You Attract More Flies With Honey

Have you ever heard someone use this phrase before? “You attract more flies with honey rather than with vinegar.”

I’ve never actually “field tested” this, but I think the point is that if you want to attract people you will be more successful with something sweet rather than with something bitter. Who doesn’t like a kind word over a rude word? Truthful words are always helpful,  but when are harsh, cruel, spiteful tones in a conversation ever helpful. I think this is likely the origin of a phrase like this. (I want to first of all say, “why do you want to waste your honey on flies?”)

But what happens when one applies a phrase that means one thing in a particular situation to an altogether different situation?

For example: Today, while I was watering my garden I noticed both flies and bees and it caused me to remember being told one time early in ministry days that if we want to attract people to our churches we have better success when we use honey rather than vinegar.

This may be true in how we speak to people, all people. Be kind, sweet, gentle, friendly, etc… If you want to turn people away then just be rude, crude, harsh, brutal, etc. But when we, the church, apply this to methodologies I think we can run into a risky, unintended conclusion.

Here’s what I mean…

We may likely be able to attract a bigger crowd with flashy activity. It’s a proven fact that churches across the land are doing a lot of things and it appears to be attracting more people. There runs a problem with employing this kind of thinking to church growth. However, when we begin thinking that the current gathering crowd is here because we’ve done something “sweet” for them that they really like we’ve pulled a “bait and switch” on then. It may well be what they want (and we gave it to them) but is what we’re giving them that which is the sweetest?

Now, I don’t know of any church that would dare say that the word of God is like vinegar. But I know many churches that treat the word of God like vinegar. This is the unintended conclusion that is implied when we use this American proverb to the church.

But what if there was something sweeter than honey?

Wouldn’t it make sense then, that churches would use what is sweeter than honey and begin treating what we call “honey” like vinegar?

Reader, if you’re employing worldly philosophy that treats God as anything but the highest pleasure imaginable then you are nursing on vinegar.

Churches of the Magic Valley, if you are employing trickery to gather a people because you don’t think the word of God is the most helpful thing for people then you are keeping people from the most helpful, valuable, pleasurable thing God has ever given us.

This is how God puts it…

Psalm 19:7-14