From High Brow Pirate to Hometown Pastor

So today I was bored and clicked on to focus on the family.  I think surfing pron would have been more constructive.  Okay, maybe not constructive, but it would have been less aggravating.  It was a giant adventure in arrogance and missing the point.  The guest was Lee Stroebel.  I used to be a big fan of Lee back when I thought the point was having a big ass church and I thought discipleship was a conglomerated network of small group communities.  Lee writes great books on apologetics.  Apologetics is a great and important study, but ya know what, it is not an evangelical tool.  Sorry.  Dinosaurs, evolution, and the age of the earth is not what is keeping people from accepting Jesus.  Frankly, the ambassadors of the author of love is what is the major barrier.  Sorry.

Anyway, Lee had me and then he lost me.  He spoke of how Christians need to be generous to others.  He said we need to give single moms food from a pantry, money from our wallets and get a car donated to them.  I am at the edge of my seat saying yes…yes…and YES!!! He is driving this car on a journey.

Then he goes on to tell us that the single mom may look at us and ask, why are you doing this?  Oh baby….yes!  Home stretch now…here we go! He says now you have an opportunity to share the gospel with her and get her to say the sinners prayer and come to church on Sundays. Suddenly…the home stretch turns into my gear box exploding and bits of my tranny’s linkage hitting the track as a push rod blows through the hood and the car careens into the tree.  The journey ends in a smoking heaping ruin of crap.

Is that the point of generosity, kindness, advocacy, and need fulfillment…a hook to a sales pitch? What he does not realize, what he does not get…is at the point he gave her groceries, put money in her hand, and gave her a minivan…he showed love and changed her life.  At the point he shared 4 reasons to turn or burn and went down the romans road…he added a string and condition to the love offered.   The gifts are no longer love, they are a fucking technique.  He cheapened the work of the gospel and the love that could have been shared into the free knife set you get to hear about Rainbow vacuum cleaners and the free weekend in Florida to hear a pitch about time share condos. The implication is that this life is nothing more than a waiting room and any kindness we dispense is a hook to the other side of the waiting room.  Maybe all of this is a blip in the radar of existence, but there are people with needs right here and right now and real hurts.  I don’t have time serving some pampered little suburbanite ass a half caf Jesus with some cream on top and a sprinkle of cinnamon.  There are God’s children out there who need our love and our help.The words on the statue of Liberty should be the mantra of every church…but we are too focused on tops and tricks and ten percent.  I might be gagging a little as I write this.

Let’s clarify something as I just realized I dropped and f bomb which I now refuse to delete.  Some people think I swear for shock value.  I swear because I am mad.  Let’s clarify something else here.  Let’s see why I call this a sham. Say you are a guy and you bring home flowers to your wife or significant other.  The eyes mist, a smile erupts…and the person asks why you did this. Imagine the response to

-Cuz it is my duty.

-Cuz I wanna get laid tonight.

-Cuz they were on sale, no biggie.

Now imagine the response to…

-Cuz all I can think about is you.

-Cuz I saw them and I thought of you.

People want to know love and know they are in your heart…they do not want duty, tricks, or subterfuge.   

This is another hurdle that makes life hard on me.  This is another thing that makes it hard for people to trust me.  I talk with a woman about God and love a lot and you know what she tells me?  She tells me she is always waiting for the other shoe to drop in our conversations.  She is ready for me to use the hook to reel her in.  

Why?  It is all she ever has known from us.  I used to admire guys like Lee and Dobson.  Now I see simple men who could learn a few things from an 8 year old that calls me dad. It’s where I learned most of my life lessons in love without strings or hooks. 

If you think I am being too hard, show me where Jesus says feed the hungry and cloth the poor as a hook to the romans road and I will eat my words.

I am sorry.  I do not want to give the impression that this is a church built on anti church.  But sometimes…I just gotta vent.

I said I wanted this church to be organic, but I never gave it permission to be organic in a method contrary to my formula.  Guess that is part of the whole organic thing. 

My Bible College student buddy with the crisis is still working through it.  I have not really connected with him the last week like I wanted it.  But, to be honest, it has been asses and elbows right now, hence the limited updates.  I was given the gift of a sprained ankle.  I say gift because it is forcing me to slow down and absorb…and…ya know…the pain killers make you lucid enough to move past your bad self and write.

