A couple weeks ago I confessed that worship times at church often leave me feeling lonely. My proposition was that this was, in part, to the lyrics of the songs themselves. (Along with a few other factors.)
I wrote:
I wonder what it’d be like to stand with my brothers and sisters in Jesus and lift our voices in worship proclaiming that I, me, mine are cheap compared to the power of we, us, ours?
Kristen and I are late-comers to the Downton Abbey craze. Other than the season 3 finale we’re all caught up. (Don’t spoil that last episode for us, we’ll probably watch it tonight.)
Speaking of spoilers this post won’t have any. Instead, this post will talk about things in general ways.
If I were going to preach about church life… I might use Downton Abbey as a metaphor because of its popularity and because of the parallels we can make between the life portrayed and how people in the church generally see the world around them.
Here’s the metaphor I’d use:
I’m not a worship leader. My butt is too big for skinny jeans. My high school piano teacher told me to quit trying to learn. And no one would knowingly hand me a microphone to sing into.
That means that at least once per week I’m lead in worship. And that means that while the worship leaders are up there singing songs and talking and doing their thing, I’ve got lots and lots of time to think down here.
So accept this as a personal lament, not indictment. I’m sharing it while longing, praying, and seeking something I don’t even know exists.
1 John 3:16-18
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
For some, Valentine’s Day is a day you sit a little closer or go out on a special date or send your kids to school with some red-topped cupcakes.
But for the brokenhearted it’s a reminder that you are brokenhearted. Today leaves you lonely, grasping for something you once had or always wanted.
I wrote this phrase down in my notebook a few months ago and have been looking back at it for a while. I can’t escape it. It both empowers me and annoys me. Sure, there’s power in speaking the truth. But Death has a way of clenching its fist on people’s lives, unwilling to let them live.
When you think about it this phrase is at the core of many good stories, including our own. Great novels and movies carry the tension of that phrase. Lies have a way of working their way out into the light of day, don’t they?
We each have the opportunity to be the truth teller from time-to-time. It’s a sacred role.
While we all know that it’s dangerous to be the one to tell the emperor he’s walking around naked, it’s still better for him to know he’s been deceived than it is for him to die of exposure.
Tell the truth, friends. Because the alternative is Death.
Having just taken a 2-week break from my daily blogging routine, I’m coming back at the task fresh from some time of reflection.
Ultimately, my reasons for writing this blog haven’t changed from when I started it in 2004. Back then I said I was starting this blog, “Mostly as a way to share with myself, just what is going on.”
Historically, my blog is at it’s best when I’m writing about my journey. And, speaking just for myself, I feel worst about it when I try to use it for some other purpose.
Sometimes Jesus’ words shock me because they are so offensive to my own culture. Jesus has a lot to say to us today. His words still indict and call us to a new, counter-cultural way of living.
These statements are a powerful reminder that Jesus, fully God and fully man, could have easily conquered the world. (He had the power.) Instead, the Good News is primarily an insurrection of the heart. He knows that capturing a mans body without first capturing his heart is a fruitless effort. Until we fully surrender our lives to Him we will not be changed and we will not see the change we long for. (Romans 12:1)
You say, “If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.” You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled. ~ Charles Spurgeon
Here’s something I wrestle with. Do I let my holy dissatisfaction with the status quo rule or do I measure my ideals and settle for less?
This either-orness really drives me nuts. Yet I get locked into it all of the time.
That’s the teeter totter I find myself on all the time. Being driven vs. being chill.
It’s an unhealthy pattern I long to rise above.
Preaching to myself here, the Gospel offers me a third option. Thanks be to God for this Good News.
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 1 Timothy 6:6-8
Contentment comes from another world. It says, “Yes, be dissatisfied with the status quo and work hard on making changes.” But it also says, “Be happy with who you are, your circumstances, your weaknesses. Find satisfaction in who you are… God’s beloved child.”
I’m convinced, more and more each day, that the drive that lives inside of me is from God. But I’m also leaning hard into being content.
But, as Spurgeon says, even if I had twice as much “more,” if I’m not content with myself now I won’t be content with myself then. I need chose contentment because it’s the answer to my teeter totter problem.
