Community

What the Church Is Not Learning

Standard

Carnage is the best word to describe what is happening in New Orleans. I pray the Church in this country is watching. What we are seeing may very well be the future, although on a scale restricted to one city in this country. Should more cities than one be involved in a more catastrophic event many days from now, it won't be pretty.

This is not a happy post. People may never want to come back here again after reading this, but I feel compelled to write.

I don't consider Jerry Falwell a spokesman for American Christianity. I want to say that up front. But on 9/11 he commented that perhaps what happened in New York that day was the judgment of God against America's sin. After being shouted down by a protest spearheaded by other Christians, Falwell was forced to retract that statement.

After hearing Falwell's comment, rather than immediately taking sides on it, I thought about it for a long time. Though I never did come to a firm position on what he said, Hurricane Katrinawhat shocked me was that so few people were even willing to consider for a brief moment that what Falwell said might be true.

Now we have a monstrous hurricane decimating a city known for it profligacy and overt sensuality. We have the gambling centers of Mississippi washed out into the Gulf. A couple folks have proffered the same reasoning as Falwell for the wreckage of New Orleans and Biloxi, but once again no one is listening.

Again, I don't have the perfect answer here. Judgment of God or not? I'm still pondering that. What troubles me is that so few Christians are willing to entertain for a second the possibility that Katrina is Wake-up Call #2.

Why does this trouble us so thoroughly that we relegate this possibility to the dumpster so quickly? Can we take a day to ponder this before we say that this is not the judgment of God against this nation? If it's not, then we move on. But what if it is?

The Church here has something to learn through all this. If we cannot discern the judgment of God, a judgment His righteous people easily saw in our Scriptural examples, what does that say about the American Church today?

The images and stories coming out of the Gulf are shocking. They so clearly show the utter depravity of Man that I can't see how we can be the same country after this. All the bravery that we hailed in New York almost four years ago has been swept away. The courageous stories of Katrina are buried in the rubble of vice and sin we see paraded on our TV screens.

What unnerves me about this is that the Church here does not understand that what we are seeing and hearing in New Orleans is far closer to the truth about Man than some are willing to admit. Worst of all, the events in Louisiana only prove that we as a Church are not prepared.

How are we unprepared? Look at the ripples this Gulf event is creating through all the strata that make up this experiment called America. The glaring weaknesses in our government, our energy reserves, our food and water supplies, and most of all, our souls, are on display for all to see. I read today that the area that makes up the most afflicted parts of the Gulf contributes a little less than two percent to the American economy. What if five or ten percent had been affected? Would total chaos reign nationwide?

It saddens me that the Church is largely unprepared to meet a major meltdown in America. We are not planning for a day when times get brutal. In truth, we act as if bad days will never come, the veritable grasshopper to the ant. Only in this story, there appear to be no ants.

He answered them, "When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
—Matthew 16:2-3 ESV

Church, should we not be the ones who interpret the signs of the times? Have we filled our lamps with oil or have the reserves gone out?

Did we learn anything from 9/11?
Did we learn anything from the prolonged recession from 2000-2004?
Are we going to learn anything from the aftermath of Katrina?

From what I can see, we ignorantly go on, blithely brushing it all aside. What else can explain the fact that we have not changed our course?

Just the other day I read that the underground Church in China is praying that persecution will come to America so revival will break out here. While I don't exactly side with that way of thinking, are we prepared if God answers the prayers of the persecuted Church in China?

I don't want the Church here to learn the hard way, but it looks as if we need a more catastrophic event to wake us from our slumber. God help us all should that catastrophe come and we are unprepared.

The Little Things: Homes & Churches That Say, “Keep Out!”

Standard

Michael did particularly well in the Internet boom. He and Linda bought a large home as a result of that success. But that home was never just theirs alone; that home belonged to their church—and to anyone else who wanted to drop by. And there was always someone dropping by.

My wife and I had the pleasure of hanging out at Michael and Linda's place. We witnessed some baptisms in their pool, ate several dinners there, and I weekly practiced our worship music in their basement. Magnifying GlassWhen they learned we would be moving away, Michael and Linda sent us off by taking their time to make us Cincinnati-style chili from scratch. Nice touch.

Michael and Linda are the epitome of hospitality. Their home is open to anyone because they understand that God has a heart for sojourners and those who need a place to lay their heads. Michael and Linda are our inspiration.

It doesn't take a protracted examination of our American society to see that we have fostered a culture of desert islands upon which a family here and a single there and an elderly couple over there float in the same social ocean, but have virtually no real contact. With civilization itself based on a foundation of strong social ties, we seem to be heading for a collapse of that civilization if we do not restore the broken-down relational machinery God built into us.

