From the Pastor’s Heart

I recently read about a conversation a woman had with a street minister. I found it alarming and eye opening. “A street minister in Chicago tells the story of a young mother who came to his homeless shelter. She was sick, frightened, racked by guilt and despair and with tears streaming down her face she told her story of drug addiction, prostitution and how she had abused and endangered her two-year-old. Revolted by her degrading story, the street minister was silent. Finally he asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. ‘I will never forget the look of pure astonishment that crossed her face,’ he writes. ‘Church!’ She cried, ‘why would I ever go there? They’d just make me feel worse than I already do?’”

Troubling, isn’t it? I think her question is a question every church should ask and ask frequently…WHY WOULD I EVER GO THERE?

God never intended his boundaries to be less than the whole world. Whenever we look down on someone different than we are, or when we snicker at someone’s misfortune, or when we say, “Thank you, Lord, that I am not like them,” or when we say, “It’s too bad they do not believe as we believe,” we miss what it means to be the church. Sometimes it seems as if many of the people who fill church pews each Sunday have missed the whole meaning of what Christ was about? WHY WOULD I EVER GO THERE?

Richard Fairchild tells about a man living in the Appalachian area during the Depression, who went to Knoxville for the first time to transact some business. While there he saw a refrigerator that made ice. Since it was Summer, he thought it was a miracle of God. When he returned to his hometown in the mountains, his church was in the midst of a revival service. He arrived at the service during the time when people were giving testimonies. He told of the miracle of seeing ice made in the midst of summer. Well, a dispute broke out. Many claimed that there was no such thing. Others wanted to believe him. It resulted in a schism within the church. Many left the church to form a new church. Its name, to this very day, is “No Ice in The Summer Southern Baptist Church.” People can be petty, can’t they? We have all witnessed it, if not a victim of it. WHY WOULD I EVER GO THERE?

Sometimes the church doesn’t understand how to go about sharing the good news. It’s like the woman who read that dogs were healthier if fed a tablespoon of cod liver oil each day. So each day she followed the same routine—she chased her dog until she caught it, wrestled it down, and managed to force cod liver oil down the dog’s throat. Until one day when, in the middle of this grueling medicinal effort, the bottle was kicked over. With a sigh, she loosened her grip on the dog so she could wipe up the mess—only to watch the dog trot to the puddle and begin lapping it up. The dog loved cod liver oil! It was just the owner’s method of application the dog objected to. WHY WOULD I EVER GO THERE?

Even when we are in mission, we sometimes convey the wrong message or engage in mission for all the wrong reasons. A teen-aged boy informed his father of a wonderful activity that they were going to do at his church’s youth group. They were going to hand out blankets to the homeless. This was in Cleveland, Ohio where we know warmth is a necessity during the ruthless northeast winters. The young man exclaimed with fervor, “We’re passing out blankets so that we can tell them about Jesus!” His father, simply and with certainty, corrected him. He explained, “We don’t give blankets to the homeless to tell them about Jesus. We give them blankets because they are cold.” Do we understand the difference? If we are motivated by the idea that we’re going to make our church a bigger church, then our witness will ring false. If, on the other hand, we are motivated simply by the desire to transmit the love we have received from Jesus, then the world will gladly receive us. WHY WOULD I EVER GO THERE?

I appreciate the story from the Baptist tradition that rings true for all that wish to be the CHURCH. A young man was converted to Christ during his senior year in high school. Here is his story in his own words:
“I was a fresh, eager Christian, so when Tony Campolo came to our town to speak, I went to hear him. He was great! After he spoke, he asked us to sign up for his program of inner-city ministry in Philadelphia that Summer. So I did.

Well, in mid-June, I met about a hundred other kids in a Baptist church in Philadelphia. We had about an hour of singing before Dr. Campolo arrived. When he got to the church, we were really worked up, all enthusiastic and ready to go. Dr. Campolo then preached for about an hour, and when he finished people were shouting and standing on the pews and clapping. It was great! ‘OK gang, are you ready to go out there and tell’em about Jesus?’ Dr. Campolo asked. ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ we shouted back. ‘Get on the bus!’ Tony shouted. So we spilled out of the church onto the bus. We were singing and clapping. But then we began to drive deeper into the depths of the city. We weren’t in a great neighborhood when we started, but it got worse. Gradually, we stopped singing, and all of us kids were just staring out the windows. We were scared. Then the bus pulled up before one of the worst looking housing projects in Philadelphia. Tony jumped on the bus and said, ‘All right gang, go out there and tell’em about Jesus. I’ll be back at five o’clock.’

We made our way off the bus hesitantly. We stood there on the corner and had a prayer, and then we spread out. I walked down the sidewalk and stopped before a huge tenement house. I gulped, said a prayer, and ventured inside. There was a terrible odor. Windows were broken out, no lights in the hall. I walked up one flight of stairs and toward a door, where I heard a baby crying. I knocked on the door. ‘Who is it?’ said a loud voice inside. Then the door cracked open, and a woman holding a naked baby peered out at me. ‘What do you want?’ she asked in a rather mean voice. I told her that I wanted to tell her about Jesus. With that, she swung the door open and began cursing me. She cursed me all the way down the hall, down the steps, and out to the sidewalk.

I felt terrible. ‘Look at me,’ I said to myself. ‘Some Mr. Christian I am. How in the world could somebody like me think that I could tell people about Jesus?” I sat down on the curb and cried. Then I looked up and noticed a store on the corner, windows all boarded up, bars over the door. I went to the store, walked in, and looked around. Then I remembered: the baby had no diapers and the mother was smoking. I bought a box of pampers and a pack of cigarettes.

I walked back to the tenement house, said another prayer, walked in and up the flight of stairs, gulped, stood before the door and knocked. ‘Who is it?’ growled the voice inside. When she opened the door, I slid the box of diapers and the cigarettes in. She looked at them, then looked at me, and said, ‘Come in.’ I stepped into the dingy apartment. ‘Sit down!’ she commanded. I sat down on the old sofa and began to play with the baby. I put a diaper on the baby, even though I had never put a diaper on a baby before in my life. When the woman offered me a cigarette, even though I don’t smoke, I smoked. I stayed there all afternoon talking, playing with the baby, and listening to the woman. About four 0’clock, the woman looked at me and said, ‘Let me ask you something. What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this? So I told her everything I knew about Jesus. It took me about five minutes. Then she said, ‘Pray for me and my baby, that we can make it out of here alive.’ And I prayed.

That afternoon, after we were all back on the bus, Tony asked, ‘Well, gang, did any of you get to tell’em about Jesus?’ And I said, ‘I not only got to tell’em about Jesus. I met Jesus.’”

Jesus said that his followers can be identified by their love. Not by their clothes, not by their bumper stickers, not by what part of town they live in, but by their love. Our actions are so loud and clear that people can’t hear what we are saying. It’s easy to love in the abstract. Love in action is what the church is about.

WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO GO THERE?

It is my prayer that the day will come when every church will be able to say, “Come, for it is here you will not find judgment, but love. It is here you will be treated as a beloved child of God.

Blessings,

Pastor Russel