Field of Dreams
By Becca Fletcher.
“If you build it, they will come.”
Even if you’ve never seen the 1989 Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, chances are you’ve heard this iconic line around which the entire plot turns. In the film, farmer Ray Kinsella hears this message whispered to him in his cornfield and is inspired to destroy his crop and risk everything to build a baseball diamond.
Over time, the words have taken on their own life and meaning apart from the film. These days, the phrase “if you build it, they will come” expresses the belief that if you create something of value or interest, people will naturally be drawn to it. While this mantra has been popular in several contexts, my experience is that it has been and continues to be a driving principle in the church world.
My LeaderWise colleagues and I have worked with many, many churches across the country who are desperate to reverse the trend of declining membership and dwindling budgets. They are constantly searching for the perfect program or offering that will bring people streaming through their doors. This is what’s known as the attractional model – believing that they can create a program, a worship service, or an outreach program that will be so valuable or interesting that people will be drawn to the church and will return it to the glory days when the building was full to bursting on a Sunday morning.
It seemed to work in the movie. After forfeiting the income from his plowed-under crop and draining his own savings to build a baseball diamond, Ray was thrilled and amazed to see Shoeless Joe Jackson, Mel Ott, Gil Hodges, and other legendary ballplayers emerge from what was left of the corn to play baseball. And as Ray and his family sat and watched the games, he believed that he had fulfilled the prophecy of the voice that had whispered, “If you build it, they will come.”
But that isn’t what the voice had really said. It said, “If you build it, he will come.” And that’s not all the voice said. It also said, “Ease his pain” and “Go the distance.” (If you haven’t seen the film, I apologize in advance for giving away the ending: One of the ballplayers turns out to be John Kinsella, Ray’s estranged father, and the two of them end up playing a game of catch under the lights of the field of dreams. It’s a lovely story.)
And I think the church should pay more attention to the rest of what that still, small voice whispered. “Ease his pain” and “Go the distance” speak to a missional model of ministry rather than an attractional model. These directives urge us to look for our hurting neighbors and go the distance to do whatever is necessary to ease their pain. The world is very different today than it was fifty years ago when sanctuaries and Sunday school rooms were bursting at the seams. It only makes sense, then, that God is calling the church to very different ministries than they were called to fifty years ago.
We are living in a time when some people are using words like “church” and “Christianity” as weapons that harm and exclude people who are already on the margins. In such a time, perhaps the mission of the church is not to expand its membership and pad its budget. Perhaps the mission of the church today is what it was at its very beginning: to go into the world to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted and heal their wounds, to comfort and provide for those who mourn. Perhaps the mission of the church today is to risk everything for the sake of the Gospel, to let go of the security of money and property in order to build a little bit more of God’s realm on earth.
Near the end of the film, as Ray Kinsella and his father speak together for the first time, John asks Ray, “Is this heaven?”
“It’s Iowa,” Ray replies.
“Iowa? I could have sworn it was heaven.”
Perhaps we all have it in us to make our own humble little corners of the world into a place that someone could experience as heaven.
What could you cultivate in your field of dreams?