Last year, as I was trying to understand the whole Emergent thing, I picked up a book by Joe Myers called A Search to Belong. This book was getting great press within Emergent ranks, so I read it and promptly felt my stomach sink. One particular passage flat-out made me seethe. Myers insisted that it was too much for some people to enter another person's home and that we should not expect people to want to do this.

Now I'm no expert on sociology, but the bigger question has to be, What happened to hospitality that we've bred people who suffer fits of anxiety should they have to come to someone else's house?

Church, what happened to hospitality?

Do we no longer practice it because

  • It takes too much time?
  • We have too many expensive things in our homes that can break?
  • It costs too much money to be hospitable?
  • We have no physical energy reserves that we can use to make others feel connected?
  • We don't like our space being invaded by others?
  • People, in general, give us a rash?
  • We're too busy shoring up our own nuclear family?

I wonder if the problem stems from this passage:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
—1 Peter 4:8-9 ESV

Maybe we are trapped in that sinful no man's land where if we did practice hospitality, we'd grumble about it—grumbling's a sin, right? Better to not grumble by not having anything to do with hospitality and then everything's okay. Who can say?

I remember my parents entertaining people at our family home all the time. They went to other people's houses all the time. But as I look around, I get the discouraging sense that this idea is passing away with that generation. I hope that isn't the case, but it's what I see.

You would hope that the Church would do a better job of this, but I find that hospitality is as commonly practiced by people who don't know the Lord as those who do. I'm just as likely to hear of someone who acts like the devil's compadre but who lets his buddies crash at his place as much as I hear that Christians welcome even their own kind into their homes.

And what is the point of having greeters at a Church? They have greeters at Wal-Mart, but that doesn't make me feel loved by Sam Walton's megacorporation. Sure, it feels nice to have someone shake your hand, but if it goes no further than that, what's the point? Too often the onus is on people visiting a church to reach out to the church members rather than it being the other way around. Shouldn't we be the ones to note the visitors—or in our own fractured relational world within our churches can we not tell the regulars from the visitors? And if you consider Myer's comment, if folks get a nervous tic thinking about going into someone else's home, what does it mean for them to go into their church—and then have to be the one who makes small talk?

Even before we met Michael and Linda, my wife and I decided that we would be the ones who sought to bring people together and show others hospitality. We've tried very hard at this, but the results have been middling. As much as we want to be hospitable, we sometimes wonder if people want to receive that hospitality. Perhaps Joe Myers is right. We may have reached a place where being in another's home is too much of a freak-out for too many people. Maybe the failure of people to practice hospitality has spawned a generation unable to not only practice it, but receive it as well.

But we will not stop being hospitable.

As for our churches, we should identify the people who are blessed with the gift of hospitality and underwrite them. Huh, you say? Well, what if we designated church funds for use by the most hospitable people in our churches to locate the new people every Sunday, then offer to take them out to a local restaurant for lunch after the meeting? The church could pick up the visitor's tab. Those same hospitable people could have visitors over to their own home later (regardless of what Myers says.) Wouldn't that be more effective to reaching out to others than what we are doing now? If the Church is not overflowing with the grace that pours out through hospitality, then where will people see it practiced?

What if the hospitality of early Christians was one of the very things that set them off from the people around them, the practice of hospitality being the very aroma of heaven to the lost and perishing?

Do we really believe this verse?

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
—Hebrews 13:2 ESV

Or don't we? How many individual and corporate blessings have we missed because we failed to be hospitable in our homes and churches?

Remember, we are awaiting a heavenly dinner party called "The Marriage Supper of the Lamb." If we're not emulating that idea this side of heaven, will we appreciate that Supper when we finally sit down for it?

Some things you can do to practice hospitality:

At home

  • Pray that God would fill you with love for other people and with hospitality
  • Let other people know you have an open home
  • Let your children know that you have an open home
  • Invite all your neighbors over for a backyard BBQ
  • Periodically invite one neighbor family over to your house for a 1:1 time
  • Invite people from your church over who would not get invited elsewhere
  • If you are worried about a dirty house, pay a responsible young person in the neighborhood or your church to help you clean before and after get-togethers
  • Host church events at your home
  • Take a cooking or entertaining class
  • Teach a cooking or entertaining class in your home
  • Cook for neighbors and church members when they are sick or overwhelmed
  • Remember that you need no reason to have people over

At church

  • Pray that God would fill your church with love for other people and with hospitality
  • Identify the most welcoming and hospitable people in your church and work with them to develop that gift
  • When visitors come:
  •  
    • Make certain your hospitality folks identify them and offer to sit with them
    • Offer to take them out to lunch—on the church's tab—after the service
    • Don't put the onus on visitors to identify themselves, but put that on the hospitality team to identify visitors
    • Hospitality team should offer to have them over for a home cooked meal (pastors should consider this also!)

