Blah, blah, blahh?

So far it has been a very late, very wet summer. And there is even more rain  ... and showers ... and drizzle ... in the forecast. It's soo hard to get motivated with this kind of weather. Everything feels so BLAH.

So-o, it looks like I need to hold a private gratitude meeting with myself. Maybe by doing that, I can light a candle and dispel the darkness.

Okay-y, hmm. 

I'm grateful that my daughter was able to get the huge drywall compound stain off the brand new floor in the family room last night (where it had dropped from someone "mudding" the new ceiling); I'd been stressing out about whether the stain would ever come out. [Whew!!] I'm thankful that I have my husband and daughter to talk to and that we have good relationships and can talk about pretty much anything. 

I'm relieved that my daughter finally has an appointment to go see the orthopedic doctor in Halifax next month, and that she is continuing to learn to drive a car. Her progress in other areas is slow but positive and steady. I'm thankful for that too. Her totally accepting attitude about her lot in life just amazes me.

I'm pleased about my courses at my online grad school and that I will have the same classmates going into my upcoming fall course as I now have in the orientation. (From the winter semester onward, I won't have the same people in my classes, but that's then and this is now). The course for this fall will explore all different kinds and styles of therapy and the different underlying theories behind each - so it's kind of like a review for me ... but I'm sure I'll learn a lot too (it covers areas my previous program didn't have the time to cover) and continue to develop relationships I've started.  I've been assigned a faculty advisor that will be the same one throughout the program, so that's neat. Plus, I don't have to pay extra for my textbooks - a real bonus!

I am glad to have a pretty rewarding job ... and that my job is far less stressful now than it was six months ago due to some positive changes near the top. 

Photo "Candle" courtesy of phanlop88 at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I'm grateful that hubby had a chance to make a few extra dollars in the last few months (thus being able to replace the ceilings in the basement with drywall and the lighting with something a bit brighter for the most part). It's not completely done, but the majority of it is, so our lives can resume their normal rhythms. I'm also grateful that hubby can now return to his normal schedule at home the rest of this year - it gives him more time with our daughter and allows him to be able to take her to her various (multiple) medical appointments. I am happy that my back (sacro-iliac) is doing well enough that I'm no longer using a cane, even though I need to be careful not to aggravate it by standing or sitting or walking for too long (hence my staying home today from church because those pews kill my back and standing up for any length of time is even worse). Nevertheless, it's doing better today (and I want to keep it that way) so for the moment, I'm okay. Okay is good. It's honest. An honest "okay" is better than a faked "great" any day.

I'm even grateful to be able to be there for a friend who just lost her 41-year-old daughter after a long fight against a congenital heart condition which left her susceptible to strokes. It's a rough road ahead for my friend, but I know she will make it - and I feel privileged to be there to help in any way I can. Mostly it's just by being there, and letting her know that her feelings are valid and normal for what she's going through. 

And although I am currently going through what I'd call an existential crisis at the moment (pertaining to the whole idea of fear-based obligation and ritual vs love-based freedom and service), I am grateful that I have a strong faith to ground me while I'm finding my way through what can be a mine-field of second-hand emotions that some people could attempt to put onto me. I have talked about my faith on this blog before, so most of you know that I'm a Christian, but most of my discussions on this topic are reserved for a different audience (different blog), so I won't repeat them here. Enough to know that there are some pretty fundamental changes going on within me, and even if the end result is a different way of living and spending time, it won't be because of a loss of faith. Rather, it will be as a result of returning to a more simple, less complicated (less guilt-based, less fear-based) faith. I see that as a positive thing, and I'm thankful for that.

There, that's much better. The rainy day has not succeeded in keeping me in a downward spiral. In fact, I can even feel the warmth of that candle now.

The Truth : Taking Responsibility

| This above all: to thine own self be true,
| And it must follow, as the night the day,
| Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- Polonius, in Hamlet, Act I Scene iii (William Shakespeare) 

I've been having discussions with a few people lately about how important it is to be honest about even the little things, to maintain personal integrity. The practice of honesty with oneself (and then inevitably with others) is one that, in today's society, is slowly going the way of the whooping crane. 

It is high time to revive it. 

During the last four and a half years, I've been living a lifestyle that demands rigorous honesty - first with the self, then with God and with others.

