Franchising Church

Today my previous pastor becomes the guest pastor for today’s service. It was great to listen to him again and on how he confirmed his calling to serve in Indonesia as a lecturer in a seminary. He then shared on how he had been to different churches in different part of Indonesia since he came back to Indonesia this year’s March.

He said, it is a sad thing to see there are more and more “church franchise”. That means there are a group of people who try to copy paste the success of a particular church which has different culture than the local culture. An example is on how the Western church has segmentized the congregations into several services such as the traditional service, the normal service, and the contemporary service in the name of satisfying different needs or even in the name of evangelism.

The danger is that we stop thinking the moment we relies to much on the franchise. Perhaps for food it is still possible as we want the consistency of the taste. But when it comes to human, it is not wise to force a certain system with cultural baggage to be implemented. Even if it starts with copy paste, it requires for an adaption to the local context.

Also, I learnt that a lot of us, both church goers and not, tend to like the idea of harmony. But somehow we stick to be with people with the same background and we are not comfortable to be with those who are different than us. So in other words, we are not ready to pay the cost for realizing those harmony image.

The suggestion is to have a mental image on the impact of the harmony. Also, we need to have a common goal to pursue, a goal where we can prioritize it over our differences. This reminds me not just for church but for my office. We have many talented people but often we can’t be in harmony and so wasted unnecessary efforts. How good it is if we can have the same purpose and putting aside our differences. How to do it? Let’s start from the smallest which is for me to learn to be less last minute to increase the quality of work according to what is needed.