Church 'R' Us (Part 1)

Steve Brown October 25th, 2007

You know something I discovered last week? It kind of sneaked up on me and, frankly, I was quite surprised. I think it was connected to three things and they may have been connected to the Holy Spirit.

I'm not sure of the last part, but maybe.

It started with a great interview for our talk show with Rick McKinley about his book, This Beautiful Mess. And then it continued in an interview with Gabe Lyons, founder of the Fermi Project and co-author of the book, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity… and Why It Matters.

The church didn't come out smelling very good in either one of the interviews. In fact, I was kind of ashamed of being a part of the church. In fact, the teaser for that second program was, "Un-Christians are hypocritical, Right-wing, judgmental, sheltered, proselytizing, gay bashers…and boring, too! Let's talk about it."�

I loved talking to those guys in the same way I love talking to Don Miller, Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo. They are the good guys who love Christ and are making a real difference in the places where they serve and write, and in the church across the nation.

May their tribe increase.

But there were, as I said, three things that happened.

After I thought about the "sexy"� stuff in the interviews–straightening out the church, fixing our arrogance, getting away from secondary matters, showing compassion and love for those for whom we have rarely shown compassion and love, being authentic, following Jesus in the hard places, etc.–my wife and I had lunch with some very old friends of ours whose granddaughter had recently died. She was just a little girl and, for reasons I don't understand, Jesus decided to heal her at "Home"� instead of here.

But that isn't all that got to me. When our friends were talking about the people in the little church where their granddaughter and her parents were members, they talked about the love and compassion that had been shown to their family…the meals they brought in over a period of years, the lawn they mowed, the times when the dear people in that little church–not knowing what to say–just stood and wept with the family. Our friends talked about the prayers, the compassion and the support that small church had given.

Then a friend of mine that I haven't seen in a long time was in town and dropped in to say hello. I love him for a lot of reasons, one of which is that he is as screwed up as I am. He came, frankly, for me to encourage him. He's been going through some serious physical problems as of late and has stopped praying and going to church. He wanted me to preach the Gospel to him and to hug him.

Instead, even if he didn't know it, he preached the Gospel to me.

Let me tell you what he said.

"Steve, the Bible says that God is going to circumcise our hearts. We'll be sitting around the fire in heaven with our circumcised heart and we'll look through the fire and see someone we loathed on earth…someone we despised who hurt us, held spurious theological and political views, and who was a self-righteous twit.

"We'll look at them with our new circumcised heart. We will be shocked and we will say…

""�I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry. I didn't understand.'"�

I wanted to tell my friend that the "circumcised heart"� is happening now and that we wouldn't be sitting around the fire, but sitting around a table at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

But one doesn't quibble when one senses that God is trying to say something.

Okay, now I'm ready to tell you what happened. That evening, I was speaking for "Women in Ministry"� at the seminary. The problem was that I had not prepared anything to say. (I've been doing this for a long time and sometimes I just talk until something comes to mind.) I had no idea what I was going to say and thought we would have a Q&A; and, if not, I had brought my Bible and could do the teaching thing if I had to.

When it was time to speak–I suppose my unconscious mind or maybe the Holy Spirit brought to mind the interviews and the time with my friends–I opened with these words:

"I love the church! No, I mean I really, really love the church. I don't know why I love the church, but I do and I can't help it."�

Then for the next 25 minutes, I couldn't believe what I was saying. In fact, it scared the spit out of me. It sounded heretical and weird. I remember thinking that I was going to lose my job for saying it and maybe lose all my Christian friends.

"Lord,"� I thought (yes, I can multi-task and multi-think!), "this is crazy. If this isn't from you, I'm going to be in serious trouble."�

But I kept talking and in the next post (this is already too long and I have this day job) I want to tell you some of the things I said that evening. It may have been from Him. Then, again, I may have had too much coffee. It could have been the devil too. ("The devil made me do it!"�)

But maybe it was Him. I've been thinking about it as of late.

Just a hint of what I said to the group that evening as a kind of teaser (as we say in the "Business"�): It had to do with Jerry Falwell, Ann Lamott, Democrats and Republicans, Pharisees, Joel Osteen, Ted Haggard, Pat Robertson, Augustine, Pentecostals, Robert Schuler…

Now I need to get to work.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.