A Look on the Inside

We spend so much of life trying to make a good impression on other people, putting our best foot forward, as it were, and sometimes wondering what others would think of us if they knew what we were really like on the inside. The psalmist, however, begins the celebration of faith by acknowledging that God already knows what he's like on the inside and knows him better than he knows himself, even after a lifetime of self-discovery: "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me!" he wrote in Psalm 139, "...Thou discernest my thoughts from afar, ...and art acquainted with all my ways."

In our church life the drama is somewhat the same. We, as a congregation, create a public image of our church and then wonder why the community doesn't beat a path to our doors; we live with the conviction that if the community knew what our church was really like on the inside, they would knock down the doors just to be a part of it. But how do we do that? How do we get people to see the inside of the church?

The most profound answer is to share the love and energy and strength of our faith with friends and neighbors, because God uses our witness to draw people into faith. But now technology is coming to the rescue with a resource that may help curious folks to see the inside of our church from afar.

Google Earth has long been able to view any place on the globe from satellite distance, zooming in on terrain and streets, pinpointing precise locations; and lately they have also provided a street level feature, so that one can not only find the location, but view the specific address, and rotate the camera to explore the neighborhood! It's all rather amazing, really.

And now Google has asked to come and photograph the inside of our church so that prospective viewers can not only locate the church and zoom in on the site, but also open the door and enter to discover how beautiful our church is on the inside. In time there may also be a feature by which we can prov-ide a personal video clip with words of welcome. I don't know how long it will take for Google’s virtual tour of our church to become operational; but it feels as though we're all on the same page at the same time. It's time to let the world see what we're like on the inside, so that God can draw people in from the outside to new life.

~David