That forces me to be realistic with myself about a great many things I might otherwise have shoved under the carpet and lived in denial about. It fertilizes my conscience. It demands that I own up to my mistakes - even to (and especially to) my children. It makes me examine the motivations behind my own behaviors that still at times baffle me.

I've discovered that as I embrace this personal honesty, I have less tolerance for being snowed, no matter who's doing it. It's like I have this "BS meter" that points not only within but also outward. It pings all over the place when I hear people talk whose power has gone to their heads - notably politicians, high-ranking officials in businesses or organizations, and the like. 

However, the loudest pinging goes on when I am not being true to my moral compass, when I allow myself to be led astray or I start rationalizing my behavior to myself. That's a good sign. The loudest pinging used to be when I noticed someone else being dishonest. I still notice, but it's tempered with the knowledge that it could just as easily be me compromising my principles to satisfy some ulterior motive.  I know. I've done it.

Insisting on honesty doesn't mean I'm not tactful when I notice something askew in someone else's behavior. It doesn't mean I "let it all hang out" and justify my lambasting someone by saying that I'm being honest. Nor does it mean that I keep silent when silence is not called for. It means that I look at my own reactions and check my own integrity first. It means that I understand that I am human. Fallible.  And that it is okay to make mistakes - as long as I recognize them, and that I learn from them. 

Telling myself the truth is the first step in me taking responsibility for my part in whatever situation has become unlivable. It doesn't allow me the luxury of blaming another person entirely for the state of a relationship or a situation.

When I do need to confront someone, I remind myself to do so in meekness and kindness, with consideration for that person's feelings. It's the way I want to be treated whenever I mess up.

Wouldn't you?

The Acid Test

The term, "the acid test" has been around since the days of the early gold prospectors. They needed a way to determine if the metal they found was real gold or some other metal. So, they would mark the metal with nitric acid, which would melt other metals; gold, not so much. That term came to mean the way by which someone would know if something was genuine or not - from merchandise to someone's promises or beliefs. 

I got to thinking about this expression this morning as the face of this one person came into my mind, someone to whom some people react one way while others react the opposite way.

I first met Joseph in the late 1990s. He's an itinerant - a man who chooses to be homeless. He has a "home base" - the home of a relative in a different province - but he only goes there once in a while to catch up on his mail. Most of the time, no matter what the season, he walks and sometimes hitch-hikes from place to place.  He has a full beard, wears layer upon layer of clothing (because there's no other place to put it) and smells of spruce, wood smoke, and sweat. He makes no apologies for his appearance or his lifestyle. He sleeps in the woods, sometimes in a sleeping bag and sometimes not. 

It's intriguing to see the reactions of different people to this man. The first time I saw him, I was a receptionist at a church office. He walked into the office one day in 1998. My immediate impression was that he was a homeless man in his mid-fifties, in need of a bath, a good meal and a change of clothes.  There was something about him, though - something in his eyes, which contradicted what my sense of smell was telling me. My boss at the time, a wonderful pastor, caught sight of him and came out to greet him warmly. I decided to watch him, talk to him, and get to know him a bit better. 

Taken at Picadilly Circus, London.
Thanks to photographer Mantas Ruzveltas
for this photo, "Homeless Man" - obtained at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Over the course of the next week, as he used the woods behind the church to sleep in (with the pastor's permission of course!) I learned that he loved his life, that he enjoyed country and western music (well, nobody's perfect), that he was a diabetic, and that he had the most gentle, humble character you would ever want to meet. I instinctively knew that if I ever needed anyone to look after my preschool children, I could trust him implicitly to guard them with his life. 

I began to look forward to his visits; he was always so full of joy, so content with his chosen lifestyle, so grateful for every bit of help offered to him, and so accepting of others. About once or twice a year he would show up, stay a few days and then move on. Whenever he did, he'd stop for a church service on a Sunday morning. He'd usually sit at the back, close to the door, so that he could slip to and from the washroom unnoticed. It was there that I noticed the varied reactions to his presence. They were much like my original impression had been - except that they were a bit more (how shall I put this nicely? oh never mind) "in your face."  Some reactions were downright visceral; they were clearly repulsed by this man and got as far away from him as possible. 

Many of these people are the first to attend prayer vigils and go to spiritual retreats, talk about the glory days, and tell others exactly what they believe. 

