Who is at the wheel?

I remember when I used to believe that the cruise control setting on a car meant that the vehicle could drive itself. I thought it was a great invention - you could get your car up to speed, set the cruise control and then have a nap until you reached your destination. Thankfully this error in my thinking was corrected before I had a chance try out cruise control for myself.

Still, cruise control is still a pretty cool option to have on a car, especially if you do any highway driving because it allows you to maintain a constant speed which improves gas milage and keeps you under the radar of police - literally. It is still up to the driver of the car to ensure that the vehicle stays in the designated lane and to navigate safely to the desired location.

I have found that a number of churches also have a cruise control option that they use all the time. These churches have discovered a comfortable speed that they like and they set their ministry on cruise control. Some churches set their cruise control in the 1950's and haven't shut it off since! Others have set their cruise control at a time that they felt was when they where at their peak and have tried to maintain the same "speed" since that time only to find that it is tough to maintain something over a number of years without something going wrong.

Setting the cruise control is the job of the person driving the vehicle, or in the case of the church, the cruise control is set by whoever or whatever drives the church. Some churches are driven by certain individuals, or pastors or boards or families that have been members of the church for a number of years. I don't think all of them are bad drivers, per se, but they tend to lead the church in a direction that is in their best interests and not always in a direction that is in the best interest of mission and the Kingdom of God. Other churches are driven not by individuals but by Mission and Vision statements that have a predetermined destination that the church wants to arrive at within a certain period of time. Still other churches are driven by theology and it is the beliefs of the church that determine the direction it must go. So who is driving your church?