When you go to the theater, you know that before the feature film plays you will typically see 15-20 minutes of trailers promoting upcoming features. Trailers are “teasers”—brief features about soon-to-be-released movies that are meant to capture the imagination of moviegoers and, hopefully, spark some buzz and sell some tickets when the film is eventually released. The trailer will typically include a particularly memorable line … or a special effect … or a funny scene … or an exceptionally scenic sequence from the upcoming film that its makers hope will kindle the curiosity and pique the imagination of theatergoers. They want the audience, on the basis of the trailer, to say to themselves, “Man, I want to experience more of that!”
As I was thinking about that, the thought occurred to me that this is a great metaphor for the role and function of the church in our society. If the church is doing its job, people who interact with us will say, “I want to be a part of a people that live life that way.” They will encounter and experience something refreshingly different and say, “I want to experience that difference for myself. I want to dig in and see what it is that makes these people tick and see if it’s possible for me to live life the way they do.” The church is to do in the hearts of people what a movie trailer does in the lives of those in the theater—open them up to something that is vaster and more far-reaching … something of which the trailer is merely a foretaste.
And that’s a reality that also frightens me. For if the statistics I’m seeing are right, my children’s generation is not so much rejecting the Christian faith as it is rejecting the organized church as a means by which to experience it. Over 50% of people ages 18-29 say they are certain God exists, but only 18% of them attend worship on a regular basis. It appears, for many in that age group, the church is the last place they’d go to investigate and explore their spiritual cravings.
Going back to the theater analogy, it’s as if they’ve seen the trailer and found it wanting. It’s not that they’ve given up the search altogether or concluded that God is a useless myth or an antiquated illusion. They’ve merely decided that a meaningful connection to God is not something they believe they can encounter through current institutional Christianity … that the “trailer” isn’t a reflection of the feature film.
The church is to be a “taster” of what life as part of God’s Kingdom is like. If life in God’s Kingdom is a place of perfect and absolute justice, then we are to be advocates of such justice so we can create assorted foretastes of it. If we believe that the world to come is a place of acceptance and love and mercy, then we are to demonstrate that acceptance and love and mercy in some small way. If the Kingdom of God is to be characterized by peace and reconciliation, then we are to be a place where peace and reconciliation is the order of the day. We are to relate to each other and those around us in ways that will cause them to want to experience what they’ve just experienced more fully.
When you think about it, this really exposes some of the petty and trivial things we get hung up on for what they really are—petty and trivial. May God help us be a people who move beyond the insignificant and get down to the business of encouraging belief where it currently doesn’t exist because we accurately demonstrate—and announce—that God has something life-giving and invigorating for every man, woman, and child, and what He is making available and has to offer is far better than anything they can ever imagine!