But Joseph is the acid test  -  his very existence challenges people and he isn't even aware of it; he just is who he is. Yet the challenge hangs in the air, "Do you really believe what you say you believe?"

A few months ago, as winter melted into spring, I found myself wondering where Joseph was, if he was still out there tramping the roads and touching lives with his uniqueness. 

And then one Sunday morning recently, I saw him - sitting by himself in the back near the door. His hair and beard were more gray; his face was more gaunt, but it was him. He was beaming, basking in the simple but profound pleasure of good music and shelter from the rain. When the service was over, I rushed over to where he'd been sitting, but he was gone. Disappointment settled on me like a wet blanket. I made my way back to my seat and began to pick up my purse and other items.

Then I turned and saw him, not ten feet away! He'd been in the washroom (most likely) and was coming up to the front to talk to the pastor and ask for a drive. My eyes misted over; what a beautiful soul. I shook hands with him and was delighted that he remembered me - his grip was a little weaker, but still firm. He was wobbling a bit with age and the ravages of life on the road - but it was the Joseph I remembered. His eyes were still as bright, and his smile as ready as it always was. 

Given the rainy day, the pastor asked a young man (a student interning at the church) to drive Joseph to where he needed to go next - across town - and I wondered if yet another generation would come to appreciate the inner beauty of this simple man ... and pass the acid test. 

I sure hope so.

The power of liking

I wrote an article on a blog of mine yesterday (not this one) - and in my internet Mail Inbox this morning was an email from the site telling me that someone had "liked" my article. 

My eyebrows raised; my interest factor spiked. "Who?" I wondered. I clicked on it and found that not only did someone like it, that person started following the blog! Further, I had no idea who it was; the individual had just been browsing and stumbled on my site ... and liked what I wrote.

Hm!! 

I got this graphic from
this site on how to insert a FB like button

"Liking" is very powerful. There is an innate human need to be affirmed, to be approved of, to have contributions appreciated. That's part of the appeal of social media sites like facebook. It feels good to be acknowledged and appreciated for what you think or believe. Or what you've done. 

It's amazing how just a "like" on FB or an encouraging comment on a blog can lift my spirits. There are times when I wonder if I should even bother continuing, and then someone will like my link to this (or another) blog when I post it on FB, or they'll give me verbal or written feedback, and then I'll rethink my rethinking. Again. 

Liking is powerful in another way too. Knowing that someone enjoys my company - especially someone in whose company I feel safe - goes a long way toward whether I have a grumpy day or one filled with gratitude. Today someone came up to me and put an arm around me and squeezed. That person doesn't normally do things like that - at least not to me. But that show of support really made my day, because I'd been feeling isolated even though I was in a crowd of people. It was good to know someone thought enough of me to tell me, to show me. 

It reminded me to make a point of giving feedback, especially positive feedback. Do you know why most people in "helping" professions (psychologists, pastors, social workers, public servants) burn out so frequently? They give and give and give some more, and people take and take and take. The only things they ever hear are the complaints when someone's not satisfied. Very rarely does anyone come back to say, "Thank you for such great service," - or "What you said really helped me today." 

It only takes a couple of minutes once in a while. The way I figure it, folks are really good about saying nice things about someone after he or she is dead. 

Why wait?

Splitting Headache

We've all heard the stories, we've tut-tutted and shaken our heads.  We deplore it, and we wish it would not happen.  But it does.  

A friend and I were discussing the history of a particular church; I remembered how it formed back in the early 1980s, and I told the story, warts and all.  Without going into a lot of details, someone decided what constituted holiness, and said that not only must the people who held an office in the church (from secretary to deacon) be holy according to this definition, but all the members of their families had to be as well.  The organist's husband smoked. This was not deemed as holy.  Need I say more?

Churches have split over such deep doctrinal issues as the color of the hymnbooks, whether Sunday or Saturday is the day on which we should worship, even whether Adam had a belly button or not. How ridiculous!! 

This cartoon found through Google Images at
http://ponderingpastor.blogspot.com/
2010_05_01_archive.html

The problem with a church split (and let's face it, they are bound to happen because they contain the one thing that causes them - people!) is that it doesn't actually split.  A split implies that half the people stay in the original church and half go to form a new one.  What really happens is that about 30 percent of the people stay in the old church, 15 to 20 percent form the new one - and half or more don't go to church anymore at all.  This last group is composed of people who are so disillusioned by the pettiness of people who are supposed to be loving and self-sacrificing.  

