Until Every Paradise is Paved
Screwtape is history… but it appears that his nephew Wormwood is alive and well and busy tempting Christians and church leaders in North America! This year’s must-reading for fans of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters is The Wormwood Archive by T.G. Brown, an updated look at how demons might operate in a world of email and the internet.
The following excerpt will give you a taste, and as you will see, the topic fits our theme at Our Father’s World perfectly. In fact, it almost makes one think of a section of my own book – Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation – that argued that ‘church planting’ is better for creation than ‘church building.’ It should – T.G. Brown is one of my younger brothers! – and I am pleased to encourage you to take a look at this well-written, clever and timely look at church life today. The following excerpt is used by permission from Doorlight Publications and the author.
Here’s Wormwood’s take on Parking Lots:
Dear Professor Slubgob,
Last Sunday, we had an elaborate dedication ceremony at ECC that truly—and I’m sure I speak for the whole staff—warmed my heart. One of our oft-repeated mottos speaks to the need for leaders to feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in their work; taking a portion of the Sunday worship time to celebrate the completion of a new piece of construction made the ECC leadership very happy. To have it done over a live video link from the site—as part of Sunday morning worship—sent all the right messages.
It helped that so many hours of planning and elaborate execution were expended to celebrate . . . the new parking lot.*
This does three things for our cause. First, the missions team is well aware that they are limited to about two minutes to introduce visiting missionaries on Sunday morning. This will communicate clearly that, at least on Sunday morning, the dedication of a parking lot has a higher priority than the Enemy’s great commission. It may also occur to a few people that the annual maintenance of the parking lot could build several new churches in Africa each year, and the resulting dissatisfaction, criticism and potential for bitterness plays into our hands admirably.
Second, it will help reinforce the idea that the church does not care about creation. The lyrics to the old song they paved paradise and put up a parking lot ring in my ears. The newly paved area was one that had a long history of sports ministries and family events, an area with green grass where a restless sixth grade boys group could go on a warm Sunday morning. Now it is nothing but hot asphalt and spilled auto fluids beautifully reminiscent of our home down under.
Finally, the parking lot dedication cements the idea that accommodating a large Sunday morning attendance is the prime mission of the church. Our pastor is enamored of large attendance, and shared recently that achieving a church of 4000 attendees is ‘the reason he gets up every morning.’ That passion will be very useful in suppressing any church planting efforts.
Until every paradise is paved, I am
Your Loyal Student,
Wormwood
[*Wormwood may not have been aware of how close to reality this situation really is: Northpoint Community Church in the Atlanta area, Andy Stanley, Pastor, is currently engaged in a major fundraising effort (5 million dollars), not to build a parking lot, but to build a bridge to a parking lot! Some things are hard to make up.]
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Dr. Joseph Atta-Fynn — December 3, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
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Michael Bush — December 3, 2009 @ 10:44 pm
By Chad Schlosser, December 7, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
Great post, Mr. Brown, although how terribly sad. The fact that Stanley thinks they need a $5,000,000 bridge in order to reach unchurched people is absurd. See you at Urbana!