Resistance is Futile

I always like to say that my parents raised me right, which meant that one of the things I did growing up was watch Star Trek: the Next Generation. This allowed me to learn about the Borg, a race of aliens who move around the galaxy assimilating other species into their collectives. Their famous line is "resistance is futile, you will be assimilated." In the last couple of weeks I have received a couple of mailings at church inviting me to attend a new seminar, "The Assimilation Seminar: From First Time Guest to Long Time Members." This mailing both reminded me of my old Star Trek days and also disturbed me. I don't like the idea that goal of the church is to assimilate visitors into our church collective. First of all, the Borg at least tried to take the best of all those and so the collective was changed as new people were assimilated in, something that is not really implied in this church assimilation. I also just don't like the notion that conformity is the solution for the church. I think there is a tendency in the church for us to value membership and conformity too much in the church. We want visitors to come into the church but we really want them to leave looking just like us. While I believe that the church as something to offer people, namely a Gospel of love and grace that will change people's lives, I also think we need to realize that visitors have something to offer those of us in the church as well. How do we look at visitors not by what they need from us, but instead by what they offer us. I don't mean what they offer us in terms of "another Sunday school teacher" or "a strong giving unit" or "the next chair of the trustees." I mean what do visitors have to offer us in our faith journeys. How can we learn from visitors in the same way that we want them to learn from us? I guess the kind of assimilation I like is the one where both sides are changed by the other, so that all are bettered by the experience.