I was speaking with somebody the other day and, after chatting something through with them, mentioned that Christians just aren’t very good with boundaries. I’m not talking about personal boundaries here (though that may be true). I’m talking about organisational, institutional, missional boundaries.

One thing we don’t like doing is saying no. Particularly when we are sympathetic to somebody. We might recognise their plight, see their issue, feel quite badly for them too. We want to help. Only, they just don’t fit our parameters.

The tempting thing to do is to wiggle the boundary and say yes. The problem then is you very quickly end up getting mission drift. You expand your borders to welcome an evermore tenuously linked set of people into the group. Before long, you end up with as many people who don’t really fit your remit as you do people who are onboard.

Churches are often replete with this kind of thing. Here are some people, they are lovely people, we really like them. They just don’t subscribe to a whole host of stuff we think is quite important. If we wiggle on that stuff once, we end up having to wiggle on it again, and again, until our church end up having welcomed so many people who aren’t actually on board with where we stand that we have a problem. You either end up drawing weaker and weaker boundaries until you have none left or you live with some pretty serious cognitive dissonance causing its own issues.

Christian organisations can face the same danger. They set up with clear lines, plans and mission intent. But over time, they welcome more and more people who don’t quite fit the bill and soon enough find they have lost any distinctness they might once have had. Boundaries are often very important for keeping our distinctness and ensuring our mission remains the mission it set out to be.

Let’s be honest, you don’t have to look too far to find churches and organisations that refused to draw boundaries. Many of them no longer exist. Those that do are, well, let’s just say more than a little mixed. Maintaining our boundaries is pretty important.