Church and a Lemonade Stand

My son and I were playing in the front yard when we heard a faint voice a couple houses down- "lemonade for sale".  Now, I am all for kids and the entrepreneurial lessons offered with the classic lemonade stand.  My own kids have done it and they area a blast.  But a couple things struck me about this stand:

• There was no signage- you know, the lemonade costs $.25 or something like that.
• The stand was blocked by cars- there's some construction on our street so there's cars parked everywhere.  I am sure this girl's folks didn't let her go to the corner (much better location), but no one could tell she had a lemonade stand because it was hidden
• One sales technique- the only sales technique the girl employed was her faint voice- and I mean faint.  If you wanted lemonade from her, you had to have heard her voice and then work to locate her stand.

I think there's parallels between this stand and how we do church.  Often times, church can turn into an enterprise that seeks to serve those who already belong.  So we don't worry about signage, we don't worry about communication, we don't worry about varying our approach, because everyone who needs to know already knows.  We're communicating Jesus like this lemonade stand.  

If you hear us and can see us, then you can come to us, otherwise, we're good.

Trying a couple of different- and rather easy- things though would have made a huge difference in this girl's ability to sell lemonade.  

There's a parallel there too for churches.