An invitation that demands a decision

We had weekly altar calls at Camp Glisson. Older campers didn't need to be encouraged to come forward. Come Thursday night it was expected that most would come forward to the altar. This was an expected part of the Glisson experience.

We decided to mix things up once. It was a middle school week - still plyable in mind and adaptable to change. We removed the altar from the equation. Thursday night we arrainged the pews to face the center of the chapel and stored the pews, stacked one on top of the other, in a corner of the stage. We offered the youth the grace of God - and explained that it was a decision of the heart. They could sit in the pews and ask Jesus into their heart. It wasn't about the location of their knees, but about the trust in their heart.

It backfired. Horribly. Wonderfully? The youth crawled over one another to the stacked altars. They unstacked them and knelt at the altars. There's something compelling about that altar. It is the place where faith is formed.

We have been trying to open the altar up for prayer during our contemporary service. All attempts have failed. We couldn't fix the first problem ... what success can we have with this one?

You stand, you sit, you stand, you kneel, you take a shot. What could this possibly describe but church? (Bill has effectively argued the similarities between a Friday Showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I'll leave that one alone.)

There is really very little scriptural framework provided for what a church service should contain. A weekly altar call is never called for. The pastoral prayer is not commanded in scripture. The collection of tithes and offerings is not given as a weekly activity. Communion is highly recommended, we know that the early Christians sang songs together, and we hear numerous sermons given at church meetings. But we aren't told there was a sermon every week. We don't know how many songs people sang. It probably lasted for longer than an hour. (I can see hundreds of Baptists getting up to leave before the meat of my message after that comment.)

My degree is in two fields, primarily. Figuring out cultures and figuring out how Jesus fits into those cultures. Here is a quick overview of what I've learned so far.
* Churches don't need to have a steeple.
* Missionaries shouldn't import hymns.
* Find bridges between the native stories and the Gospel message
* Don't allow American theology to block the absorption of the gospel.
* Don't change the message - change the media.

We as the American church are worshipping a foreign God. We have never taken the gospel message to heart in such a fashion that it became our own. We are worshipping using the same forms as our anscestors even though the forms are meaningless to us.

We take communion using bread and wine/grape juice. In Jesus day these were the staples of life. In Irian Jaya the people only ate sweet potato - so communion was sweet potato and water. Why don't we southreners have cornbread and sweet tea to commemorate the sacrifice of our savior?

Why do our churches look like they do? Why are we using pipe organs or, for the contemporary crowd, tambourines? Why is our worship not indiginous? Christians are always a step behind the mainstream.

So let's consider doing church differently. Why not go intergenerational? Why not try NOT taking up an offering? Small groups anyone? Small groups in place of worship? What about a talk show format - or an Oprah-esque dialogue? Why not ditch the sermon entirely and just worship for an hour one Sunday? Why not ditch the worship music and worship God by praying for one another?

There are so many things we just aren't trying. Anyone else naive enough to want to give them a whirl?

Michael,
I LOVE it when you make me laugh when I read your posts in my office - not so fond of the funny looks I get...heh, but that's another story.

I wanna get the "it" - I really do. Some days yes, some days no. I guess yesterday was a "no" day. Thanks for the "atta boy" though.

I just read your "I want to change the world but I can't stop channel surfing" post. I think we're all there - some days it's too much to even change the channel...

I have this longing to make a difference, but something about my day to day sucks the life out of me - and it's all I can do some days to keep the status quo...

I guess that's ordinary. And I guess there are moments - yes, I am very proud to have been able to take a song about a guy leaving his girlfriend and connect with a grieving group of people who needed to hear the Gospel in their language - and I'm proud to say that it had very little to do with me... I actuallly went into the service with no notes (okay, I had the lyrics of Free Bird and a note about when Skynyrd's plane went down and half the band died) but I went in having spent hours in prayer.

And that's the end of it for me. I come to the end of me - and God is there. I find I'm at the edge of who I am, what I know, what I can do, and God is there.

And some days it takes really good friends who are 800 miles away to remind me of that.

Grace and Peace, Michael.

So incredibly ordinary ... and yet ...

We're all so incredibly ordinary. Every one of us is similar in more ways to every other human being than we would like to admit. Even a slight differential, such as skin color, can throw a geographic region into a tizzy for decades.

Yet it is the differences that make us human. It is the uniqueness of our lives that seperates us from potential robot races.

What's your special characteristic that makes you a phenomenal pastor, Bill? You get it. ... not in some weird "bible professor" sort of way, not that you know all the answers, not that your theology textbooks will sell millions .... but in an entirely different and un-definable way.

You preached a message of hope and forgiveness and grace at a funeral for a biker with a joint in his hand. The majority of pastors, those who would remain at all after seeing the joint, would have preached a message of hellfire and damnation. There's a reason the family asked for less of the God stuff - they've heard it before. You get it. It's what makes you unique.

As much as you hate it when my posts make you laugh when you're at the office ... I hate it even more when your posts make me cry when I'm at the coffee shop. I recently witnessed two Christians refuse to communicate with work associates because the latter were not Christians. They refused to make contact with people because they are outside of the family of God. My grandmother proudly proclaimed last weekend that Ellen "Degenerate" would never be welcomed in her church because she's a "pervert." (Not that this is an issue or that Ellen is dying to get into my Grandmother's church) I see a lot of Christians who just don't "get it." I couldn't begin to number the pastor's who would have left that funeral or asked the family to remove the joint.

You're real with people. You're real with me. You get the illusive "it" factor in Christianity.

There are billions of ordinary people ... you're one of them ... but ordinary has rarely appeared this good.

Self Esteem Booster #14

I want to be...different. Not in the pants up to the armpits or pierced...um...body parts kind of different. I just want to be unique, somehow. But I'm not.

Oh, I know, "Everybody's special." As supermom says in the Incredibles. But sometimes I feel just like the kid, who responds, "That's just another way of saying nobody is."

I'm not very good at social interaction. Okay, so why did you choose to be a pastor? Well, I don't have the gift of small talk, but so what? I'm not extroverted. So what? I believe I have other gifts. Besides, who ever said I CHOSE to be a pastor.

It's not like I took one of those "You'd be really good at this kind of job" tests and it came up "zookeeper or pastor" and I thought, hmmm, I don't really like animals - people...well, they're easier to ignore, right? (According to one online poll, here's my top five jobs: Author, Graphics Designer, Teacher, Web Designer, Chef - not bad, considering I've done all those jobs, but never as a profession - except teacher...hmmm...also not bad considering it was less than ten questions....)

So, I'm a pastor. But I'm really not much different than the other 600 pastors in the conference... So, what unique gifts and abilities do I have to offer a congregation? Sigh...nope, not any too different than anybody else.

Look, I don't want to be rich, I don't want to be famous, I don't have this desperate need to be accepted, I don't define myself by what I do... But I'd like to be special...

And then I go home at the end of a really long and crappy day...and I am special. Sometimes Elie hugs me so hard I have to recover from it and Rachel almost always wants picked up and hugged and kissed. And Lori stops what she's doing to make sure I know that I'm special... And, it turns out, almost every day that's enough.

And today I feel special to God - not because God rained money on me or because I had some miraculous moment or vision - but there are some words that Jesus heard at His baptism that I think God says to all of us - and they're running through my head - and my heart - right now. "This is my little boy. I'm so proud of him."

So, yeah, maybe I am special...even when I don't feel like it...