What if when a church planter laid out a vision for birthing a new church they also included an expiration date? So not only would the planter be planning for when the church is born, but then also when the church should die; 10, 15, 20 years in the future.
What if the planter anticipated the irrelevance of the church in the future, and so set a date to declare the church dead and bury it? How would that impact the way people in the church view the mission? Would it discourage them, because they know the day is coming when the church is no more? Or, would it embolden them to know exactly how long they have to accomplish the church's goals? Would it cause them to stay and be apart of the story to see how it ends?
Perhaps it would give the people a unique opportunity to celebrate the different stages in life that church might go through. Its infancy, its childhood, its adolescence, its adulthood, its senior years, and finally its death and burial. Imagine a congregation coming together to remember the journey of their fellowship, tears and nostalgia flooding the aisles as the founding pastor eulogizes the church that has accomplished so much. People who have been there since the beginning side by side with those who joined in only the last year. Appreciating together the shared experience of having been apart of a story, as the last page turns and "the end" is slowly and deliberately placed at the bottom.
How would it make you feel to know your church has an end date? What about that would be good, what would be bad?
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