When I was a child I was taught, like many, many others, to put my hands together with my fingers interlocked and my two index fingers pointing skyward as I said, "here is the church, here is the steeple." Then you would open your hands with fingers still interlocked and say, "open it up and here are the people."
I have a completely different perspective on this exercise today and don't think I recommend it any more.
Why?
Two reasons.
First, the people should be outside the church where the people who need to hear the message the church offers actually live. Those people who are in need and are seeking aren't near as likely in our day to search for a church to attend. They won't come to us any more. It's time we go to them. Jesus rarely taught in the synagogues and temples, he did, but it was far more often we find him on a hill, at a lakefront, in someone's home, on the road. When he commissioned the 70 to be his advance men he sent them out on the road and into homes, not the temple and not the synagogue.
Church people should be outside the walls of the church.
Second, when you open your hands in this exercise the fingers that represent the church people are still interlocked. They are tight knit. We used to say that cohesion and group identification in the church were good things, and to some extent they still are. It's not near as satisfying to affiliate with a congregation where you don't feel connected and integrated -- and that makes the opposite point. The church is too tight, too cohesive and not near welcoming and inclusive enough. It's difficult to break in. We even have rules that say new members can't be in leadership until they have been in the church for a certain period of time. The church needs to be less interlocked and more open.
Really, about the only thing I like about the exercise any more is where it says, "open the church." Yes, let's do that. Let's open the church and when we do maybe more people will find its message essential to their lives.
