HAMPTON, Va. — In his final message to messengers and guests attending the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, Reggie McNeal told them to get off their donkeys.
Using the parable of the Good Samaritan as his text, he addressed the church’s need to develop a different method of determining success.
“We have to change the scorecard,” he emphasized. “In every human institution, what gets recorded gets done. In the story of Good Samaritan, all the religious people met their scorecards. The priest was not defiled and the Levite got to the committee meeting on time.”
The church needs to develop a different method of determining success, said Reggie McNeal at the BGAV. (Photo by Alice Rusher)
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Using humor to great effect, McNeal contended it was the Samaritan who cared enough to get off his donkey and consider the needs of the injured man. Meeting the needs of the man who had been beaten and robbed became more important to the Samaritan than meeting his own. Like the Samaritan, the church needs to get off its donkey, he asserted. McNeal offered to use King James terminology to emphasize his point should anyone there require it. No one did.
In each of his three messages to the BGAV, McNeal challenged the church in general to abandon the practice of being church centric.
“Quit thinking in church-centric terms. This is not about building the church, this is about building the kingdom.”
“We are living in a time when a new conversation is breaking out between God and the church,” he asserted, recalling times when the church took a new direction. “We are in another one of those ages. The first half of [the book of] Acts is the church trying to catch up with the Spirit. The church finally caught on and expanded to the Samaritans, then, even worse, it went to the Italians,” he quipped, tongue in cheek. “Then, a few chapters later the church had a business meeting to see if the Spirit could keep doing this,” he continued amid knowing laughter from his audience.
Alluding to the ancient Roman practice of infanticide, particularly of female babies, McNeal charged that the early church sought long-term kingdom growth when it collected and cared for discarded girl babies. Girls, he reminded his hearers, were a drain on a family’s finances because, unlike their brothers, they had no earnings to contribute to the common welfare. At the same time, the family had to save for her dowry in preparation for marriage. He says that the church took in these girls and taught them about Jesus.
“Later, when Roman boys were looking for wives, guess where the girls were — in the church!”
“The early church served its way into the hearts of the people. Get out of the church business and into the people business,” he affirmed.
In his previous message the night before he had illustrated what he meant by alluding to his experiences at Atlanta’s airport.
“Tomorrow, when I fly away from here, I get the privilege of flying through Atlanta, the busiest airport in the world. At least once a week they get the scorecard confused. When the airport confuses itself with the destination, people’s lives get messed up. Yet the church has believed it was the destination. No, the kingdom is the destination. You don’t go to people’s houses and find coffee table books about the airport. People don’t come home from vacation talking about how great the airport was. It is the means of getting to the destination, not the destination itself.”
Drawing from his consulting experience, he illustrated his points with examples from church life. A northern California pastor had asked a school official what his church could do to help the school and was told to stay away. He persisted, however, and eventually convinced her that the church was not seeking to manipulate, but to minister. Eventually an excellent relationship developed.
According to McNeal, every church needs to connect with a school.
“Ask how you can help,” he counseled. Citing studies showing a child’s chances of success in life are linked to his or her reading ability, he challenged, “How can it be that a child can get out of elementary school without reading at a fourth-grade level when we have nearby churches filled with retired people who can read?”
“It’s not about the size of your gatherings,” he asserted, “its about the size of your hearts!”
Other passionate expressions were delivered with equal fervor. “Our challenge is not ‘doing’ church better. Our challenge is “being” church better.”
“If you want to become a missional church, you have to quit looking for members, and start looking for missionaries.”
McNeal, at one time a member of the South Carolina Baptist Convention staff, is a consultant with the Missional Church Network.