Moreover, at least three times the population of the church - who hear about the split (usually from the disillusioned ones) and have never gone to church (any church) - are people we will never see inside the doors, for they are all the more convinced than ever that Christianity is for weaklings, bigots, and losers.  The problem is that people who are more prone to be involved in a church split still call themselves Christians - except that they have a different interpretation of what that is.  

If the folks in a church have gotten to the place where there is an imminent split, their faith bears about as much resemblance to Christianity as a dodo does to an eagle.  Both birds - but the former is pretty much useless ... and extinct.  And so what was once an organism has been subject to the normal vivisection that happens when it gets "organized."  It loses all traces of life.  

Fear takes over - fear of losing the purity, the passion, or the fire (which is an interesting concept - for if you fear losing the fire, it's probably already gone out. Otherwise you're too busy being on fire!)  I know people who are absolutely convinced that they have the RIGHT to sit in judgment on others with whose lifestyles or practices they do not agree, simply because they are 'seated with Christ in heavenly places.'  This is a gross distortion of all that Christ came to accomplish.  It was never His intention to have His message of love twisted into a message of paranoia and bigotry.  

Fear of people slipping and straying from the tenets of ancient Judaism led to the formation of the group known as the Pharisees.  Their one mission in life was to uphold the laws and traditions they were taught and make people follow them. And when someone (one of their own countrymen) came along who threatened that by talking about love and a personal relationship with God, they went against their own laws: paying someone to betray him, holding his trial after sunset and on the holiest day of the year when nobody was to be conducting any business at all, consorting with people they considered heathen, and bribing witnesses, to have this threat put to death.  

Religious people within the church have done the same thing ... to the same person.  I say religious people because religion is all about maintaining the status quo, dressing it up, making it pretty, doing it right to the point of shunning those who don't, keeping people in line, making the right impression, trying to twist God's arm to make Him do what you want Him to do, and doing what you've always done just because you've always done it that way.  

Christianity, on the other hand, is iconoclastic - always has been ever since oh, let's see, its founder was here!  "Iconoclastic" means it tears down the idols - idols of complacency, of hypocrisy, of spiritual correctness (if Christians were all one race, then this term "spiritual correctness" might even be called racial purity!)  It focuses on an individual relationship with God, and it celebrates the uniqueness of every individual rather than building an empire of people who all agree with each other, look the same, and act the same through what can only be described as bullying. Strange that so many religious leaders can get away with that, and so much more: shoving their fingers in someone's face and calling him or her to the lowest (in front of fellow church-members, no less) because of a perceived "difference" in either focus, approach, interpretation, or belief. They have no qualms about using guilt, shame, and intimidation to keep people all believing a certain way and they try to eliminate all who don't.  One of the last times a political leader tried to do that, the world plunged into war; it was 1939.  

But unfortunately, nobody in the church stands up to stop it; those few voices who do object are ostracized or drowned out in the zeal of the polarized groups that emerge.  So those who get in a huff about the far-reaching implications of choosing blue hymn books over red (yes, this actually happened, several years ago in a different country) will "up and leave" over such things, start another church, and leave hundreds of casualties, Christian and non-Christian alike, in its wake.  

It's enough to give the Head of the church (that is, the one preparing a place for us in Heaven) a splitting headache.

Awkward!

Okay - this is a rant.  Just sayin'.

I was just reading a fellow-blogger's post at "Daughter of Abba" and it really made me think.  She was talking about how she loves God but hates church.  I'm glad someone was honest enough to say how many of us church-goers feel.

My hat goes off to her.  (Among other things) she calls church members, pastors, and other people in leadership on:
 - favoritism
- hypocrisy
- elitism / cliques
- judgmental attitudes
- guilt trips
- exclusion

And she's right.  Church people are notorious for all of those things and more.  It's why the world looks at things like whassisname's prediction about the Rapture taking place on May 21, 2011 and (when that prediction failed) the world still going to end on October 21, 2011 ... and they laugh their heads off.  I don't blame them.  I would too, if it weren't so tragic.  Okay - so I laughed - for a while. 


The truth is, I always feel so awkward at church, and frankly, I've been embarrassed to admit to the people I work with that I go at all.  

