Redshirt

Since we're better homeschool parents now, we had our younger two daughters watch all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We failed the older two girls in this this regard. All they got was Awanas, legalism, and later some cool youth groups with alcohol and stuff. Thanks, institutional church! So now, my precious young ones get Star Trek, Stargate, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Battle of the Network Stars (whenever Netflix gets around to streaming it).

Anyway. Star Trek TNG is the perfect vehicle to introduce them to an important aspect of life: the A Plot and the B Plot.

The A Plot: Picard assembles an away team to do something violent and/or sexy down on Beta Omicron 5.

The B Plot: Back on the Enterprise, everybody else catches a mysterious space-virus.

Now that we're clear what on the concept of plot versus subplot, let's learn something further about The A Plot from Star Trek TOS (The Original Series, in geek parlance).

In any given episode, the crew of the Enterprise will make an amazing and useful discovery. And then at beginning of the very next episode, they promptly forget it. Like how to time travel. Or which chemical promotes the telekinesis. Or new alien allies with god-like powers.

On the other hand, one little mention that Spock has a human mom, and that little nugget gets used for the rest of the series.

The A Plot: Action Packed Adventure, quickly forgotten in the face of the upcoming episode.

The B Plot: Two sentences that can be used for inspiration throughout the rest of the series.

This subject of plots and subplots comes up because of a recent invitation to some blowout life-changing get-together to meet a foreign underground apostolic figure who-cannot-be-named for safety reasons (it could all be true, but come on). Bullet points ensued. And capital letters and underlining. Marketing is no surprise to those in Big-Church. But in the community of home gatherings, marketing has an odor. And by the way, marketing is deception.

Forget bashing the institution, I'm going after my own community here. There are brothers among us who continue to strive to build things which they have no business building, who have their fingers in every pie, who consider other local gatherings loose ends to be tied up. And though the banner is "unity", the track record has been estrangement.

The marketers write the A Plot, Spine Tingling Thrills and Adventure, featuring Jesus (they've written Him a great part in the script). But the episode comes to nothing. The A Plot always comes to nothing in the face of the Next Exciting Episode.

Except.

Something happens in the B Plot which the script-writer hasn't accounted for. The Lord has written a subplot for the "extras", a story arc which may develop over several seasons. Something happens which the script-writers have not intended and may never discover. Truly, the marketers have their reward, being seen of men. But a lasting payoff is necessarily a hidden payoff.

Surprisingly, mercifully, God doesn't give everybody flat tires on the way to the show.

If you're reading this, and you've scripted something for the Lord and His people, be aware that you've got latitude. Your gig will probably run like clockwork and you won't get struck by lightning for presuming that you're doing His business. But be aware that the shindig isn't for you, and isn't for your special guest, and won't accomplish what you think. You have your reward, having been noticed. And that reward is going the way of time-travel and telekinesis. But keep doing what you're doing, I guess, because our Lord's eye is on the extras and the "red-shirts" and Spock's mom. Your next thrilling episode, as far as the Lord is concerned, may ultimately be about developing the arc of Crewman Number 3.