"Why Will They Come?"

“Why Will They Come?”

In 1989 Kevin Costner starred in “Field of Dreams”, a fantasy film depicting an Iowa farmer’s building a baseball diamond in a corn field. I saw the movie some years later and the thing I remember most is the saying, “If you build it he will come.” Since then this quote has cropped up in other contexts but is usually rendered, “If you build it they will come.”

When the first covered sports stadium, the Houston Astrodome, was opened in 1965 one of the Astro players observed at the end of the season, “This year they came to see the Dome. Next year they’ll come to see us. We’d better deliver.” So the novelty of a new stadium wears off quickly and the attraction becomes the team (or teams) which use it. So “If you build it they will come” has (in the words of our Manchester Associate Mike Conneally) a shelf life. “They” will come only if expectations of performance are met.

1 Kings 8 relates the account of the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem to the worship of God which had been constructed under King Solomon’s leadership. It was a beautiful building and the people came by the thousands. Within a generation, however, the nation had fallen into idolatry and the magnificent Temple became corrupted and a place of ritual rather than true worship. So “they” came for a time but the luster wore off and the structure was later destroyed by Babylon,

Today God’s people sometimes get the idea that a new building is the answer to the question of how a church grows. Initially new people may come, but as with the Astrodome it’s often out of curiosity rather than commitment. Statistics tell us that only a small percentage choose to attend a church based on a building but almost 2/3 do so when invited by someone they know. And they keep coming because of the chance to establish meaningful relationships, biblical preaching which provides help in answering life’s questions and knowing they’re loved and accepted unconditionally. In other words, they stay if we who make up the church deliver the goods in a way that meets them where (and as) they are.

Maybe the “why” question can be best answered by changing the quote to “If we build them up they will come.” Paul wrote to a church that had grown in faith and numbers, “…Encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11, emphasis added). It wasn’t a structure that drew people in (there were no church buildings then)—it was believers’ practicing their faith. May we do likewise!

Grace and Blessings!

Jim McMillan