Car Wash Christianity

Yesterday was a rare day where I live. The temperature finally climbed above freezing and the sun came out. Days like this have been few and far between this winter. When they come every car owner knows it's time to get the salt washed off their vehicles and I was ready to get that done yesterday.


So I had a choice to make - take $7 and join the long line at the local car wash, or get the bucket and sponge out and clean our van myself by hand. The car wash wins that contest many times for most of us. It's faster and more convenient to just some money in a machine and just sit there and wait while it cleans the car. The only problem is, no matter how good the car wash it isn't really going to get the car clean, it's just going to rinse of most of the dirt. Honest car owners know that in order to get your vehicle really clean you have to do it by hand - you have to get a little wet and dirty and actually put your hands on it to get all of the dirt of. Sure there are car washes that have giant brushes or floppy clothes hanging down, but all they do is scratch the polish off. No, if you really want your car to be clean and look it's best, you have to wash it by hand.


So I decided to take the extra time and I washed the van by hand. I admit that my decision wasn't based so much on getting the van as clean as possible as it was based on saving the $7!


As I washed the van by hand I was thinking about the Christian life that God has called us to. I thought about the people that He leads us to, people that need our help because they have made a mess of their lives. Too many times in too many churches we are looking for the $7 car wash solutions to these people and their problems. We want to fix them quickly because their mess makes us uncomfortable. So we give them a quick spiritual answer and a token prayer and hope it is enough. But just like your car that is covered in the dirt of the road, if we are really going to help people, really help them to clean up the mess in their life, it is going to take time and we are going to have to lay our hands on them, put our arms around them and not look for the quick or easy way out.


When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them.  Luke 4:40


I love the picture scripture paints for us here of the daily ministry of the life of Christ. He had only three years to teach his disciples all he could, to prepare them to build the church, he had so much to accomplish but yet we see him here (and in many other places) taking the time to listen to the needs of the people he came across. He didn't just listen, he didn't just pray for them, he laid his hands on them - he touched their lives physically and spiritually. Note that he didn't just stand on a balcony somewhere and bless everyone at once, he took time with them one at a time.


If we are going to be the Church the Jesus wants us to be, to really love and care for people, then we must slow down a little - we must take the time to really see people in their needs and then minister to those needs for as long as it takes. No quick fixes. No easy answers. It's going to be messy and we might get a little dirty along the way, but the truth is that this is the only way to really help people.

From the Outside In

I have been active in church for all of my adult life (and I was pretty active as a teenager too!). I have been an active member, Associate Pastor, Assistant Pastor, Youth Pastor, Senior Pastor, and almost everything else in between. For the past few months I have found myself in a the very unfamiliar position of being on the outside of the church looking in. In August of 2010 I resigned from the church I had pastored for over 9 years as the Lord took my life and ministry in a different direction.

In the time since then I have been attending church but have not really been involved in anything more that just attending a Sunday service. This time away from active involvement in church has given me a whole new perspective - a chance to see the church from the outside in. My eyes have been opened to many things that I either did not see or chose not to see in the church at large.

So this little blog is going to be about some of the lessons I have learned during this time of changed perspective, and a chance to confess that in many cases I was a part of the problems that I can now see.

Let me be clear, I love the church! I am committed to the idea of the local church and I so much look forward to being active in church again very soon. The things I post here may be critical of how things work in churches sometimes, but I write not from a place of criticism or cynicism, but rather out of the love I have for the Body of Christ and the desire to see us become the Bride that Christ is waiting for.

I would love your feedback on anything I write, even if you don't agree, just post your comments and let's have an honest discussion about how we can do church better.

Where Has All The Love Gone?

This blog is something of a personal confession. 

I have been involved in ministry within the church in various capacities for all of my adult life. Since the age of 21 there has not been a time (until recently) that I have not been actively involved in a local church to some degree. For some seasons I was just a volunteer helping where and when I could. In other times I have been a pastor, youth pastor, and associate pastor.

