**WARNING: LONG POST...make sure you've gone to the bathroom before you start reading.**
After getting back from my vacation a week ago, the euphoria of being 'away' quickly devolved into a pseudo-depression. Though the free time at the beach away from responsibility and routine was nice, the real kicker was that I got to spend a few days with an old friend engaging in 'ministry,' if you will, that felt very free from the baggage and obstacles that plague doing this whole 'church'-thing in Decatur (I don't mean baggage at Crosspoint, but the baggage this whole town lugs around...I'll explain later). Now, it's easy for me to say this since I was only around him and his group for a few days, but I found it refreshing nonetheless.
And more...while on the trip, I read and finished (finally) Radical Reformission, by Mark Driscoll. The book got me fired up, too.
Recharged. Refreshed. Ready to tackle the world.
Then it seemed that the energy quickly got sucked out of me, as I began to confront the reality of ministry in a town like Decatur. (I use the word 'ministry' lightly here to mean simply engaging in the task of connecting people with God and with others...and that my career path is one of ministry by design).
And today, the reality of my ministry (career path) has become even more evident than ever. Especially as the f-word 'Falwell' seems to be the local 'buzzword. Even the people in the Baptist church that I grew up in knew better than to follow this nut. Furthermore, there's a headline on FoxNews where another nut job, Pat Robertson, is urging Americans to take military action to 'kill' Chavez of Venezuela (
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166478,00.html). Holy crap! That's messed up.
What happened to Christians engaged in reaching people for Christ? Why has this simple mission been replaced with political, financial, and building agendas? Good freakin' grief.
So my depression is turning into rage (a righteous one, I hope)...and my rage is turning into determination.
A lot has been said lately about the frightening Fundo-Falwellian-Christianese-'give-baptists-a-bad-name' 'cult' mentality that dominates Decatur. Stuff has also been said recently about the theological divides between those who believe in "once saved, always saved" and those who don't. Likewise, a lot has been said about style, tradition, etc. over the past couple of years. I've even gotten into dialogues (okay...arguments) with people about whether or not the church itself in ANY form is still capable of being the body of Christ in 2005.
It's a mess, indeed. And here I find myself planted...trying to help build a church and a career in the middle of the mess.
Decatur seems - to me - to be completely polarized. Either people are fundamentalist/traditionalistic churchgoers who blindly run TO church, OR they're wounded, yet intelligent people who are running FROM church. Okay, I know that's not just Decatur. In any case, there are those of us in the middle - a remnant, if you will, trying to tell both sides there's still a Gospel...that there's more to church than the ugly portrait that's painted here in this town of 60,000. Yes, this is oversimplified, but if I try to elaborate, I'll burn out a neuron.
Mark Driscoll likened a lot of our churches in our world to 'museums' that spend time trying to maintain the norms and structures of times gone by rather than functioning as relevant and effective bodies of Christ in 2005. If that's true, there may be at least 100+ museums in Decatur. Their purpose seems to be to ban draft beer, keep businesses closed on Sunday, elect conservative Republican officials, and make sure they don't stain themselves with anything that resembles the very culture they claim to care about. And when they do talk about things like mission and reaching people, it's usually only in connection with some building program or some ill-conceived 'crusader' mindset to 'take Decatur for Christ.' Yikes. Still, I have some hope that I'm just overly pessimisstic and some of the churches around here are more than they appear to be on the outside, but if they are here, they're (we're) still being drowned out by the big ones that still are 'museums'.
And the people who finally escape these museums feel so good about getting out, they're - I'm sad to say - happier than many of the people still enduring these corpses of Christ. Free at last! Free at last! How do you connect people with a community (a church), if they're just glad to be rid of it?
Okay, calling churches 'corpses of Christ' is harsh. But the reality of all this is harsh. The fact that there are still good people in these churches is not enough anymore. How's the quote go? "The only thing necessary for the advancement of evil is for good men to do nothing." There's a lot of "nothing" when people would rather sit 'comfy' in their church and ignore the fact that their community is leaving trails of wounded people in its wake. There's a lot of "nothing" when people ignore the needs of the city around them...and refuse to grace the halls of places like The Brick or even Java Jaay's, fearing they'll just pollute their self-righteous self-image. There's a lot of "nothing" when good people try living a dual life of wanton abandon on Friday nights and feigned righteousness on Sunday morning.
