There is a coffee shop near where I live and they boast of selling exceptional coffees made from organically grown beans, only grown in Australia.  Their coffee making equipment is high end, their staff are skilled and even the interior design is pretty funky.  But there is one pet hate I have about this place.  Their retro interior design, includes using an eclectic collection of ‘St Vinnies, white elephant’ cups in which to serve customers their coffee. You never know what you’re gonna get. A latte could come out in a small, cold, plastic Tupperware tea cup instead of a warmed, gleaming, 220ml glass.

[caption id="attachment_223" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Cafe Latte in 220ml glass. The way it should be."][/caption]You might think ‘hey relax! Go with their retro theme’; and I try. Except, they are quick to wax lyrical about how premium their coffee is. If that’s the case, why are they serving it in such mediocre vessels? All this does is undermine their ‘exceptional product’ and water down the ‘premium experience’ I should be having.

If you had an exceptional product, would you present it in unexceptional packaging?

The good news of Jesus is exceptional.  Every Christian has the words of eternal life and it is our privilege to offer it to others. We didn’t make the gospel, God did.  But we are the vessels of its delivery. Both our lives and our words matter. We are all gospel presenters. So it makes sense that we should aim to present the gospel exceptionally.

Yes we are ‘jars of clay’ and God works through our less than exceptional lives and abilities to communicate the gospel.  But that’s not an excuse to aim for or settle for mediocrity.  As the Scripture says, ‘What ever you do, do as to the Lord’.

Churches often have to spend their time preserving the truth of the gospel.  While this is important so that the truth doesn’t get lost, it can mean we are prepared to accept mediocrity with the packaging.  We neglect our job as gospel presenters. We spend our time, defensively, being gospel preservers.  We pick on other churches about what they’ve got wrong, rather than setting the bar height and pioneering presentations of the gospel that engage our contemporaries.  We keep doing what’s always been done, fearful of what others might think, rather than going for broke and taking some risks to present the gospel in our time.

If the gospel is exceptional, then it deserves exceptional packaging.  If Jesus is the ‘king of kings’, then he deserves our best work.