(Yes, if you smell something weird, it’s because there is a nearly sardonic mood here today. I snapped this photo myself last night.)
Imagine this Potential Backstory:
Are you ready for a spiritual reawakening? A kind of rebirth? A cleansing in your spirit?
NOT SO FAST. WE’LL HAVE OUR EYE ON YOU. So-WATCH your back, Slacker!
Maybe you’re thinking… “Lots of family members will arrive for a big dinner at 1:00 pm. Will there be time to do it all?”
Today started out rough. It involved seeing my son’s breakfast, before and after it was consumed. The poor boy’s tummy was upset. Sometimes I forget about using this common remedy I have in my refrigerator. I keep it for times such as these. Sure there’s Pepto Bismol, Tums, Gravol people use as over-the-counter medicinal aids, but I have found nothing works better than a few ounces of flat ginger ale. It worked wonderfully this time too. It’s not magical, it’s the ginger.
Now, suppose I wanted everyone to save money, and time, and feel better sooner, like my family and I have, but instead of telling them my experience, and the reasoning behind the remedy, I would first try a tactic to soften them up. Have you noticed this sort of thing used for Christianity?
Maybe asking them reasonable questions would get them to think about the whole thing themselves, and it wouldn’t seem like I was actually trying to shove my beliefs down their throat. I won’t but let’s suppose I would say to them,
“As a human, you would agree that all humans have tummy aches at some point in their lives, right?
The unsuspecting, pre-convert would then reply something like, “Um, what? Um, yeah, I guess, sure.”
Then I could say, “Did you know that you will 100% lose more money, and be more sick without using ginger ale to fix your tummy aches and vomiting?”
They maybe would say, “Um, no. But I’ve never used ginger ale before, and I’m not sure it’ll work for me.”
Maybe then I would say, “Since you haven’t tried it, you really can’t say that. Would you rather risk it, and throw up for days?”
And they might respond, “Well, I’m just not sure if I can see it your way.”
And I would say, “Listen, you have to take that first step of faith. You have to say you’ll commit to ginger ale. You have to trust it will help you. And then you have to take the steps to implement that into your life. You have to be prepared, because you never know when violent illness will spring on you. It usually comes like a thief in the night! Sounds scary doesn’t it?”
They might say, “Well, I don’t want that to happen.”
(me) “Well, it might happen that way. In fact, it’s an absolute certainty, you will, one day, get very ill.”
(them) “Oh. I never thought of it like that.”
(me) “It is an urgent matter. Would you like to commit, right now, to accepting ginger ale as your stomach’s own personal savior?
I don’t evangelize any good news this way.
I just tell the truth, and share my experience. I don’t try a tactic, trick of technique to corner my prey, I mean, listener. I don’t simply because, anything I really love and enjoy I talk about anyway. It’s not fake. It’s not a sales pitch. It’s not a way to get people to do what I do, or believe what I believe. What they wish to believe is in their control. Besides, I personally can’t stand being manipulated, so why would I subject anyone to that?
What witnessing or evangelism follies have you seen or had tried on you?
The Spirit of Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to preach the good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
-Lk. 4:18-19
When I first saw this video below, I cried. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4]
It showed me the power of offering connection and love. The largely untapped, healing power of embrace–which connotes acceptance–seems to be too absent today. The distance between us grows, even though technology has supposedly drawn us together.
Luke 15:20 “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.”
If you would, please response here, and explain your feelings about embrace, or any reactions you had to this post, the video, or the artwork. Thank you.
An idea for plumbing deeper:
Your challenge-
Bring these pictures to mind the next time you pray, and speak about them to God, honestly. If you have fears, joy, sorrow, gratitude, or other feelings, express them, using this theme as a vehicle to interact in your next intimate time with the Lover of your soul.
1. You find yourself thinking up illnesses that would suffice for excuses for staying home. Sometimes you even invent names like Snufflititus or Schnozatigo: The serious redness and inflammation of the area beneath the nose from too much tissue rubbing. Rx Coffee, remote control, rest, snacks, and tissues with lotion built-in.
2. You suddenly realize how cool, smart, and savvy the early Sunday morning tv shows are, and feel like you might be getting a raw deal but missing them.
3. You feel deeply offended that your church doesn’t care too much that the coffee offered tastes something like armpit, and you start to identify this characteristic with an inherent spiritual problem of your congregation. (perhaps the misusing of the gift of hospitality)
4. You start to pick apart the pastor’s sermon with a graph, and two columns of hatch marks on your church bulletin, adding up the times he is substituting a self-aggrandizing story instead of using a true parable to teach a point.
5. You find getting tapped for nursery duty a welcomed relief, because you won’t really have to talk to anybody, watch a worship performance you won’t enjoy, or try to not yawn an ungodly amount of times as you try to get through a sermon the pastor must have downloaded from somewhere late Saturday night.
Okay, this was a purposefully whacky list. If you can relate to any of these internal excuses, signs, or avoidance qualities, in some sort of way, then maybe the experience of attending church has grown stale.
It’s normal to have spiritual slumps. It can’t be wise to think of walking with God as a continual emotional high, and when it’s not experienced as such, something is horribly wrong. Like any journey, there will be hills and valleys. Faithfulness demonstrated as a choice done continually, (rather than a feeling-based action) can really see us through times like this. God is always with us, whether we “feel” him or not.
However, I’ll make a different point. There is also a tendency to fall into a consumer mindset, and feel like church-going is like shopping, and picking out something you like. We probably all do it, to an extent. Have you ever walked out of the service on Sunday thinking, “That wasn’t really what I was hoping for,”? Yep. Unmet expectations are common. But, it doesn’t have to wreck the whole bit of it.
Church doesn’t have to delight us every time, and soothe us. Most times it won’t feed us, not in the deep ways we crave. Those times are often found in community that can plumb to greater depths, and do the harder work, but build the stronger bonds that make genuine growth possible. (Think small groups, or spiritual directors, spiritual mentors, and discipleship situations.)
Church isn’t just some way to get recharged for your week, and be poured into. But, have you noticed how easy it is to slip into that bare minimum, and consumerist outlook of it? I have. I’ve been guilty of it way too much.
It’s not about just an experience, nor is it just meant for worshiping God with others. We worship God all the time, whether we do it poorly and unawares, or we tune in and give him our whole selves. We are his creation, our lives lived are a form of worship, like it or not.
Church-going, and the whole of the spiritual walk, are about applying the gospel to our lives in every circumstance and situation, the whole way through. God’s grace and love came down. He draws us to him. He restores. It seems we co-opt and yield to his mighty, gracious work to changing us radically, to be more like him.
Sometimes it just comes down to sucking it up. Sometimes it means you have to change, not your local church.
Have you ever been burned out on church, like I have, at one time or another? What helped you?
Leave any kinds of comments you’d like.