Contentment comes from somewhere else. It’s supernatural. And when I rest in contentment I find what I’m looking for.
One place the Good News needs to prevail is helping to reshape our neighborhoods.
We, as a culture, obey the rule of affinity in our lives. Who we gather with, who we have as friends, where we go to worship… our entire place in this world is governed by affinity.
We do stuff we like. We are friends with people we like. And we worship with people we like. We eat what we like, we wear what we like, we shop where we like, it never ends.
We’ve liked the life out of ourselves.
Doing stuff we don’t like. Well, that’s yucky.
Do you remember that kid in your neighborhood who would get ticked off because things weren’t going his way? He’d get all huffy, take his ball, and go home. Every kid in the neighborhood hated that guy. He was a brat. But we were friends with him because he had a nice basketball.
That’s pretty much the story of the protestant faith. Affinity– gathering by what we like– is the weakness of our religious DNA. Taking our ball and going elsewhere has been a tradition since the Reformation. How many protestant denominations were started because of disagreements going back to… “Well, we want to baptize people this way and you don’t, so we’re going to start another church across the street.” Pretty much all of them.
Don’t you hate church history? It reveals so much truth!
The result of this DNA weakness is what we see now. People go to the church that they go to because they like it. They’ll drive 45 minutes to go somewhere they like…. passing dozens of perfectly good churches along the way. Consequently, churches who have something for everyone to like tend to grow.
And this has been the unspoken narrative of church people for a long, long time. We go to a church ultimately because we like something about it. We like the kids program or the music or the pastor or what they do in the community or because we grew up in that faith tradition and it feels comfortable or because of an affinity-based conviction.
I’m not trying to cheapen these things. I am 100% guilty as charged. All I’m trying to do is raise awareness of this inborn propensity we have to gather by affinity.
Here’s where it plays out…
This morning a friend posted on his Facebook wall something like, “I’m tired of my pastor friends getting hurt because families leave. Why can’t they just work out their differences and stay?” The answer is affinity. For generations we, collectively as protestant church leaders, have told (in acts and/or deeds) people that they ought to gather together and worship based on shared affinities. (Again, not cheapening values/traditions/theological differences.)
The problem is affinity is cheap. Affinity is fickle. By telling people they should worship with people they like in spaces they like and attend churches that meet their needs is that that stuff all changes all the time. We live in a society that changes fast. And our churches pride themselves on moving slowly. So you are always caught in a cycle of being 5-10 years behind what culture wants! (This is something I call depreciating returns. It’s not 1-2 things that have killed the mojo in a church, it’s lots of things which have resulted in a gradual slow down.)
So, while it hurts we can’t be frustrated when people go to what they want because that’s what we’ve taught them… “Worship Jesus how it works best for you and your family.” So they do. That makes church consumeristic. That makes it transient. That makes it, in some ways, cheap.
It’s Romans 7 lived out in church leadership. We do the thing that hurts the most and we don’t know why but we keep right on doing it. And as a result, Satan gets a stronger and stronger foothold in our society.
The Good News of Jesus isn’t an affinity thing, it’s a proximity thing. Christian people from the same community, empowered by the Holy Spirit can overcome the rule of affinity. (We can/should/must look to our Catholic brethren. The parish model is a beautiful thing!)
People of all walks of life really can and should worship together. They should recognize and celebrate differences of opinion, they should love that the church reflects their neighborhood, they should see power in willfully worshipping with people with different needs, people whom they might not be comfortable with. If you watched the vice-presidential debate you heard Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, two faithful Catholic men, express two wildly different viewpoints on their Catholic faith. Their differences were not a weakness at all, it was a demonstration of the strength of the Gospel! Two people who truly see things from different vantage points can and willfully do share one communion cup. That’s the Gospel lived out in proximity in full denial of the rule of affinity!
Proximity is how you bring Good News to the Neighborhood. Proximity is how you build lifelong, grace-filled, messy, overcoming relationships.
But to get away from affinity and towards proximity, we all need to repent of our personal preference sin. And confession and repentance, well… we don’t like that.
