Lego Church

A Methodist Church, which I passed at West Kirkby near Liverpool, is advertising ‘Lego Church’. I suspect this is not unlike Messy Church and Café Church in being attempts to attract new people in, especially that most exotic of church attendees, young families. I am fairly traditional in my churchmanship and evangelism, though I am loathe to offer excessive criticism to those whose methods I do not emulate. It is certainly possible to share the gospel using plastic figures and to teach stories in the Bible using children’s playthings. My own days in Sunday School, for example, seemed to involve a lot of colouring pictures.

Evangelism aside, the idea of a Lego Church set me thinking. The joy of playing with Lego is that one can build almost anything, and rebuild it, again, and again, and again. Younger me built houses, castles, spaceships, farms and police stations. You name it, I built it. And the more proficient a lego-ist I became, the more sophisticated and complex my constructions.

Too many today are rebuilding churches. I do not refer to actual buildings, nor those engaged with building up believers, which is good and proper. There are those, and not just Methodists, who deconstruct the church away from her ancient Christian witness, in order to rebuild it to conform to newer blueprints, contemporary designs, more fashionable beliefs. If you attend a church which has come to a 'radical' 'new position' on this or that, it is almost certainly a Lego church, cheerfully rebuilt and reimagined in order to accommodate the latest patterns and expectations. The real church of God, on the other hand, is characterised by faithfulness and perseverance, in the face of shifting sands and erratic winds.