The following study offers insights into self-awareness:
“One Saturday in 2000, some unsuspecting moviegoers showed up at a suburban theater in Chicago to catch a 1:05 P.M matinee…. They were handed a soft drink and a free bucket of popcorn and asked to stick around after the movie to answer a few questions about the concession stand.
“There was something unusual about the popcorn they received. It was wretched. In fact, it had been carefully engineered to be wretched. It’d been popped five days earlier and was so stale that it squeaked when you ate it. One moviegoer later compared it to Styrofoam packing peanuts, and two others, forgetting that they’d received the popcorn for free, demanded their money back. Some of them got their free popcorn in a medium-sized bucket, and others got a large bucket–the sort of huge tub that looks like it might once have been an above-ground swimming pool. Everybody got their own bucket so there’d be no need to share.
“The researchers responsible were interested in a simple question: Would the people with bigger buckets eat more? Both buckets were designed to be so big that no one could finish their portion. So the actual research question was a bit more specific: Would somebody with a larger inexhaustible supply of popcorn eat more than someone with a smaller inexhaustible supply?
“The researchers weighed the buckets before and after the movie, so they were able to measure precisely how much popcorn each person ate. The results: People with the large buckets ate 53 percent more popcorn than people with the medium size.
“The author of the study, Brian Wansink, described the results in his book Mindless Eating: ‘We’ve run other popcorn studies, and the results were always the same, however we tweaked the details. . . all of our popcorn studies led to the same conclusion. People eat more when you give them a bigger container. Period.’” (From Switch by Heath and Heath)
Those in the study above argued with the results that they knew when they were full, yet those with bigger containers obviously got full with more popcorn than the others.
Sometimes we cannot see the change we need because we are not able to take ourselves out of the situation to see reality. You think you are not so fat, until you find a picture of yourself from years ago and are stunned (personal testimony–full disclosure).
In the church we tend to focus on how we have done things, and when we have had a modicum of success we tend not to see how thing could be better. The status quo becomes comfortable, safe, and can cloud our vision. In those great spiritual movements that brought about sweeping change (like the First Great Awakening) there were plenty of pastors who thought things were just fine like they were. They kept eating the popcorn. But awakenings were led by those who saw beyond the normal.
Today many have realized that while the American church may have had success in reaching people for the past generation, there is a great need to change if we are to reach the current one. Fundamental changes must happen if we are to reach the America of 2010 and beyond. Sometimes our own “successes” have clouded our ability to see this. Example: for years one of the most significant times people in a given church were called to exhibit great faith (sometimes THE most significant time) came via capital campaigns, with a focus on constructing a new building. Buildings do help.
In our day, however, I have been to several congregations (including my own home church, now in 4 services) who have seen dramatic growth and simply cannot build fast enough to keep up with their growth. These churches have leaders who measure the SENDING capacity of a church membership more than the SEATING capacity of the church building. In only the last month I have been in churches with anywhere from two to eight services on Sundays.
These churches have anywhere from 2 to 11 services each weekend, are led by pastors who preach the Scriptures and who love their people, pastors who understand change. In some of these (not all) nice jeans and an untucked dress shirt have replaced a three piece suit, but they pastors have not stepped back one iota from declaring the Word of God. Many are more contemporary in worship style, but there is diversity.
These pastors and others I know whose churches find themselves literally bursting out of their church buildings share a common conviction that the gospel, not self-help messages, remains the need of our time; that church buildings do not set the criteria for church size, but the vast mission field around them. They also understand the need for change.
The same could be said for those who lead the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force in the SBC. These leaders understand the gospel is the need of the hour, and while we can be grateful for all we have seen God do in the past, the urgency has never been greater to focus our attention on reaching the world. We have sat for too long munching spiritual popcorn oblivious to the needs around us. And thus we have been oblivious to our own spiritual poverty, so focused as we are on what we have accomplished, on our institutions, on our way of life. In my informal surveys the past few years about 90% of my audiences grew up in Christian homes. But only about 10% remember a time their family talked about reaching their neighbors! A growing awareness to reach our neighbors and the nations must move us to change. It seems more Christians of late are up in arms about health care to a much greater degree than they are about the spiritual health of those who live around them.
Throw down the popcorn tub. Look around. Look in the mirror. Realize this: if we keep doing what we are doing we will keep getting what we are getting, which is not a pretty picture. No, change for change’s sake is never good. But we need a God-intervention in the church.
Note this familiar parable and apply it to our day:
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was a once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost.
Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little life-saving station grew.
Some of the new members of the life-saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea.
So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they re-decorated it beautifully and furnished it as a sort of club.
Less of the members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired life boat crews to do this work.
The mission of life-saving was still given lip-service but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to take part in the life-saving activities personally.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people.
They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin, and some spoke a strange language, and the beautiful new club was considerably messed up. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.
At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal life pattern of the club.
But some members insisted that life-saving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the life of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. They did.
As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. They evolved into a club and yet another life-saving station was founded.
If you visit the seacoast today you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, only now most of the people drown.
NOTE: The above is adapted from my free ebook Advance: Gospel-Centered Movements Change the World.
Whew. GREAT thoughts Doc.