Where Are We Going?

Luke 14:28-30

“Where are we going?”

The question was innocent enough, asked by a lady in the congregation who had been with us perhaps a year or so.

“What do you mean?” I replied, even though I already sensed where this was heading.

This was my third pastorate, my third time around in leading a dying church back to a place of health and—I thought—renewed hope for the future. But her question echoed something I sensed, too, but hadn’t identified. Like that first bubble rising from the bottom of a pan of water about to come to a full boil, something unsettling had been stirring throughout the church body.

Her answer was not unkind, just an observation from someone who cared. “It just feels like we’re not going anywhere,” she said.

My initial reaction was defensive (although I did not show it). Internally, my mind was racing. What do you mean, ‘not going anywhere?’ For the first time in decades, the church is growing; finances are slowly but steadily improving; I work hard at providing sermons that are biblically solid, spiritually challenging and bathed in prayer…

What I actually said was, “You know, I’ve been sensing the same thing. Let’s both agree to pray about this and see what the Lord says.”

As pastors—especially in revitalization situations, I believe—we are often so engaged in patching holes in a sinking boat that we unwittingly take our eyes off the reason God put that boat in the water in the first place. That boat, His Church, is designed to go somewhere! And it’s often the people in the church who are the first to realize that all the feverish effort at keeping the boat afloat is accomplishing nothing toward reaching its intended destination. So they begin to look around at the empty sea and ask, “Where are we going?”

Jesus recognized this dynamic, describing it in a parable from the point of view of someone watching from the outside:

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

—Luke 14:28-30

What really grabs my attention in this parable is not just the ridicule aimed at the person who couldn’t finish the building project he’s begun, but the realization that the project failed because of poor planning. There was a goal: “I want to build a tower;” but no plan, no strategy laid out in advance for financing it.

Most pastors, in my experience, are gifted as shepherds, not administrators or financiers. Their desire is to feed and protect the sheep. Their desire becomes their goal: feed the sheep, lead them to the green pastures of God’s Word.

Or, as in Jesus’ parable, build a tower.

Whether building a tower or feeding sheep, neither the tower nor the sheep exists just for the sake of existing. A tower is built for a purpose. God’s people, His sheep, His Church, are created for a purpose—a purpose far greater than just being fed. And once the sheep begin to get full and healthy, some will lift their noses from the grass and look around. Some will look around and be content with all the abundant pasture before them still waiting to be consumed. Others will look toward the horizon and wonder… Where are we going?

In a church that is beginning to recover from a long period of stagnation and decline, the faithful people at the heart of that new momentum have sacrificed a great deal of their time and resources. It is normal, even healthy, to want to know that their sacrifice, their investment, is going to make a significant difference for the kingdom of God. It’s normal, even healthy, to ask, “Where are we going?”

I kept my word and prayed for God’s clear direction. I knew the big picture: we were to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, love others as Christ loves us, and make disciples who would love Jesus in faithful obedience. But now I was asking Him to show us what that looked like, specifically for this church body, on this corner of this neighborhood, at this time in history.

Before long, we were praying this way—seeking God’s clear direction—in home Bible studies, Sunday School classes and board meetings. Whenever we gathered together, in large groups or small, we were asking the Lord to show us where He wanted us to go.

Soon, the quiet, growing discontent was replaced by a beautiful sense of unity and purpose. God began to answer that prayer—not with a manufactured ‘business plan,’ but with clear pathways for making disciples within our ethnically diverse neighborhood. Where once we were waiting for those who might come to us on a Sunday morning, now we were going to them with the love of Jesus.

And somewhere along the way, people just stopped asking, “Where are we going?”