It is a tough flu season this year, and many are going to get their shots.  My family is just getting over two weeks straight of the flu.  But what does a shot do anyway?  Basically, in non-technical terms, the vaccine shot introduces a bit of the flu into your system so that your system can build up immunities to the flu.  Seems like a good idea, kind of a “fight fire with fire” type of thing.  Give them a bit of the bad stuff that you don’t want them to get.

But there is another way to get vaccinated (at least partially).  Get the Flu.  Some would advise one to get a flu shot even if you have had the flu, but many others would ask, “why bother?”  Most would agree that if one has had the flu this season, they have a fairly decent chance of not getting it again, because their system has built up the necessary anti-bodies to fight off a second flu attack.

Not long ago, I was reading a book by Jim Putman called “Church is a Team Sport.”  At one point in this book, he compares many churches to a vaccine.  He believes that when churches only focus on evangelism and getting people into the church, they essentially inoculate those folks.  In other words, small doses of incomplete Christianity can in fact vaccinate people so that they go against Christianity rather than into it.

Being the flu season that it is, and thinking through Jim’s thought, I began to ponder what it is in the church that makes people inoculated to it.  If we take the analogy of the flu, then there are two ways to become inoculated.  First, get a small dose of Christianity that is incomplete.  In doing so, one thinks they know what Christianity is all about.  They go to a large church, and hear the professional band, hear the pastor speak, and then they leave inspired and yet unaffected.  They build up anti-bodies.  After a while, they begin to think this is all there is to the church, and unfortunately in many churches this is the truth.

The second way to become inoculated is to contract the illness.  Hmm…perhaps that is too potent of an analogy.  Perhaps not.  What if rather than a small dose a person ends up highly committed to a church, volunteering or being employed there, and then finds herself in the unenviable place of realizing they just don’t believe this anymore?  There is something that has been nagging at them for years, and they have pushed it under the rug and ignored it, but now it has reared its ugly head and is not able to be ignored anymore.  After leaving the church, they have anti-bodies that will hopefully fight off another infection.

I know this is perhaps a very harsh analogy.  However, in the last few months I have spoken with no less than 10 people who have either not engaged in church because they feel that there is no real substance or use, or that have left ministry after being burned out because they were working for something that they no longer believe in.  These are not isolated instances, but rather a theme of inoculation that is happening.

I can’t help but think that we are doing people a dis-service by serving them up an incomplete platter of Christianity, and yet presenting it as the whole meal.  Discipleship is rarely found in larger churches.  For that matter, I see a blatant lack of true care for people many times.  Our church buildings are filled with people, yes these are real people in the church.  Not something to make your giant church machine function well.  No, they are people, who need to be cared for, nurtured, and brought up and discipled, not sold an incomplete bill of goods.

 

Are you being inoculated?

 

Phil