What Should Our Focus Be?

I read an interesting article today by Mike Bishop over at Next-Wave. He quotes Reggie McNeal, the author of The Present Future as saying:

"The point is, all the effort to fix the church misses the point. You can build the perfect church - and they (people in the world) still won't come. People are not looking for a great church. They do not wake up every day wondering what church they can make successful."

Outstanding. I've been thinking this for some time. We have to go to people and incarnate the gospel in their lives in a way that makes sense. But, more than that, we really have to listen to God, find out where He is working, and allow Him to do what He wants to do to bring salvation to people. Our churches need to be healthy and life giving so that when people do come to Jesus they have the experience that they were meant to, but all of the energy spent trying to make our churches or ourselves perfect can be very frustrating. Bishop gives the following five points to avoid as well as the five things that we should focus on:

If you are reading this and have some vested interest in a community of faith - whatever your flavor, old-school or new-school, emerging or submerging - do yourself a favor and stop caring about the following things:

1. The number of people in your church. Really, it doesn't matter.
2. The "relevancy" of your common worship.
3. How often or if ever a new person shows up at one of your common worship times.
4. The size of your church budget, building, or paid staff.
5. What any other church in the world is doing - good or bad or otherwise.

And please start caring about the following things:

1. Actively looking for the evidence of God's kingdom - where what he wants done is done - at work, at home, at Starbucks (heaven forbid), at the beach, and anywhere else you might find yourself in the course of living your normal life.
2. Simple, honest worship.
3. Having friends that don't give a rip about your church. Maybe you might just rub off on them.
4. Giving away money to people who need it; using existing, familiar (and free) spaces for common worship such as homes, restaurants, parks, or community centers; flattening the organization's need for paid leadership and support roles.
5. Go on a unique, unreproducible journey with a group of people and rejoice with other groups of people who do the same.

Excellent. I couldn't have said it better myself. Let's focus on Christ and allow Him to take us where He wants to. Not where we think we should go. Any Jesus followers in the house?