Cynthia Weems, who delivered this presentation on the floor of the Florida Annual Conference in May, 2019, says that our churches have become like fine china — perfect and proper but locked away in a cabinet except on special occasions and increasingly irrelevant. Renewal requires a different, less fragile image of Christian life — the biblical image of a potter constantly reworking a flawed vessel until it becomes useful.
The China Cabinet Church
For years, I struggled with the misguided impression that a healthy Christian life was something like a pattern of fine china. Proper, perfect, matching the rest of the crowd, no scuffs or cracks, all shiny. But through tears and heartache, I learned that the notion that our spiritual life is meant to be unbroken, perfect, matching, and untouched is false. We have an image of the church that does not match our experience of life.
The Potter’s Wheel
Fine china is not the picture we see in scripture of how God works with God’s people. Instead of pretty patterns, locked cabinets, and matching sets of breakable dinnerware, God shows us the messy, unpredictable results of sitting at the potter’s wheel. In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet is told to go down to the potter’s house where he sees a potter working at his wheel. The vessel he was making was spoiled, so he reworked it into another vessel. And then the word of God came to Jeremiah, “Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” (Jeremiah 18:6)
Churches that imagine their life more like a potter’s wheel and less like a china cabinet seem to be the ones that are thriving. These are churches that have embraced new communities of people who speak different languages and come from different cultural traditions; churches that have embraced the realities of an urban environment and the changes that come from being situated in the middle of tall buildings; churches that welcome new partners like non-profits, tutoring programs, homeless ministries, schools, and even real estate developers. These are the churches that are thriving and can see a clear future. Not an easy future, mind you, but a clear, missionally focused future.
We all know that fine china ends up in one of two places. Fine china is either in a locked cabinet snug in the corner of a dining room or found in a rummage sale. We don’t want a future like either of those for our churches. A different future requires a different image. It requires a dream that our churches will daily be in the hands of the potter, the one who guides our molding and shaping. If we seek to transform lives, our churches must be transformed first.