A lot has been going on.  It all started with a notebook and some questions.  Not too long ago I posted about getting a notebook and kinda writing things down.  I was looking for something…a pattern, a puzzle, something.  I figured it out recently, and I will get to it, but for right now…stick with my pain killer laden mind. 

I recently asked for a favor from some people and it has sparked amazing conversations.  I asked some folks who would consider themselves to not be part of the evangelical sub culture to allow me the privilege of asking them some questions.   This would help me see "their" perception of "us" so I could see how f****ed up "we" are.  See…the more people like that who get this and the more people within the evangelical subculture do not get me…the closer to the mark I think I am.    Anyway, from that simple request…in which I was hoping to get 3 replies from….I got more than I could have ever bargained for.  Yeah, I got the data, but I also got new friends and some people who have been sitting on the sidelines having a hunger.

The dynamic has changed.  There is space being offered, there is a sound system offered, and the most important part…there are people offering themselves to help others.  But they want something in return…something I was not expecting.  They want the Sunday service.  I am still not 100% sure why, I am probing that.  But they are willing to offer themselves to others and offer their presence and their participation.  There is hunger, there is ownership.  And here is the lesson from all of this.

See, one of the biggest problems in the attractional, WCA, Purpose Driven play book is their linear thinking.  I wish I could call them two dimensional…but that would be giving them credit.  Nah, going back to the days when I read Flatland, they are simple lines who have reduced the life of Chrsit to somehting as simple as the nervous system of an earthworm.  I am sure that Deitric Bonhoffer is rolling in his grave to see how his words have been twisted by legalists and I know that…oh…sorry…tangeant.  Okay…where were we…. Oh yeah…the linear line of the Evangelical formula of starting chruches.  

(start line)……build a kick ass worship service……build a community…..if you have spare time, do the work of the gospel….(end)

The main problem I saw is the monster you create becomes insular and never gets to the heart of the gospel. So, my main idea was to turn it around…but I still missed the point.  My idea was……

(start line)….do the work of the gospel (feed the poor, befriend the lonely)….build a community around that….if I had spare time, build a worship service. (end line)

In doing that, I have had a lot of people resonate with what I had to say about things…but I find myself going to the food pantry and the elderly home alone most of the time.  I never complain…because I am changed…but I have wondered where these other people who claim this is what the church should be doing are.  But here is the problem…all I did was reverse a formula.  

When I stepped out of the way and asked a question of people with no plan, no strings, and no hopes for them to show up to feed the poor….suddenly…organic community developed.  That community came in fast and furious.  That community wants a sunday service and they want to do the work of the gospel.  It is not a this or that…or a this..then that…but it is both.  

If a community develops naturally and without influence and deep thoughts about God come to play…there is a natural progression for wanting to do the right thing…but there is also…(and this is the part that threw me for a loop) an inclination for people to gather together in synagogue. I say synagogue, because unlike the holy temple, they know that the synagogue is not a consecrated space, nor is a synagogue necessary for collective worship. Worship can be carried out wherever people assemble. A synagogue is not in the strictest sense a temple; it does not replace the true, long since destroyed, Holy Temple in Jerusalem.  Regardles of that, they want a beit knesset, "house of assembly" and a beit tefila, "house of prayer".  It is a time of prayer, a time of study, and a time of gathering.  There are lessons to be learned and mysteries to be unraveled. 

How did I miss this?  I think 22 years as an evangelical has deadened me to the possibilities of a Sunday service.  Of synagogue in the shadow of the temple….the temple…the very seat of God where the blood is sprinkled.  I was ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  I called Sunday service the Sunday show.  Because in the modern church in America…that has been what we reduced it to.  It is a show.  But there is something else here.  There is something else people need and want and yearn for from that time that we have covered up in music, announcements, sermon styles, and coffee blends…that something got lost.  Something "they" know instinctively.  

So anyway, the time is now.  God willing, we may have a space in Lockport, Illinois.  I know this was meant for Bolingbrook…but that is the funny part about that notebook I mentioned earlier.  (See?  Told you I would get to it!).  What I forgot to look at was where people lived and what I do and where I do it.  It is not, strictly, in that lovely town that raised me.  It is in all of Will County.  And in the words of one of my favorite panelists…"It is not the where, it is the what.  What you have is different…be different..every day."

So..yeah…any questions?