The Church - A Teaching Hospital

Often when I think about the church, I think of her like a teaching hospital.  Here is a place where patients who are hurting, sick, and even dying come to seek comfort from their pain and healing from their illness.  Often times, these patience come in through the emergency room where they have been severely injured or are experiencing some sort of trauma.  When the patients arrive a doctor sees them, tries to diagnose the problem, and presents a course of action to relieve the pain and to bring healing.  It is here in the emergency room that the church often finds things to be difficult to handle.  The emergency room is where the sterile environment of the hospital meets the unsterile environment of the rest of the world.  The patients in the emergency room are often scared, belligerent, hurting, and could really care less about anyone else at the moment.  They certainly don't care about the hospital procedures or regulations.  They are not interested in fitting in with the hospital culture or staff.  They simply want to find relief and healing.  The emergency room is chaotic, frightening, and often stained with blood.  The patients know they need to be there but don't really want to be and frankly, other than a few really dedicated individuals, most of the hospital staff would rather not be there either.

Now then, remember that I said this is a teaching hospital.  You see the church cannot be a place where patients come, get healed, and just leave.  Therefore at this teaching hospital once the patient is recovering then they will begin to learn how to run the hospital and to offer the same healing to others.  Now not every patient is going to learn how to be a doctor.  In fact this would be devastating to the hospital.  What in fact will occur is that every patient will be allowed to exercise their gifts and talents for the overall good of the hospital.  The patients will become the caregivers who will act in a variety of functions.  Some will be doctors, some nurses, some social workers, maintenance, IT, human resources, counselors, lab techs, researchers, etc.  Each patient will be trained, and each worker will be a former patient. - Oh, and there will always be new patients.

Anyway, that's just one of the ways I often think about the church.  What ways do you often think of the church?  What illustration would you use?