A Place to Fail

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Phil Vischer, creator of VeggieTales, built a small Christian animation kingdom called Big Idea and then watched it slip through his fingers. He has told his story to numerous groups. Toward the end of his recounting on his podcast of how it all got away from him, he mentions something about 40-something men that really breaks my heart:

Skye Jethani of Christianity Today chimed in too. His is a refrain I’ve sung before on Cerulean Sanctum:

We Need a Gospel That Speaks to Failure

Still Looking for a Gospel That Speaks to Failure

Mistakes As Sin: Does the Church Need a New Grace?

Steve Went Looking for Grace

I think one reason that grace, the lifeblood of the Church, remains just a concept in most Christians’ lives in the West is because of the very problem Vischer mentions: Anything less than success is considered unworthy of our attention. Therefore, people who fail go wanting, looking for grace, when grace is only afforded to those who triumph in the eyes of the world.

What do you say to the guy who finds the perfect girl—only to lose her to someone else? Or who lands the perfect job—only at a company soon to fail? Or who spends plenty of time with his kids and tries to train them up right—only for them to rebel and complain about him to friends? Or who listens to his heart and goes for his dream—only for it to crumble in loss?

Why don’t we preach a gospel that reaches that guy? Why don’t we practice a gospel that makes a safe place for him to fail? Where is that pool of grace to be found when all of life goes to pieces? And why is it so hard to find in the very place one should expect to find it?

Lastly, what if that guy tries to live by every Christian principle in the Book and still fails?

We need something better than what we’re giving people Sunday in and Sunday out. We may talk about the brokenhearted, but nine times out of 10, that brokenhearted person is someone who failed, often spectacularly. God help us if we have no grace to offer him.

We Need a Whole Lot More Grace

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Grace of GodSometimes, I think we don’t have any idea what grace is.

This seems unbelievable to me, given that grace is one of the bedrock distinctives of the Christian faith. When we talk about freeing people from their locked chains, grace is the key in that lock.

But beyond the grace that God gives that allows us entrance to eternal life when we die, what does grace look like in the everyday life of the Christian and the Church?

Grace can’t be for the future alone. What does grace look like now?

I confess that I remain unclear on grace for the present. Part of that is because I see the American Church continuing to add to people’s burdens. The great hope of the Christian faith that we we used to sing about in our old hymns was how grace allowed us to lay our burdens down. But today, I wonder if what we do is substitute a different set of burdens. What grace is there for the mom who is juggling four young kids and a job and yet her pastor says she’s not doing enough for the Kingdom because she can’t find a way to squeeze in teaching Sunday School or going out to feed the poor?

Jesus said this:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
—Matthew 11:28-30 ESV

What does that look like in the life of the average American Christian today? Are we living by grace? Or are we simply finding ways to sanctify burdens?

In addressing another aspect of grace, I wonder what grace today looks like in the lives of Christians who fail. And not just for moral failures but for people who fail in other ways. What grace exist for the student who went to college, found it harder than expected, and dropped out? What grace exists for the person who is bad with household finances? Where is the grace for the businessman who starts his dream business (or dream ministry), only to watch it fail?

One of the strange trends I see in Christian nonfiction books is an over-reliance on stories of success, as if these stories are always reproducible, even if the underlying conditions that made them possible don’t exist elsewhere. More than anything, I’d like to read real stories of real Christians who failed, how they received grace in the aftermath, and how their churches channeled that grace to them. Don’t we all need to know how grace works when we fail in those ways too?

What are your thoughts on grace, its availability, and what it should look like in the everyday life of the Church?

Fallen-through-the-Cracks People and the Church

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Recently, Slate skewered the favored mantra of people who claim business success for themselves and therefore want you to know their secrets: “Do what you love. Love what you do.”

In “In the Name of Love,” Miya Tokumitsu notes how well this works for those chosen few who are not working an assembly line in Kokomo. As for those factory workers, the question of loving what they do looms large.

Not everyone gets a corner office. Sometimes, the destination is the basement mail room.

Nothing makes me ponder the vicissitudes of life more than that person who is one day an active presence in a church and then is gone.

In my own Christian experience, the following example people eventually fall through the cracks of our church programming:

FallingThe family with the unruly special needs child, the kid that hoots and hollers sometimes during a quiet Sunday meeting. That harried mom and dad who got one too many stares one Sunday and then weren’t there the next to receive more.

The guys who didn’t grab the brass ring. Often, they seem to be general workmen, “handymen” as it were. They did the odd job, but didn’t do it often enough. One week they are in church, and the next they are gone.

The divorced, diabetic, unemployed mother with the teenage daughter that can’t seem to stop having illegitimate kids. The whole melange lives in a trailer on the outskirts of town, and they come to church now and then, until they get one too many looks or lectures.

The healthy guy who one day stops being so healthy due to the predations of a chronic illness. He used to sit in that back pew near the windows. One Sunday, he was there, and now he’s not.

The cute single gal who gets the dark thoughts that descend on her at random, when her pretty face becomes a mask, and no one knows just what to say. Whatever happened to her? You remember her, don’t you?

I remember.

I wish I knew what happened to these people and why it may be their presence no longer darkens the nave.

I also wonder if the following is more true of them than of the people they leave behind:

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted…
—2 Timothy 3:12 ESV

We don’t think of the fallen-through-the-cracks people as desiring to live a godly life in Christ Jesus, do we?

But don’t they? In fact, could it be they may have wanted that more than the folks with whom they may have once shared a pew?

Do we think of them as persecuted?

And did we become the persecutors?

There’s a success idol in the Church today. We have our own forms of “do what you love and love what you do.” We find spiritual ways to take our own successes and to project them onto others and ask why that person or persons is not duplicating our achievements. How is it they are still in the basement and not in the corner office? Must be sin in their life. They must be hiding something. Or they’re lazy. Maybe they don’t read their Bible enough.

A group of men had an encounter with a fallen-through-the-cracks person:

As he passed by, [Jesus] saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
—John 9:1-5 ESV

That the works of God might be displayed in the lives of the fallen-through-the-cracks people.

We must work the works of the One who sent us.

Night is coming.

But the Light is still here. For now. Among us. In us.

Sadly, some of us are the ones doing the pushing that results in the fall through the cracks for someone else, someone who desperately didn’t want to fall. We must stop making the problem worse.

Instead, our task is to grab onto falling people and set them on their feet again.