Churches and Lifesaving Stations

Pea Island Life-Saving Station crew, 1896. Photographer unknown.

A cautionary parable from Managing the Congregation: Building Effective Systems to Serve People, by Norman Shawchuck and Roger Heuser, pp. 78-79:

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought of themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew. 

Some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club’s decorations, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held. About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beatiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside. 

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members instisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving stations down the coast. They did. 

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown!

Churches would do well to consider what happens when they lose their sense of purpose. Without a purpose and reason for existence, churches become nothing more than social clubs.

“No Longer Worthy”

Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt van Rijn

Luke 15 is my favorite chapter in the entire Bible because it contains one of the most famous parables of Jesus, The Prodigal Son.

It’s a parable that many are familiar with. It begins with a father who has two sons. The younger son demands his portion of the inheritance while his father is still alive and then takes the money he receives, moves to a distant country and squanders all he has on riotous living. With all his money gone, he is forced to take a job working with pigs until he finally comes to his senses and decides to return to his father, realizing that even the servants in his father’s house enjoy better lives than he currently has. But when the son returns home, his father greets him with open arms and celebrates his return with a feast. The older son resents the warm reception that his younger brother receives, but is rebuked by his father:

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

It’s a wonderful parable, and there are a multitude of lessons that can be learned from it: the freedom that God gives us to leave Him or follow Him, His eagerness to welcome us back and forgive our sins, the perils of being the older brother, the false promises of the “far country”, and more.

But a while back while reading the parable, I was struck by something I had never thought about before. In Luke 15.21, when the Prodigal returns to his father, he launches into the speech he has prepared:

“‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’”

The son describes himself as “no longer worthy.”

I feel very similar sometimes when I run from God, when I commit sin and then return to Him.

But it’s not the proper mindset to have.

Not because the unworthiness aspect is inaccurate—certainly we are unworthy of being God’s children. No, the inaccuracy comes from the words “no longer” which imply that at some point we were worthy of being God’s children, and that simply isn’t true.

The Prodigal Son wasn’t a son because he somehow earned or deserved that relationship, but because he was born into it, and his father chose to treat him as a son whether he deserved it or not.

Similarly, our relationship with God doesn’t depend on our worthiness, it depends on His love. We are not his children based on how much good we’ve done, but based on His willingness to have a relationship with us at all.

We feel guilty when we stumble, and we rightly feel that we don’t deserve a relationship with our Heavenly Father. But we must remember that we never deserved that relationship in the first place.

That’s the great thing about God—He loves us despite our unworthiness.