![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/question1.jpg\" "\\"question\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nDo you like church?<\/strong><\/p>\n Seriously. Do you really like<\/em>\u00a0church?<\/p>\n I was prompted to ask this question while having lunch recently with a good friend. He was telling me that his wife was in the final stages of landing a \u201cChick-fil-A\u201d franchise, and he was explaining the various interviews that had been involved in the process.<\/p>\n As he explained the process I was growing increasingly impressed with Chick-fil-A\u2019s integrity and thoroughness. But it was their final question in the final interview that stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you like chicken?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n It turns out that the company had once granted a franchise to an extremely qualified business person, only later to learn that the franchisee was a strict vegan!<\/p>\n She could run a strong business, but she could not, with any integrity, encourage people to \u201ceat more chicken\u201d, when she herself would not.<\/p>\n Since then, so my friend told me, Chick-fil-A has established a strict policy that each franchisee must be able to say with integrity that they do, in fact, \u201clike chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s simple.<\/p>\n To the point.<\/p>\n Powerful.<\/p>\n That brings me to the awkward question for church leaders.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you like Church?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Seriously.<\/p>\n You might find something vaguely troublesome, even offensive about that question.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter all,\u201d you might reason, \u201cI\u2019m justified, sanctified, redeemed, washed in the blood, anointed, born again, cleansed, crucified with Christ, and filled with the Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n Good.<\/p>\n All important.<\/p>\n But do you like Church?<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you like the board members who seem to nit-pick every decision?<\/p>\n Do you like the youth group who didn\u2019t clean up after pizza night, again?<\/p>\n Do you like the group of seniors who complain every week about how \u201cnoisy\u201d everything is?<\/p>\n Do you like the frustration of preparing a sermon that just doesn\u2019t seem to come together?<\/p>\n Do you like church?<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you like the rush of seeing someone far from God take a huge step towards him?<\/p>\n Do you like the thrill of seeing the love of God restore a broken home?<\/p>\n Do you like the miracle of seeing someone declare they have committed their life to Christ?<\/p>\n Do you like church?<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s post has no 5-step plan.<\/p>\n No 4 keys to a successful anything.<\/p>\n Just a question worth wrestling with.<\/p>\n Do you like church?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want to ask you a question that is likely to make you squirm a bit. But it\u2019s one of the best church leadership questions I\u2019ve ever encountered. Do you like church? Seriously. Do you really like\u00a0church? I was prompted to ask this question while having lunch recently with a good friend. He was telling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,738,478,7,579],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-effectiveness-2","category-featured","category-leadership","category-ministry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3034"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3042,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions\/3042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}