USA)is finally coming to a realization that we cannot solve our problems. They are too deep. Too complex. The lack of trust simply too much to overcome in our own strength. And so we are being forced to look to God. Only when God gets ahold of us will we finally understand our role is to launch people out into the world to share in the work He is doing. Only when God gets ahold of us will we finally stop blaming Louisville or other entities for the problems we are dealing with and take a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror. Only God can shake us out of our spiritual lethargy and awaken us to new life again! Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus, come soon!

Thanks, Clark, for being open to the movement of the Spirit and sharing with all of us this encouraging Word from the Lord!

[Steve Hayner]

I join Doug in affirming your analogy. I keep looking for ways to describe the missional church. Because we our concept of "church" is so thoroughly steeped in our Christendom culture, it is a tough, tough job to get people to understand what kind of paradigm shift we are advocating. And once they "get it" (and I count myself in this category), it is way too easy to slip back into the other ways of thinking. So, Thank you, Clark!

[Pastor Chris]

I think this is a great analogy. It might fall down on some points, but it paints a wonderful word picture about the church and what it could be.

Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org

[Markus Watson]

I love this image, Clark! I'll be linking to this from my blog!