Dr. A.J. Swoboda has a well-written article at Christianity Today in which he argues the Church is not a hospital. "Our metaphors for church," writes Swoboda, "serve not only as descriptions of the church but blueprints for the way we understand and live in the church. That is, that our metaphors have actually shaped the way we imagine the church."

This is an important insight. Metaphors are far more important than many realize. Metaphors don't just help understanding, they shape it. Once a metaphor is embraced we begin to see everything through the lens of the metaphor. When a community of faith adopts a dominant metaphor for "church", that metaphor begins to shape, direct, and limit, the actions and priorities of that body of believers. Those things which support the metaphor will be embraced, and those which do not support the metaphor will be eliminated from consideration.

Swoboda quickly drills in on a metaphor with which he has substantial disagreement. He has concerns about the metaphor of church as hospital, noting it is a metaphor found nowhere in the Bible. He writes,

Seeing the church as hospital subtly implies that the church has value until you are better. Then, once you're better, matured, healthy, evolved, no longer in need of its services, whatever it may be, you no longer need to go. When we honestly examine the church in the 21st century, isn't this precisely the way in which our general body of Christians think about and imagine our relationship to God's church?

Here's the question that nagged at me while reading Swoboda's piece. I've never actually heard a church leader use "hospital" as a metaphor for the church. Is this a common occurrence in churches that I've somehow missed all these years?