A lighthouse is a strange thing when you stop to think about it. Nobody builds one for the people who are already safe in the harbor. The folks standing on the shore with their feet on dry ground do not need a beam of light sweeping across the water. The lighthouse exists for the boat still out in the dark, the one taking on water, the captain who has lost his bearings and cannot find the way in. A lighthouse that only shines on the shore has forgotten the whole reason it was built.
I have been thinking about that picture all week, because our church is talking about becoming a lighthouse for the lost. It is the second line of our relocation vision, and the more I sit with it, the more I am convinced it cuts against something deep in all of us. Left to ourselves, we would much rather be a clubhouse than a lighthouse. A clubhouse is comfortable. It is for the members, the people who already belong, the ones who know the secret handshake and like the coffee the way we make it. A church that only thinks about itself slowly becomes a clubhouse. But a church that thinks like Jesus becomes a lighthouse.
So how does Jesus think? In John 10 He calls Himself the good shepherd, and then He says something that I have read many times without really catching it. “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). He was speaking to a Jewish crowd, and He told them plainly that He had sheep they could not see yet, sheep in another fold He fully intended to bring home. We are some of those other sheep. Aren’t you glad He had another fold in mind?
Here is what grips me about that verse. Jesus sees people who are not here yet. We look around our sanctuary and we see who came. He looks across our town and He sees who is coming. When Paul was discouraged and afraid in a hostile city, the Lord told him, “I have many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:10). Paul could not see them. God could. The good shepherd always sees sheep we have not met. That is the real meaning behind the empty chair that sits in front of my pulpit at church. It is a seat for the person the shepherd is going to call, the one we cannot see yet but He can.
Notice one more word in that verse, because it stopped me cold this week. Jesus says, “I must bring them also.” The almighty Son of God says He must do something. He is not casual about the lost. He is determined. And that changes everything for people like you and me, because it means our mission does not begin with our energy, our dreams, our building, or our clever plans. It begins with His determination. He told us flat out why He came. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). We do not manufacture that drive. We simply get to join Him in it.
That takes the pressure off in a way I find freeing. It is not my job to be the voice that saves anyone. It is my job to make His voice clear. Faith comes by hearing, Paul says, “and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The Shepherd brings His sheep home through His own voice, and He lets us carry that voice into ordinary places. It happens through preaching, through a Bible study, through a life group, through a friend who finally says yes to coming to church. Our summer missionary team just came back from Honduras, and the motto they served under was simply “walk with us.” They did not flip anyone’s life around by sheer force. They sat, they listened, they showed people that someone cared enough to come a long way. That is how the Shepherd’s voice gets through. Not by being loud, but by being near.
Remember too that there are two kinds of lost. Some people are lost in the clearest sense, separated from God because they have never trusted Christ. But others are lost in a quieter way. They may already believe, yet they feel alone and cannot find their place. The lighthouse is for both. When we welcome the wanderer and make room for the stranger, they begin to hear the Shepherd calling them home.
So let me ask you to do something I asked my own congregation to do. Picture one person you know who is out in the dark, away from the Shepherd. See their face. Now start praying that the Good Shepherd would call that person into His flock, and keep praying every time you think of that empty chair. We are not building to grow our numbers. We are building so the light shines a little farther out, to the ones we cannot see yet, but He already does.
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