Airport Adaptations

The new airport clubrooms are amazing.

 

It seems that the COVID break helped them analyze how to better serve their customers. Having spent too many hours inhabiting these spaces, I’m glad for the renewal.

 

Last week en route home from New York, I found myself in a super-confined space—and I enjoyed it. The workspaces shrunk. Normally fitted to two to four people, the airline now offers a tiny desk in what feels like a phone booth with carpeted walls.

 

The work surface is about 18 inches square—room enough for my laptop and phone. The space is quiet, so you don’t hear the clamor a few feet away. Somebody got their act together.

 

I think there are implications for the church.

 

We’ve come from an era where big and bigger were considered better. That is true wherever bigger actually works better—as in sponsoring area-wide ministry, etc. But many of us sought to grow only to feel defeated.

 

And in some places, big is never going to happen. I spoke with a couple today who rejoice that their entire community numbers around 2,700 people. A church of a hundred approaches four percent of the population.

 

We live in an era of micro populations. If it takes a village, most people live in one. The New Testament called these extended families or “households.” A household might include slaves and delivery persons. The most probably included neighbors and customers of a household-operated business. Our “households” are mainly built around shared interests, a local coffee shop or some other building block of society.

 

Like the airline clubroom operators, we need to adapt to today’s realities.

 

We’re not the church in 2019. Empty seats and vague aspirations point to a different future. We need to learn to penetrate the unreached people groups all around us. The metachurch idea has merit, as does microchurches, at least as a starting point. Money is becoming a more significant issue for shrunken congregations, and our nation’s polarity isn’t going away anytime soon.

 

Adapting to new circumstances may bring pain. It usually does. But taking the gospel to the unreached 70 percent is worth it.

 

I’ve written about taking the gospel to the gang on a construction site or the coffee shop where the nurses from a nearby hospital congregate. The title is “How Nearly Anyone Could Start a Microchurch.” I think you would find it helpful. It’s free on the Exponential.org website, so you can’t beat the price. To obtain a copy, click here.

 

If you download the book, I’d like to hear feedback in the comments box below. Please favor me by returning to this post after reading the book to register your thoughts.