Church Without End: Scalability 3

[“Church Without…” is a series of think-pieces designed to slowly deconstruct what we think is essential to having church and to call attention to the hidden barriers we’ve erected between ourselves and the Great Commission.]

God is infinite, and we are not.

I hope that wasn’t a shock to you.

God is infinite, and in our combined finitude, we express the glory of God. Each one of us expresses a different aspect of His infinite glory, and it’s the same for His churches. Each church, each body, each collective assembly of individual believers, is just one more part of the whole of His kingdom.

And each one of those bodies has a calling, a message, that is unique to them and yet in keeping with the message of the whole. Each body is a voice, and they all sing in harmony.

But what happens when the voice of one church needs to echo in a different corner of the choir room?

This is why churches do not need to focus on adding this new technological fad or that. Instead, they should focus on scalability.

Stop asking “What more can we do?” and instead ask “How can we do what we do for more people?”

That’s not intended to sound condescending but encouraging. God has called your church to do something amazing, whether you’ve found it yet or not, so do it, and do it for as many people as possible.

The power of the Internet, if it’s anything, is its power to scale. If we can use the Internet for anything, it’s to grow, spread our message, and take our calling beyond our normal reach. The futurists tell us that there is no end to what we the Internet can be scaled to do.

That may or may not prove itself true, but what I do know is that there is no end to the needs in our world, but likewise, there is no end to what we can do with God’s guidance and His Spirit’s anointing.

Phil Schneider

Senior Staff Writer

I'm a teacher and discipleship pastor. More importantly, I'm husband to the greatest woman in the world and father to a ridiculously cute daughter. I also occasionally scratch out a few blog posts.