The Visiting Team

The Royals are 22-15 in games played at home and 22-18 in games where they visited the other teams' stadiums (as of this writing). Like most teams, they are more likely to win at home than away. It's called the "home field advantage."  The reasons for the advantage are many:

The surrounding crowd is on your side cheering you on. They cheer when you do something well and they are quiet or supportive (or jeering) when you do something poorly. When the game is close, they are excited and urge you on. They hold up signs with your name on them, give away bobble heads with your face on them, and they eagerly seek out your autograph.

The park is far more familiar to you than to the other team. You know how the ball bounces off of the walls, where the warning track is, where the wind catches a fly ball, at what angles the lights get in your eyes. You know how the ball skips off of the turf and how far to go for a good lead off the base. This is where you practice hitting and shagging balls day after day, so the park is just part of your game. The dugout is your dugout and the locker room is your locker room. All the support staff are familiar to you and are on your side. You might even live nearby with your family, rather than living out of a suitcase in a hotel.

You are familiar with all the sights and sounds, which songs are played when, even the phrases that are unique to this team in this park. In other words, the "culture" of this park is your culture.

When you play in another team's stadium, the crowd is for the other team, the park is less familiar and not "yours," and the culture is not your culture. And so, they have the advantage.

The church is the "visiting team." We come from "out of town" to this world. In general, the crowd is not cheering for us, but are cheering for the "home team." When you do something poorly, they heckle. They don't hold up signs with your name on them, but the names of their heroes. Virtually no one seeks out your autograph. The world is more familiar with this "park" than you are - it's their locker room. All the sights and sounds are their culture.

We're the visiting team. But we've been acting like we're supposed to be the home team. How inviting is this: We're expecting the world to come into our park where all the fans cheer us on, not them; they hold up signs for us, not them; the "park" is more familiar to us, not them; all the sights, sounds, and lingo are our culture, not theirs. We want the home field advantage, but it's the least inviting offering possible. "Come to us, where we have the advantage, and you have the disadvantage. Interested?" But we were never sent to be the home team. Jesus sent us to be the away team.

We've been expecting to be the home team, and now we're facing the clear reality that we're not the home team. Furthermore, it's not working. Expecting the world to come into our park and be the away team is not a strategy that works any longer.

I want to be careful with this analogy. The goal here is not to "win" the game by beating the other team. The goal is to be engaged with the world in the "game" itself - to be engaged in the same game of human existence, but to demonstrate how to play the game according to Christ. They won't play in our park much. We must play in their park - we must be the away team, giving them the home field advantage. Rather than tell them what we think of their park, we need to show the how followers of Jesus play the game, even in their park.