This week I took my first sip of coconut water. Then I took my second sip. I even took a third sip. Then, I stopped sipping.
What can that simple experience teach us about bringing people far from God near Him? Plenty.
For starters, the only reason I even tried coconut water was because all I’ve heard in the last few months is how good it is for you. How all the fitness gurus drink it. How holding that container and sipping it will catapult my body into a new fitness stratosphere. But when I tasted it, the first thing I thought was that no matter how much you market something terrible, it’s still terrible.
I don’t want that to be true of our church. It’s so easy to say that we’re this or we’re that, to put a great presentation together. Marketing is easy; planting is hard. Surface presentation feels good immediately; planting for future growth feels good eventually. I’ve said this before, but the church is often guilty of over-selling and under-delivering. And at that point, our services become nothing more than the hype that sells coconut water, and people will be disappointed when they finally give what we’re selling a try.
Second, we’ve only got a limited number of opportunities with people when it comes to drawing them nearer to Jesus. There are people who overuse the phrase that you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and while that’s technically true, the reality is that most of us will give something a few shots before we move on. After my first sip of the vile stuff, I took another, and another. Why? Because I really wanted to like it, and so I kept hoping it would get better.
Apply that to the lives of hurting, broken, unchurched people who come to The Gathering. If what we say we are doesn’t match up to what we really are, they will have the same reaction that I had with the coconut water, and it won’t be a good one. Our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen, for sure, but the good news is that many people are so thirsty for something real that they will probably give us another sip or two, and that’s where our integrity as a church is so critical.
More than being the best at everything (which is impossible and would be like trying to market coconut water), we have the opportunity to be the best at the things that make us uniquely us: a culture of people who want to do life together, a culture that is passionate about being near God and each other in relationships. What we have to offer the thirsty lives around us is so much better than coconut water! We hold out the refreshing water of life. Jesus said in John 7:37-38 that if anyone was thirsty, “let him come to me and drink.” Our job is to make sure the first sip is as refreshing as Jesus said it would be, and how we serve the thirsty goes a long way towards the way they react when they try Him.
Let’s be the best at offering a cup of cold water to weary travelers, and we’ll see a great harvest of souls gulping down the water they’ve craved instead of throwing coconut water in the trash.
Your illustrations are the best!!! I’m far from a fitness guru but if you come to our house you may be offered some coconut water on tap. Thanks once again for some real life application. Love you guys!
If I came to your house and you served me coconut water, I would sip it and smile. I might not swallow, though, and you would wonder why I was going to the bathroom so much. I’d be spitting it out. We miss you and your family!