So, perhaps really just trying to break the ice, I said: “Well, I see that your church sanctuary could seat about 300 people – but somehow you have managed to ‘grow’ it down to 30. But – not to despair: Jesus only had 12 or so to start with!”

Pressing on, I asked: So, what would it take . . . what kind of church would prepare and send out 30 missioners this week, rather than those 30, or their leaders at least, ruing the fact that ‘what a shame that we only have 30 people around here anymore to ‘run the church?’”

Could this church be perhaps one – perhaps the only church in this community, that is preparing its people to actually 'go', or at least ‘as they go’ – to be missioners, as opposed to paying pastoral leader(s) (if we can any longer afford to) to do religious things (trying to get congregants to help – though mostly ducking when the nominating committee draws night)? Are we paying somebody to do our ministry for us, and are we committed only to doling out religious goods and services 'on our turf' (ie. the local church building), when we (or the 30 who are left) manage to bring a friend, having attracted them somehow to the programs, and to the building, of the local church? Attracting them to our building and programs and necessarily extracts people from where they usually live and move and have their being (i.e. the neighbourhood, work, where they work-out, etc.).

And then there is the question as to whether we have merely attracted them to our church sub-culture (not that that still cannot be a valid 'means to a good end), or whether we have actually introduced them to Jesus and to the Life He called abundant.

Church people are trying to get people into church (read: building, programs, etc.) whereas Kingdom people are trying to get church people prepared for their out-in-the-world, thank-God-it's-Monday, life.