From 1994 to 2008 my life revolved around the platform. I was either preparing for being in full-time vocational ministry or in it. God had called me to teach and as a result I felt fulfilled in that mission when I stood on the platform teaching. But in 2008, all of that changed as I transitioned from up-front, vocational ministry to my current role training, encouraging, and resourcing those in vocational ministry.
From 1994 – 2008 I would tell you that one of my primary spiritual gifts was teaching. Now? Maybe I express it differently, but I rarely teach in a traditional setting anymore.
And that transition– from platform to pew— has put me in a unique spot. I know, quite well, what it’s like on the platform. I feel more native there than I do in the pews. So, while I am now a pew-sitter in church I strongly identify with those on the platform. And sometimes, sitting in those pews, I make observations that I feel like I need to share.
In this case, this observation has sat in my draft folder for more than 2 years! It’s my heart but I’ve been fearful of sharing it for fear of the backlash. I hope it’s somehow useful to you.
It is…
As a guy sitting in the pews I can’t help but be stricken by the passive life you are calling me to.
Come to church and sit. Listen to the staff talk. Sing some songs. Listen to a 40 minute sermon. Sing some more songs. Go to Sunday school and listen some more. Every point of application is so simple, so packaged, and so…
Convenient.
I see how you did that. Your message pointed me to the cause of the week. Aw, shucks. You’ve made it so easy. Loving Jesus is so… easy, packaged, simple, and conveniently located near a camera so we can celebrate next week.
And yet, when I open my Bible and read nearly any page I see this stark contrast: There is action from Genesis to Revelation. The entire book of Lamentations is an admonishment for sitting and doing nothing while the world is upside down with corruption.
That seems to be the narrative. Come and get information. We don’t care if you ever live it out. Just come back next week for the next installment.
Yet, when I zoom out the lens on Jesus’ entire message for how to live He seems to point people away from a Temple lifestyle, one where you engage with God at a place in packaged ways, He admonishes over and over again— “This Temple thing ain’t it, friends. God’s at work in the neighborhoods all the time, not just for a couple hours on the Sabbath.”
And so we have an inborn disconnect. I’ll go about my day, I’ll go to work this week… you know, with the sinners. And you’ll go to your work this week… you know, sit in the church and think about what life is like with the sinners. God’s called you to help me with my life but you don’t really have a clue what I even do day-to-day.
I look around and see blue collar types, people who get their coffee at 7-11. And you hang out at Starbucks.
It’s a disconnect which leads to two epic streams of bad assumptions. I know you truly care so I assume you really get me, but you don’t. And you seem to assume I don’t really want to do anything, that I’m too busy, but I’m not.
I don’t just need the Good News to be true for me on Sunday’s. I need to see the Good News alive in my daily life. And my neighbors? Holy moley do they need Good News to be for real.
What would happen if Sunday morning stopped being a passive call to come back next week or deeper levels of involvement with [insert whatever busy work your church has for me] and started being a call to action to live like Jesus?
I wonder what that would even look like? Actually, I dream about it. Please release me! Get me out of this passive spot.
I don’t like being counted. Why are you always counting? You preach and I get counted. I go to a meeting and I get counted. Come to a potluck and someone counts. When I teach Sunday School seemingly the most important thing to do is count.
What if we started counting things that mattered? Like, wouldn’t it be cool if you counted on me not being there? Isn’t that what it means to live out my faith? Shouldn’t what I do between your incessant counting actually matter? How about we count that?
Why don’t we do that?
I’ll tell you what would happen. And why you shudder at the thought. People would get so busy living out their faith that they would stop coming to your Bible studies, your youth group, your choir rehearsals, and your clean-up Saturdays. You are afraid that if people really live out their faith your count will be effected.
Sometimes I worry that the whole reason we do this is not so that I’ll do something but so that you can teach.
Don’t worry. You won’t be useless if you start teaching people to be active. Quite the opposite, because I’m really going to need you then. And when we gather it’ll be a monster celebration of what God is doing. And if you think about it, this will make your teaching so much more important.
So please, count on me to do something more than sit on my hands.
Please.
Please.
Please.