I was standing near the airport baggage claim area, scrutinizing people as they moved past me toward the accumulating pile of luggage. I was trying to spot a specific passenger, a man who was to visit our church. The problem was I had never met this man before, and I had only a small picture to help me identify him. Unfortunately, no one seemed to match my snapshot. Eventually, most of the crowd drifted away from the baggage carousel and there were only a few people left. After a few minutes one of them approached me and tentatively called my name. It was my passenger! I hadn’t recognized him, but he had recognized me. It turns out that the picture I was carrying had been taken years earlier, and he had significantly changed his appearance since that time. I had let my passenger walk right past me because he did not match my picture of him.

Most people, especially longtime church members, carry a mental picture of “church.” Just as a mosaic is made up of many small pieces of colored material artistically arranged to form an image, a cluster of assumptions forms our picture of “church.” Based on our experiences, we form assumptions about the nature of ministry, the role of leaders, basic expectations of members, and so on. We may not even be aware of our presuppositions, but they profoundly influence us anyway.

In many ways, cell-based ministry looks quite different than the picture of church most of us carry. That is why, when first exposed to the cell church, we may say to ourselves, “That doesn’t look quite right. That is not how a church is supposed to work.” So, without knowing it, we might pass by the kind of church we are really looking for.