I love God, and yet His people drive me nuts! ... majoring on minors, going off on this tangent or that one (okay, so I do that too), boycotting this or that, protesting something else, and all the while judging those who don't line up with their perfect version of how life should be lived.  (I think everyone knows how I feel about that word "should.")  Most of the time I feel like the rest of the cookie dough that gets tossed aside after someone cuts out the cookies.  I don't fit, and sometimes I feel discarded.  Judged.  Minimized.

I hate it when church people / leaders try to "legislate" friendliness, "dictate" love, "order" people to pray for each other - when these things naturally would flow out of intimate relationship with God.  I abhor the mistaken idea that WE have to do something first, before God will do His work.  Great way to take the credit and pat ourselves on the back for twisting His arm, manipulating Him. How ludicrous is that?  Friggit - God already took the initiative on everything by starting the ball rolling with Jesus - and He gets the glory for everything because even the faith and the strength to do what He wants comes from Him. He said He was the vine and we were the branches. So I don't move until and unless He says so.  Period.  It wastes far less energy that way... and if it means that others judge me for not doing enough - fine.  I live my life for an Audience of One.

Thank you, Daughter of Abba.  Thank you for your honesty.  

Should I disappear

I'm not saying it will or won't happen at 6 p.m.  tonight as predicted.  It could - I suppose.

Whether it will happen then or not is not my call to make, nor anyone's.  But what has come to be known as "the Rapture" is an important part of Christian belief.  It is 'the blessed hope' - and for some, it is all about 'the judgment seat of Christ' for believers...the time when their rewards (or lack of them) will be revealed.

In any case, much has been said of late regarding the most recent foretelling of the date and time of Jesus' return for the church - the 'great Body-Snatch.'  There's been a lot of buzz on both sides of the debate... while the world looks on with rather bemused and cynical smiles as some Christians just get all worked up - some to "get ready" and others to judge the ones getting ready by selling their possessions and quitting their jobs (for being so gullible) and perhaps even judging the ones making the prediction for using it to line their pockets the last few months.  My issue is with the kind of "yeah right" mentality these kinds of things engender in the world at large.  "Whoa-yeah.  Like THAT's ever going to happen."

Well, I didn't say it was going to happen.  Jesus did.  He just didn't say when - and as a matter of fact, He said that not even HE knew.  Once His Dad makes the decision that it's time - ya think that Jesus would be the FIRST to know!  Just sayin'.  

And should I disappear at some point in time ... along with hundreds of millions (I won't say billions) of other people ... it will be a total surprise to those who predict things to stir up the pot or for whatever other reason they might do it.  The way I prefer to live (instead of being scared and 'getting ready' for that occurrence) is to keep on getting to know Him better.  Allowing Him to be intimately acquainted with my innermost being.  So whether He comes or not in my lifetime - I'm looking forward to meeting Him in person.

I Have to Give

From the moment one joins a religious organization or a similar service group, one hears about how one has to give.  Give, give, give.  "You HAVE to give!" (pronounced HAF-to). One is told that it is selfish to hold back, to refrain from giving.

In principle I agree.  However, there are a couple of provisos, a few quid pro quos.  

The idea that "we can accomplish so much more as a group than we can individually" has merit, but the tendency is to do nothing that doesn't involve more than two people... or have the approval of the whole group.  So instead of (let's use the example of my trying to reach people with the message of the church) sitting with my co-worker over coffee and really listening to her, opening my heart to her and praying for her, I invite her to church where (I reason) she'll get "all of that."  Well ... in many cases she won't.  She won't even come.  She won't come because I didn't show her that she mattered to me.

Hello!

The early church had sort of the same problem.  Jesus had told them that they would be His witnesses, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth.  

They had Jerusalem nailed.  But that's (with rare exceptions) as far as it went.  

As an aside to this, even within Jerusalem they couldn't just put a sign on the front lawn and invite people to come to church, take an ad out in the local marketplace paper or whatever - stand on a street corner.  The church was for believers.  Believers ONLY.  The conversions weren't happening inside the body but OUTSIDE, where people rubbed shoulders with their co-workers, relatives, and friends.  Hm.

But I digress. The church in Jerusalem was starting to turn into a megachurch.  Thousands of members all meeting in each others' homes - in cell groups of course, to avoid detection by the authorities.  They developed the beginnings of a church governmental structure.  Discussions were about who was allowed to be a member and who wasn't (Jews versus non-Jews.  Remember - Christianity was originally a Jewish sect!!) - what the non-Jews were required to do and not do in respect to the observance of the Torah.  Spirits were high; miracles were common - and people started to get comfortable. There was "safety in numbers" and with an increase in numbers comes a certain feeling of entitlement. 

