Are we serving fast food when we have a feast in the cupboard?
The effort we put into looking after those God gifts to our church says more than we might imagine.
As I talk to pastors, I hear a familiar refrain. Faced with the seeming problem of multilingual communities, many are turning to machine interpreting. This seems like the perfect solution: it’s free, simple, takes no setup and lets everything else run as normal. But it is actually a good thing? A little story can give us the answer.
McDonald’s or Homecooked?
I have been on two foreign missions trips. The first was a whistlestop tour of two cities in France, one in Germany and one in Slovenia. Since we travelled by minibus, needless to say, we had to find places to each. That meant that, for three days in a row, the minibuses pulled up to the drive-through window of a certain restaurant known for its large golden letter and procured a warm breakfast for us all. It was quick. It was easy. And, on our itinerary, it was the only option.
The other trip took place in Bulgaria, with half of the trip spent in Plovdiv and the other half in the mountains. No fast food there. We either ate with families, who cooked local food for us or we ate in a hotel in the mountains. Sure, the food was very different to what we were used to but it was cooked with love and/or professionalism.
Which would you rather live on: food created to be fast and profitable for a conglomerate or food made just for you be a loving host? What would you rather eat, a slice of cheap bread or a slice off the hand-baked loaf in the picture below?
Fast food will stop you starving but it isn’t safe to base your diet on it. It takes effort to find, cook, and consistently eat good food. And, of course, it comes with a financial cost too. Where possible, putting in the effort to eat well pays off. What does that mean for multilingual church?
Low effort costs more eventually
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