I love the local church and that is why I have devoted so much of my life to it, and I fully expect that service in a local church setting will be the norm for as long as I am on this earth. I believe it was the reason God created me - to help take care of people and work to grow the church and see the Bride of Christ prepared for His return.

My history and involvement is what makes me so defensive when people say negative things about the church, but I have to admit that the past few months have given me a new perspective on church and I can see that some of the criticism  is valid. You see for the past 5 months I have been in a position that is very unfamiliar and uncomfortable for me when it comes to church - on the outside looking in. Even though I still attend church I am only attending, not involved in any ministry. This "outside in" perspective has helped me to see the church in a new way and forced me to be honest about the shortcomings of the church and my own inability to address them.

One area that I have been thinking about recently is our ability (our = the church) to deal with people who struggle with sin in a loving way instead of through judgement and avoidance. The fear in loving people who sin (in ways we consider to be more serious than our own everyday sin) is that our love will be confused with acceptance as if we condone their sin. But in our inability to really love people, all people, we end up driving away the people who really need help as if we want only to fill the church with people who don't have too many problems. The problem is, that is not our job, nor the real function of a successful church.

In thinking about how I can do a better job of loving people I have focused on two things: First of all is the way that Jesus loved people, and secondly is to understand my role in the process of God's work on someone else's sin.

When I read the accounts of Jesus' life on earth it is easy to see that he had an amazing ability to love people but deal with their sin at the same time. He did not avoid them but rather reached out to them because he loved them. His love saw through the sin to the pain it caused and when he challenged them to live better lives it was because he wanted to ease that pain. I love how he was never afraid to deal with a person in sin, even if they were not ready to deal with their own sin. He did it all in love, and his love reached them when the "religious" people around them had forsaken them.

Understanding how Jesus dealt with people has helped me to learn how to love people more. Understanding his role in dealing with their sin has helped me to understand mine.

When we choose to withhold love from someone who has sinned, not wanting to appear as though we condone their actions, we are confused about our role in dealing with their sin. It is as if we see ourselves as the ones who must pass judgement on them and hand out the consequences for their actions. It sounds silly now that I write it down, but it is so true and I know I have been guilty of that exact thing many times. I know I have avoided people, judged them, and not loved them all because of their sin as if any of that was my job.

When we are cautious when dealing with people who have sinned is it because we are worried that we will be guilty by association? When we avoid them is it because we think they deserve to be sunned for a while because of their actions, or is it because we just don't know how to love them in the middle of the mess their sin has created? And what is the real risk in reaching out in love to someone who is hurting because of the mistakes they have made - someone who already feels their guilt and does not need the church to remind them.

As I said this blog is somewhat of a personal confession. I have not loved people enough because I was too cautious and worried that they might confuse my acceptance as approval. The truth is that my role in dealing with people is love and acceptance, God's role is conviction and correction.

If we (the church) would do a better job of really loving people maybe they would stay around long enough to receive the conviction, correction, and healing that God longs to give them.

Where Has All The Love Gone? Addendum

There has been a lot of interest in my last blog dealing with love (or lack of it) within the local church. If you haven't read it yet you should take a minute to read it to give you some background on this entry.

There is something else I want to add to this issue that came to me as I thought over the things I had written:

As I mentioned I have been in ministry within the church all of my adult life, the past 9 of those years were spent as a senior pastor. One thing that often frustrated and saddened me was when people who were dealing with serious issues in their lives would disappear from church while they worked through their issues. I would often remind people that in times of struggle it makes more sense to attend church more not less - to use the time there to press into God and lean on the support of fellow believers. That method of encouragement didn't seem to work too often though.

To be more specific, it wasn't just any kind of struggle that seemed to drive people away from church, it was almost always a personal struggle with some kind of sin. For example, if a person was struggling with loss and grief they would be around more, press into God and lean on the church family for support. But if a person was in a relationship that they knew to be unhealthy or sinful, they would pull back from the church and avoid contact with church friends.