Enter persecution.  James the brother of Jesus - beheaded.  Stephen stoned to death.  Saul of Tarsus making it his personal mission to see as many people recant this new sect as possible - dragging them before the magistrates, separating families, being complicit in their deaths - not just him doing this, but the Romans who were in Jerusalem too, under orders from the same lecherous Herod who had John the Baptist AND James beheaded.  

And then a funny thing happened.  The church splintered.  It wasn't a church split like so many we hear about today where a group gets all huffy over some innocuous thing - and walks out.  No - people had to move away from home to get away from the heat and protect their families from the authorities. 

For the purposes that Jesus  had intended, it was the best thing that could have happened to them because ... they took their faith with them.  It was such a part of them that it oozed out of them as they went about their daily routines.  Neighbors, friends started to come to believe in Jesus - why?  because the cell groups formed a committee, did a program to feed the hungry and organized evangelistic crusades? No - because they cared for each other, and they cared about people with whom they interacted every day.  Their LIVES spoke for them, and people were hungry to have that kind of life.  People wanted to HAVE what these Christians HAD... because they definitely HAD something!!

Which brings me to my point.  Yes, I have to give.  But I have to HAVE to give.  If my faith is not making a difference in my life in a real way, if it's not motivating me to be grateful to God and to seek His will in my own decisions regarding my own stuff, then nobody's going to see that I HAVE anything they want.

The (western evangelical) church is often too quick to push people into service.  Get'em "saved", shove'em into ministry right away.  Keep'em busy. Tell'em they SHOULD live right, SHOULD walk with God, SHOULD pray, SHOULD tell the world, SHOULD feed the hungry, SHOULD .... fill in the blank.

What about learning how to live, how to walk with God?  how to pray?  how to give God what belongs to Him (and not just money)?  That's how I can have something that's worthwhile to give away - because it's true: "you can't give away what you don't have."  One reason for that is that nobody will want it.  It's like someone with cavities ... advertising toothpaste! (Switch brands?  are you kidding me?)

Then when I learn to do all those things in my relationship with God, it will automatically overflow into all my daily decisions.  Including the ones I make surrounding who I hang out with.  And I'm sorry folks, but although the accepted interpretation of "come out from among them and be separate" is that I am more "safe" hanging around with church people, that's not my interpretation at all - and definitely not my experience.  I prefer being around people who KNOW they're broken, who KNOW they can't live the way that God intended without help and who don't sugar-coat it.  I've learned a LITTLE bit about how to live, how to walk with God, how to pray and so forth (something I'm afraid I had to go outside the church to learn, but that's another bunny trail) and so I want to be with people who are honest enough to admit that they (like me) don't know it all.  But we're willing to learn.

And as I learn HOW to live life, I find that I have [something] to give.  So I do, not because I HAF-TO but because I HAVE [life] to give ... in whatever moment God brings me to.

Sick, sicker, better

As 2011 dawned I awoke with a scratchy throat, which I thought was nothing... until it got worse. I traced it back to talking to a person on New Year's Eve day who had been sick with this cold that's been going around.  Oh great.  Don't tell me.  Oh well, maybe a good night's sleep will .... uh, no it didn't.

So, knowing that I was at that point at my most contagious (and more vulnerable to further attack by viruses and other assorted air-borne nasties including petrochemicals), I stayed home yesterday from church.  I managed to catch some of the service online - but couldn't concentrate long enough to get what the speaker was saying, except that it was (as usually happens in church) about something we "should" be doing (see my series on Shoulds and Oughtas back last summer).  I got to thinking that the world would be a better place if people just got to be friends with Jesus without having to deal with those who call themselves His people.  Myself included, I'm afraid.  I do my share of screwing up, judging, and offending.

Matter of fact, I guess my opinion of church services would shock a lot of church-goers. 

I happen to think that they're pretty useless.  

In many cases they're like the photo to the left - this is a Lego model of a congregation sitting in church.  Impressive to look at - but nothing ever really changes there.  

