Matthew Haig’s blockbuster novel, the Midnight Library, opens with this haunting thought:

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices… Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?¹

The book follows the story of Nora Reed, a woman deeply dissatisfied with her life who nearly dies, and in the space between life and death, is left to explore the library filled with books that transport her into all the lives she could have lived. Some of them are infinitesimally different, a world in which she lived in a different apartment on the same street, or adopted a different cat at the shelter. Some are exponentially different, with the infinite possibilities in front of her, she tries on lives where she is a rock star, an Olympic athlete, where she opened a bar with her old flame. Some of the lives she is in for just a few moments, some she stays in for a long time. What she gradually learns is that there is no “right” life, no good or bad life, just a vast array of choices and circumstances that shape how you live, with meaning, happiness, and purpose being more shaped than found. 

I turned down a prestigious job because of that book. I was reading it during a season I was interviewing for a job that would have given me a platform, an audience, and a level of credibility that was pretty unmatched for the kind of work that I did at the time. I didn’t really want to move, I didn’t really want this other job (or the attention it would have brought), but I felt like I couldn’t pass over the opportunity, that I had to apply, to do interview after interview, because I would regret it if I didn’t. 

This book opened a door in me, posed an idea that seems exceedingly obvious once I write it out, but had never occurred to me before: there are always going to be books left on the shelf. There are always going to be paths you chose not to take. You’re always missing out on something. The choice you have is not whether to miss out or not, but what you miss out on. 

Here’s why I am thinking about it now: whenever my colleagues or I lead visioning exercises, we have people work through modules asking them to unpack their mission, their vision, their values, the problems they seek to address, and their audience. Churches can get really stuck in this part. They always want their audience to be “everyone!” Which is sweet, and very well-intentioned! But it has a downside – when we don’t make our audience explicit, then we let our implicit beliefs decide our audience for us. There is no program, no place, no offering that works equally well for everyone. So when we don’t design with an audience in mind, we often wind up repeating what we had, or designing what we would want. 

We think by not picking up a single book off of the bookshelf that we can somehow read all of them. The fact is that every programming choice – from time of day, to day of the week, to location, to language, to activities – excludes some people and includes others. And that’s ok, that’s just true, not everyone is equally served by every program, as much as we wish they were. 

So the question changes. Its no longer “How do we not miss anyone?” its “Who are we choosing to miss?” And that’s hard! That’s an uncomfortable conversation that forces a congregation or community to confront what it is they value and what their goals are. There’s also not a correct answer. It is ok for a church to choose to serve a local senior population, or young families, or underprivileged neighbors. It is ok for one program to serve one population and another program to serve another. 

If you are engaging in work of discernment, visioning, and program innovation, the question of audience isn’t just one of marketing, its one of purpose, of values, and of deciding on who you are as a community. There are lots of churches called to lots of purposes, your community probably doesn’t need to do everything, but it definitely needs to do whatever it is that your community is specifically called to. 

If you want to engage in that work of visioning, and have someone to walk through the work of discerning who and what your community is called to with you, give us a shout. 

1. Haig, Matthew. The Midnight Library. https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Library-Novel-Matt-Haig/dp/0525559477 ↩︎