During my recent recovery from surgery I have had a chance to watch some television. My DVR is full of episodes of my favorite shows. In surfing the channels one day I came across a show called, Bar Rescue. The concept of the show is a business intervention makeover, only the process is done on bars. I spent an entire day watching “Bar Rescue”.

At first I was turned off by how much the host of the show, Jon Taffer, gets in the face of the owners and yells at the bar owners about their habits. The longer I watched the show the more I understood why he used such an abrasive approach. When people get in comfortable ruts they do not want to get out of that rut. I’m convinced we actually like ruts, even when our ruts aren’t bringing us the results we want in life.

In my 26 years of ministry in the local church I’ve found that we open prefer our ruts to change. Maybe we need to begin a show called “Church Rescue”, where hard hitting church savers come into the local church and force people to change. How would we feel if there were more coffee hour with only talking to your favorite people, no more sitting in your favorite pew or chair and no more of your favorite songs or programming? I imagine we would not be very happy.

A smart lay leader once told me that ruts are really burial plots in disguise. Ouch. I hope I’m not serving a rutted church or a place that’s becoming a burial plot. I actually believe we are working as hard and as smart as we can to serve the people in the little corner of the world.