Location, Location, Location!

Our church is sort hard to find for some. If you don't know the area well, you might just get lost while on your way. And it's also on a street that's out of the way, not a main thoroughfare. We don't get a lot of drive-by traffic. In order to direct people, we do have a small street sign marked with an arrow pointing, with relative accuracy, toward our church. However, our sign is in desperate need of replacement, something I hope will happen this spring. The significance of signage is perhaps worthy of its own post. That's not my main point today. Rather, I'm thinking of that perennial catch-phrase used to express the value of land and real estate: location, location, location.

Once when talking about our church with another pastor, he commented that our church is actually in a terrible location. It should instead be at the bottom of the road that leads into our community where people would immediately see it rather than in a spot that requires a handful of left turns. As it is, our church lacks a certain obvious visibility. It's not about blinking and missing it. It's more about being situated where even if you keep your eyes peeled you're just not likely to drive by casually on the road where our church is.

Some churches, in order to improve their ministry, will take steps to improve their location. I know of one church which is currently engaged in such a re-location project. But of course not all churches have either the calling or the ability to take such measures. For some churches, ours included, our location, whatever it may be, is something with which we simply have to contend.

And this is true of life as a whole. Location defines us. We are where we are. And oftentimes we can't simply pack and move someplace else. The specificity of our location is the result of years of decisions, unforeseen circumstances, the unseen hand of God and, hopefully, all our honest if flawed attempts to listen to and follow God.

Take me, for instance. What is my location? I am geographically located in a small LSD (local service district) where I currently serve as the full-time pastor of a small, rural Baptist church. The area in which I live is not even large enough to be considered a village or town. We have no local municipality. I hadn't even heard of this place before being called as pastor! And of course my being located here has to do with not only with physical location, but a whole plethora of factors.

One of these factors in my locatedness is that I am also married. That I am not a single male also locates me in a specific place. That I am married played a role in my accepting the call as pastor both here and in my previous church. That I am married plays in a huge role in any future locatedness--my wife and I have to be in agreement about any major decisions regarding moving or a change of ministry. Yet another factor is that I am also a father. We have a young daughter who is roughly three and a half years old. This also plays a powerful determining role. Being a parent both is part of my locatedness and determines my locatedness. So family plays a huge role in my present location.

My own personal background--emotional, intellectual, relational, spiritual, etc.--also plays a huge role in my locatedness. Who I am has been shaped by a variety of influences. I am, yes, who God has made me (and continues to make me!), but I am also a product of my parents, family members, childhood experiences, schooling, encounters with people odd and normal, and in fact all of life. I can’t always articulate it precisely, but I can often sense layers of experience playing a role in present day decisions. Simply put, it's like when someone says to you, "You're just like your father!" And that's only one example.

Try as we may, we cannot entirely escape the various layers of locatedness that accumulate over time like sediment to make us what we are. Some aspects of our locatedness may be nothing more than fossils, but when excavated and revealed afresh by a present crisis or major life change or even the stress of everyday life they come to life again. Who hasn't been surprised by how we can find ourselves in a situation where we begin to think, speak, and act as if we were still that nervous middle school kid?

Much of life seems to be about dealing and negotiating with our locatedness. As I said, we are where we are. And if we can't move to another, more pleasant location, then we have to live with our current surroundings.

What I am getting at with all of this? Why have I recklessly abandoned proper grammar to make up a word like ‘locatedness’? Well, when you think of that phrase, ‘location, location, location,’ the obvious implication is that the where of where you are located makes all the difference. Whether your home is located in an upscale suburban neighbourhood or in a poor rural community will determine the price of your home. It indicates value. If you want to be somewhere worth being, then move to a better location.

Sometimes we want to change the particulars of our present location in life. Perhaps our job is unsatisfying. What about that unexplored career path? Do we wish we had made different decisions along the way? Or maybe being a parent is more stressful than we had anticipated. It could be that the kids we had weren’t part of our original plan. We thought we knew our husband or wife better when we married them. Possibly we were hoping for more material prosperity or at least more creature comforts. All in all, life is hardly perfect. Our location is not ideal. And we sometimes entertain thoughts of what re-location might be like.

But, to point out the obvious, we are where we are. Whatever our present location, that’s what we have to contend with. We can’t just quit our jobs, dump the wife, and lose the kids; though many have used such tactics to change their location. Rarely is it this simple, however. And rarely is this a good idea (Well, quitting a job may sometimes be justified). Often such a move is a poor attempt at escapism, or of loosing ourselves from unpleasant constraints in life. As they say, the grass is always greener . . .

But the fact of the matter is all locations have value at least insofar as all locations have redeemable value. That is to say, the God of the Bible is a God who is at work not only on a grand cosmic scale that encompasses galaxies and solar systems, but one who is also at work on our street, down our lane, and in our neighbourhoods and homes. Wherever we find ourselves, there is nowhere we can be where God cannot work to redeem. This means if our marriage is in trouble, God can work redemption there; if our kids are out of control, God can work redemption there; and if we don’t like our job or are struggling with what our job ought to be, God can work redemption there. So in the same moment as I find myself daydreaming or even seriously contemplating re-location, God wants me to know that he can carry out some renovations right where we are, that he can produce something of value even at our current location.

We know this because God himself acquired locatedness in the incarnation, in that most miraculous of moments when eternity entered time, when infinity became bound by limited dimensions. We know that God places eternal value on our present location because he had for a time his own location in space and time. When the Son of God became flesh and blood, the particulars of our lives, the various levels of our locatedness, took on inestimable value. This is often what is called "the scandal of particularity," the idea, offensive to many, that the truth of God revealed in Jesus is true because of its very particularity, specificity, and locatedness. Most would rather see the truth of God as revealed in Jesus as a specific instance of a more general truth that can also be seen elsewhere--this is not the only way God has revealed his truth, but one of many--than consider the possibility that only in Jesus, this particular instance of divine revelation, is the truth of God made known fully and completely. Yet this is what we as Christians believe.

And the particularity of the incarnation means that God takes seriously the here and now of where we are. Whatever our location, God cares. So whereas sometimes we'd prefer a God who would graciously remove us from specific circumstances and lift us up beyond the often messy details of our lives, instead we have a God who--according to the incarnation--"moved into the neighborhood." We have a God who instead enters into our circumstances and is present to us in the midst of them. That God is like this means that while sometimes a move to a new location is a wise decision, often God wants to save us right where we are.

So our church is not located in an ideal spot. Does that mean for God to use us to reach the surrounding community we have to move to another location in the community, that unless we do we are consigned to irrelevancy? Or is it more true to say that no church is located in an ideal spot, that our placement can never be perfect, but that despite this, God can still work miracles, wonders, and redemption in our midst anyway? While it may be true that if our church were located in a more visible spot that we might get more drive-by traffic, more frequent visitors, and have a stronger presence, I also think that we rely too much on the world's way of thinking if we reduce the potential of our church's impact to those factors. Relying too much on the world's way of thinking also makes light of God's power. Certainly he is not limited by what we define as limitations! And certainly God is not limited by location, whether that of our church or our own. To my thinking, then, if God is into real estate, then every location has value, value that comes from and is produced by him, not by any street address or spot on a map. It's all about location, all right, but it is God and not us who ultimately determines the redeemable value of any location.