I know that a part of the reason for this withdrawal was the enemy working against them, trying to isolate them so he could defeat them more easily, but I also wonder if a part of the reason had to do with the lack of expressed love in the church.

Think about it - if it is true that the church is failing to really love people especially those who sin in action and/or lifestyle (as I wrote about in my last blog), then when you find yourself in that place would you want to be around the church more or less? Obviously less!

So if this is true, then the only course of action for someone struggling with personal sin, doubt, addictions, etc, is to avoid the judgement of the church until the issue is resolved and they can "clean themselves up" and come back to church. The problem with that is that experience tells me that many of those people never come back to church at all.

These are serious issues that we must be honest with ourselves about if the church is really going to reach hurting people, and if we as Christians are ever going to be able to love people the way Jesus did.

I would love to hear your feedback on all this so leave a comment below or comment on my link on Facebook.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1Cor. 13:4-8a

Where Has All The Love Gone? The Solution

This is the third part of a three part blog in the issue of really loving each other within the context of the local church (take a moment to read through the previous two entries if you haven't already).

Your feedback suggests that my assessment of our ability (or lack of it) to really love each other is on track. I know it is hard to admit this, trust me when I say it was hard for me. I have had to face the reality that I have been part of the problem over the years more that I have been a part of the solution. But we will not get better at loving each other if we are not honest about our need to improve, and if we don't get better at it we will lose a lot more people who are really hurting.

Just as a reminder - we are talking specifically about loving and accepting those who are in sin and/or have made a mess out of our lives because of that sin. These people are absent from church because they feel the judgement of their fellow Christians and see how people pull back from them when they struggle. Many of these people intended to stay away from church only for a little while to "get their lives in order" but they have been gone for years. It's a vicious cycle because we really need the help of the church to overcome our issues, but we fear their rejection so we isolate ourselves only to find that we slip further away from our faith when separated from the church.

We know the problem, but what is the solution? It is tempting to just say that we need to learn how to really love and accept each other, and that is good, but it's not the whole answer. Teaching the church how to be more loving is only like treating the side effect of a problem without dealing with the root cause. You see, I am convinced that the real reason why we fail to love and accept each other so often is because we fail to fully understand just how much we are loved by God.

There is an amazing account in John 8 of a woman who was literally caught in the act of adultery. She was condemned by the religious leaders and brought to trial and used as a pawn in their attempt to trap Jesus in a difficult moral issue. I am so challenged by Jesus' response as he defends the woman against her accusers but still manages to deal with her sin. This is love in action! Jesus refused to treat this woman badly even though she deserved it and the law permitted it, instead he gave her the last thing in the world she was expecting - love and acceptance! Having shown her that love, when he told her to "go and leave her life of sin" that his words had so much more weight to them. It is said that this woman, although unnamed here, did leave her life of sin and started following Jesus from that day on. 

Why is it that too often as Christians instead of acting as Jesus did in this moment, we are the ones holding the stones ready to give the guilty what they deserve? Could it be that we have forgotten all of the times that Jesus came to our defense when we were the guilty ones? Could it be that we have forgotten just how unworthy we have been of the unconditional love of God, and we somehow now believe that we are better than those who sin? Could it be that we have become the Pharisees?

Jesus said: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." (Luke 12:48) That means that all of us who have received the incredible unconditional love of God have a responsibility and a command to offer that same love to those around us. It means that because God loves us so completely even when we sin and make a mess of our lives, we can do no less than love others who sin and fail and do all the things we have convinced ourselves we are no longer guilty of.

Friends there is so much at stake here, there are so many people missing from the church because they fear our judgement - the feel like the woman did being brought before the religious leaders to receive her punishment when they come into our services. They feel that way because we have treated them that way. We must change for their sake and our own. We must never forget how much we are loved by God, and allow that truth to change how we love and accept those who fail.

If we can do this, we will become the church that Christ  would have us be, a true representation of his love in action in this world!