If we worked harder at this little thing, I believe we would go a long way to strengthening families, couples, singles, churches, and neighborhoods for the Lord.

Trying to Get By

Standard

This evening I was struck again by a thought that comes my way about once a month. It’s not a provocative thought. It may not be worthy of a post. But I think there’s some truth in it that we needHomeless to consider before we set the barrels of our collective Gatling guns on “blazing” mode.

Most people are just trying to get by.

It’s easy to paint great swaths of humanity with a specific color of sin that’s apparent to us. I know I do it with relative ease. As Christians, it’s almost second nature for us to scrutinize some group of people and candidly tell others exactly what that group’s besetting sin is. We’ve got it down to an art form.

Americans get painted with plenty of those wide brushes, especially by other Americans. We’re greedy, materialistic, the-world-revolves-around-us kind of people. We’re loud, stage-hogging, patriotic zealots who drive insensitive gas-chugging vehicles. And we’re fat, too. See how easy those labels come? How many of the seven deadly sins did I just name? I lost track.

I like to watch people. As a writer, people are my domain. Restaurants are an essential place for this. Just last week I witnessed a family that consisted of a young dad and mom that had three girls and a boy. The dad was dressed in a mechanic’s uniform, while mom wore one of those unfortunate summer outfits that heightens the very things she wished no one noticed about her. The three girls had nine months of spacing between each of them, bam, bam, bam.

But then there was the boy. He was probably fourteen, at least eight years older than the next-oldest child. You could almost envision mom and dad as sixteen-year olds finding out they had a male heir on the way. Years of struggle put off any chance of having more children, but when times got modestly better for a season they came one after another. The boy looked just like his dad and has a shared destiny, knowing how those things go. The girls mirrored mom, each unique from the other, yet all their mother’s daughters.

I watched how they interacted. Obviously drained, the parents poked at their food and exchanged few words, parenting relegated to the older boy in that moment. The girls were all bright smiles. Still, you could tell they were just getting by.

No one wakes up in the morning and contemplates how they’ll be materialistic. The CEO of the company wants to get his kids into the best school possible—and so does the company’s janitor. The brazenly loaded patron of the arts shops at Wal-Mart, intent on a good value, just like the starving artist. The dad looking for a birthday present for his son wants to get something that will put a big smile on the little chip’s face, not thinking he could feed ten Sudanese kids for a year with the amount of cash he’s going to drop. Meanwhile, mom isn’t considering how the birthday party’s wake will result in sixty pounds of trash. And a worn set of young parents of four kids is deliberating whatever blow tomorrow will bring, worry carving gouges in their faces.

You can say what you will about any of these people. All of them are trying to get by using whatever means seems best. All them will die some day. Some are destined for glory and some destined for the second death.

I aspire to great things, but when it comes down to it, I’m just trying to get by, too. My eternal hope is that I’m always plugged into the Lord and that nothing I do is outside His perfect will for my life. I also know that I fail miserably in that regard as I suspect that most people, Christian or not, do. Life is hard whether you’re surrendered or not.

When [Jesus] went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.
—Mark 6:34 ESV

Some people feel compassion for dumb animals, but not for their fellow man. Those folks confound me—and not in a good way. I hope that my view is like the Lord’s. People are just trying to get by, but what confusion attends them!

If it’s hard for the righteous to live daily in the world, how much harder is it for the lost? Is it just me or are we tougher on them in the midst of their clouded existence than we are on ourselves, we who know the Truth and yet still have a difficult time of life? Despite the fact that we’ve already been taught many things, most of us do a terrible job of incorporating that teaching into our day to day reality. What should we expect of those who have no such teaching?

This is not a post about excuses. No one has an excuse before God. If our stories were all that important, then salvation would be like the old TV show, “Queen for a Day,” wherein the biggest sob story wins a pedicure and the washer and dryer set.

Yet grace is still present. Are we dispensing it? Are we making it any easier for people, both lost and found, to make it to the finish line? Are we helping the persevering saints become more than conquerers or have we forgotten them in our own attempts to muddle through? And what about those additional burdens that we so easily load on the backs of people already struggling? Do only the strong survive?

God, help us.