The flipside is even harsher. People who escape often abandon God because they had inadvertantly coupled their faith in him with their membership at one of these institutions. And even if they do manage to make it back into a community, I fear many of them will still wrestle with a lingering bitterness and inevitably have a difficult time reacting to church-related things with skepticism...because the joy of being in a community has been sucked out of them...
Where are our prophets? Where are the people standing up in these institutions and warning that this is not of God? Why can't God raise up a Zepheniah who can walk down the aisle of one of these churches while a pregnant single woman is being openly chastized and warn the church at that moment that they've offended God for their self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and apathy and will face judgement if they don't repent?
And, the more I think about this stuff, the angrier I get. The more ominous my task seems. I look at Crosspoint, my church - a church trying to reach people - and I see the struggle between reaching people used to church on Sunday a.m. and reaching people who are sick of church altogether. Stir in a lot of differing opinions on how to make this thing work, mixed with a lingering baggage (everything from open wounds to lingering fundamentalism), and the whole 'ministry' thing becomes incredibly overwhelming. I don't want to build another museum. I also don't want to simply set up a 'counter'-church that establishes its own traditions and paradigms just to be different. At the same time, I'm convicted that we might not reach the Decatur crowd that's escaped church if we still look like a church.
...
But as I hit my breaking point today...I realized that I'm just adding to the complication. At its core, church is so simple. It's simply community. It's simply loving. It's a body of people defined by its love for one another. That's it. No other crap. We're not defined by what we're not, but by what we are...and that's the simple part.
Therefore, in the face of the ominous tide of Decatur's fundamentalism (and the inevitable backlash against it), I'm determined to not let it get to me anymore. To heck with it. I need to simply make sure that I'm following Christ and that I'm treating other people as he would have me treat them. In the end, that's what I'll be held accountable for. In the end, that's what will make a difference in reaching people. I've got to be different to make a difference. (Sad that living a life of loving your neighbor is what qualifies as being 'different', isn't it?). It's as simple as spreading the Good News of the Gospel to people who don't know it...and loving whether they accept it right away or not.
Here's a randomly relevant point:
Sunday, I went to El Portal with friends for lunch after church. A couple of my friends spent a good portion of our mealtime reacting to the sheer number of people in the room that went to their old church. Even the pastor of this church sat just 1 table away. It appeared to me that my friends were suddenly incredibly uncomfortable, as if they felt like dozens of judging eyes were upon them. Given the circumstances that drove my friends away from this institution, I had to empathize with how they felt. As time passed during the meal, I started thinking about how I'd seen this happen over and over again with many of my friends who suddenly found themselves surrounded by old 'cult' peers. Like the time the E encountered a guy who wouldn't even shake his hand because his ears were pierced. Or the time Allison had to face down a group of people ripping on Crosspoint while she graciously attended a Sunday school class at her old church (or something like that). Or the fact that many of my friends still have family connected with the old church, and struggle almost daily with conflict as (maybe even well-meaning) family members doggedly try to convince my friends how wrong they are for being in the church they are now. The stories have become too numerous to recount here.
Fortunately, the meal wound up being uneventful. But it's these moments where the discouragement kicks in full force. When being a resident of Decatur makes you feel like you're a poor heretic caught up in the Spanish Inquisition. Where you feel like the Gospel has been inconceivably lost in a town drowning in religiosity.
But I want to get to a point that I (we) don't care about this anymore. So what if we go to Camino Real and find ourselves surrounded? Forget them and move on. Celebrate the fact that our lives are focused on building a different kind of community...one grounded in love and mission, not tradition and building campaigns. Maybe some of our forms look similar (Sunday a.m. services, worship, and a message), but I pray every day that we - as a people - are at least different in our character and the way we treat others.
Okay...maybe it's easier for me to say this than it is for others. I don't know these people from my friends' past. I'm not from Decatur, so I've not personally been attacked like so many of my friends have. In fact, my church upbringing has been far more positive. Even my disastrous experience at MCC wasn't enough to tear my faith and belief that the church is still relevant apart.
But I do know fully well that I am one of the leaders of a church that's unpopular with some of the other religious pillars in Decatur...the worship leader on what many believe is a bandwagon of people going to hell. (And, honestly, that actually makes me feel good...if we've made them mad, we're probably doing something right).
I know we must avoid the traps that could turn Crosspoint into a museum as well, but at least I know we've got the core right...the whole love thing is in the bone marrow of our church.
And with a little determination, I hope I'll never be just a tour guide in a local museum.
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