Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance talks about this, but with a different twist. If you bomb the factories to pieces, but leave the people untouched, all that will happen is that the factories get rebuilt - which is what happened in World War 2. If, however, you change the people, then the factories either change or become irrelevant.
That is why the business of the church is with people, not factories. Or: the church is a people factory, taking humans and turning them into disciples...
[Image]As I have already demonstrated I am an avid reader of Seth Godin's excellent blog... yeah, yeah, yeah, I know! This quotation from Andrew Carnegie in yesterday's entry struck me:
"Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the
factory floors......Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will
have a new and better factory."This can clearly be applied to the church despite, it seems, obsessional efforts made to preserve our crumbling edifices... so in some ways it is brilliant that a church would readily survive their building, however, I wonder if we should challenge ourselves to question how essential 'church' buildings really are? After all the first Eucharist was celebrated in a rented room... no faculty required for that!
"To preserve or be preserved...."
2 Comments -
Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance talks about this, but with a different twist. If you bomb the factories to pieces, but leave the people untouched, all that will happen is that the factories get rebuilt - which is what happened in World War 2. If, however, you change the people, then the factories either change or become irrelevant.
That is why the business of the church is with people, not factories. Or: the church is a people factory, taking humans and turning them into disciples...
9 March 2010 at 14:40
... or clones ;-)
9 March 2010 at 22:56