I am also one of those folks who believes that everything happens for a reason.  Even sickness.  So I was kind of curious as to what God's purpose was in allowing me to catch this &*^$#*!@ cold.  He didn't take long to show me.  I was in the middle of trying to watch this sermon when my Skype icon started going nuts, and I heard my voice notifier say that a friend of mine was online.  Then I got a Skype chat message.  

Over the next hour or more, we talked about stuff.  Important stuff. We shared our stuff with each other, the things happening in our lives, the lessons we were learning. Like I said, important stuff: the purpose of suffering, the importance of being honest, how God uses the wounds in our lives to help heal others.  Near the end of our conversation, my friend said that she felt that the time we spent together was better than most church services she'd been to.  To be honest, I felt the exact same way.

I believe that church can be useful and productive like that too.  

It's just that usually ... it isn't.  

Usually ... it's about someone trying to tell someone else what to do and then judging that person when he or she doesn't succeed in doing it, or doesn't succeed in doing it the way the person telling them would have done it.  

I also think that maybe we need to rethink the way we "do church."  One writer I read a few years back talked about the "industrial model" for church - the idea that churches are factories where Christians are mass-produced from raw material that comes in off the street (i.e., the un-redeemed) and then they pile forth out into the world to bring in more raw materials to be "refined."  But church ISN'T that.  The church is a living organism.  Try to organize an organism and guess what: you kill it .... by a process known by biologists as vivisection.  

I believe that my friend and I were having church yesterday morning.  Each of us knew the other loved her, each not only gave but gained experience, strength, and hope, and each left that conversation feeling refreshed and empowered to face another encounter with the forces of evil, homogeneity, and mediocrity around us.  AND within us.

Food for thought.

Put it in the pages

Honestly.  I wonder just what the Apostle Paul would have thought of 20th and 21st century church.

I'm sure he would have had something to tell us.  


Yes, I know we live in a different culture, I know that our government doesn't overtly persecute Christians.  I know that.  I am talking about the things we obsess about in the Western church.  What clothes to wear on the platform.  Whether to use hymn books.  What version of the Bible to use.  What style of music to worship to.  Whether or not to just tell the undiluted gospel and minister to people's souls, or to do a social gospel and only minister to their bodies (never about both).  Who is the better speaker.  What colour the carpet should be.  

Fifty years ago the questions were different.  Whether to wear a hat or not in church. What colour the hymn books should be.  Hymns versus choruses.  Whether or not to go to the movies.  Whether to use music in church at all. Whether to wear makeup or not. Two piece versus three piece suits.  What denomination is the right one.

Hmmm.  I guess the questions aren't that different.


I was recently visiting a friend's blog ( Merge the Village ) and he had put a clip on it from a keynote speaker by the name of Francis Chan.  I'm including it here - it's about seven and a half minutes long and poses the question, "Does my life fit ?" It gels something I've thought for quite a while and couldn't seem to put into the right words.  Have a look -

What if - just what if - we could live life the way the people did in the book of Acts?  I'm not talking about the culture of the ancient Middle East here.  I'm talking about living in the moment, every moment, in touch with and listening to the Spirit of God.  Wow - wouldn't that be transformational not only to us individually but to the church - and then spilling out into the world around us ?

The people in our culture are just as broken - if not more so - than the people who lived in the days of the 12 apostles and so many others who lived in this lifestyle of dependence on God, like Dorcas, Aquila, Stephen and Philip. They all had families to feed too; they had stuff to do.  The things they did that are recorded in the book of Acts are those that transcended those mundane details.

The human suffering is just as real.  And it's not just limited to the people addicted to crack or selling their bodies on street-corners.  

It's in respectable living rooms, bound up in hopeless people watching soap operas and wondering if their lives could ever matter that much to anyone.  It's in church pews, stuck in empty religious tradition and "true lies" people tell to each other to keep them at arm's length, afraid of intimacy, afraid of rejection.  People so afraid that someone will judge them that they pretend to have it all together - and inside they're dying, crying, sighing.  Wondering if this is all there is.  Wondering where God went.

The answer is not in doing more, or in railing against the way the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, or in electing more Christians to office.  The answer is heart-based.  It's in allowing God in to those dark places in us and shining His light, transforming us from the inside out.  Accepting that He loves us - forgives us - in spite of our failures.  And living in that love, being grateful enough to spend time with Him and hear His voice every day, every moment.  

That's where the adventure begins.