Swim harder...

Ever see something that moves your heart with compassion?

I'm mean, truly.

Happens to me once a month or so. Yesterday it happened at the pool. I was there swimming my laps--in full-training mode for my second Olympic Distance Triathlon this summer and I'm bound and determined to improve my time, in fact, one of my 2014 'goals' is to drop the time by 10 minutes, which is near impossible--and was then going to meet my daughters after for some 'swim time with daddy'.

While I was in the pool I didn't notice anything; that's one of the things I like best about swimming laps, the near meditative state that comes with it. It was the 'after' that nearly un-did me.

At the top of the hour, as I stood in the pool waiting for my girls, the disabled babies started coming in. I don't know if it's a designated 'hour' for them or if it just happened that way. One after the other, in came these sweet young things, dragging crippled limbs, hands on walkers, ears plugged, goggles in place, over-large ears sticking out like wings in some cases.

I almost started crying.

Then I saw their parents.

Oh my. See, I'm a parent and I know what 'exhausted' looks like. These parents look like a whole other kind of exhausted. These parents make my exhausted look like a pale, wimpy, miserable misrepresentation of the word. I had to turn away so my tears wouldn't cause a scene.

If you have kids you know what I'm talking about. For nine months you're filled with hope and excitement about this baby who's on its way. You're thrilled about what the future might hold for them. The hope of it seems endless.

Then they're born with legs that don't work or water on the brain or a weak heart or ears that can't hear or eyes that can't see.

Dear Jesus.

The thought of their dreams crashing down, and of the season that must have followed where they had to re-evaluate the entirety of what they thought their life was going to be. It's enough to make you sick, repentant, and move you to compassion.

Hail to their perseverance! Hail to their toughness! Hail to their determination to build a life in the midst of difficulty. Hail to the fact that they're on their feet bringing their 'broken' babies to swim class! And--God help me to never laze another day away--HAIL to the babies themselves who were KILLING it in swim class, jumping and swimming and dunking their faces in the water and learning their strokes!

Todd, your life is not difficult.

Reader, yours probably 'aint as bad as you thought, either.

Hail, HAIL to those parents and their babies who taught me a lesson yesterday!

Swim harder.

T

What kind of 'BE' are you?

So, closing a church officially sucks.

Not that we didn't know this. Truth is, we knew it would suck so bad that we took a few months to get up our courage to do what needed doing.

We've been reaping the whirlwind ever since in more ways than one. I won't go into the more painful aspects 'cause really (unless you're a church planter) who cares?

But, there's an aspect of it that I CAN and WILL go into, 'cause it's interesting.

Church hopping.

Sucks, right?

Totally.

So, we've been here before. Last time (2008/2009) it led to us planting a church 'cause we just couldn't find a church that felt like it was 'home' for us. This time we're not about to plant another church 'cause, dang, but didn't we just TRY that?

:)

So, our wandering has had to persist.

I'm not going to take the time to critique each of the places we've visited 'cause that would be unkind, uncouth, and un-called for. But, I CAN share an insight that hit me a few Sunday's ago without offending anyone.

(I hope)

Here it is.

I think that every church, or movement of churches, has a 'BE' statement at the core of their identity, as in; they believe you should BE a certain way as a result of being part of their Church.

Get it? They're looking for a certain 'result' that will give them an indication that they're doing their job. Thing is, that result looks different across different churches and, perhaps most importantly in terms of helping you find the right place for you and your family, most churches are going to be mostly filled with people who (even subconsciously) highly value (or great prize) that same 'result' as a sign of burgeoning godliness.

So, here are some of the ones I've experienced so far:

The 'BE GOOD' Church...

This church is very interested in you (you guessed it) being GOOD. You'll know this is the case because every time someone gets up to speak to the congregation (in between songs, during announcements, in the sermon, sometimes in the ministry time) the speaker will lace their comments (almost unintentionally) with little tricks or hints on how NOT to DO 'bad things'. These bad things can be things like dancing, or drinking, or smoking, or wearing polka-dots, I dunno'. It'll look different from place to place but, bottom line, if you're in a 'BE GOOD' church they're going to determine their effectiveness in pastoring you and, by extension, your development into godliness, based on how many 'bad things' they can get you to stop doing and how many 'good things' they can get you to DO. Also (be warned) the 'BE GOOD' church will be FULL of people who also want to BE GOOD. These will usually be fairly 'rule following', 'hard working', 'minivan-driving' non $hit-disturbing type people. If that's you, you'll LOVE the 'BE GOOD' church. If, on the other hand, you like throwing dance parties at your house where people pop out onto the deck for a smoke with a brewskie in hand while wearing a polka-dot mini-skirt, you're not going to like this church.

The 'BE FAIR' Church...

This church is very interested in being 'fair' to everyone. They don't want to make you upset, they don't want to exclude you for any reason. This church will pride itself on 'accessibility' (and I don't mean the wheelchair type, although their wheelchair signs will be VERY prominently displayed) and on simplicity. Many more people at this church will look like they just jumped out of bed than the people at the 'BE GOOD' church. This church is trying very hard to not be impressed with impressiveness. When preaching through a passage that EXPLICITLY deals with the doctrine of HELL, the preacher in the 'BE FAIR' church will (most likely) jump right over that verse even though, previous to bumping up against that little section on damnation, they were working the text verse by verse. This church will have male AND female elders. This church will be very active in the community. This church will seem just hip enough to be hip but not so hip that it gets pretentious, 'cause that wouldn't be FAIR to all the less-hip people out there.

(the 'BE NICE' church--which didn't make this list--is a close cousin of the 'BE FAIR' church. Just LESS doctrinally rooted, usually older in demographic, and they like organs--as in the musical instrument, and are pastored--80% of the time by women)

The 'BE RIGHT' Church...

These churches are pretty popular these days, almost by way of reaction to all the 'BE FAIR' churches out there. These churches are filled with people who don't give a dang (trying to be slightly PC with that expletive--feel free to insert the *proper* one in your mind) about being NICE so long as they're RIGHT. I gotta' be up front and say that the people in these churches have often visited my church and stormed out after trying to stage a coup to get me fired. These churches typically preach through the Bible verse by verse. These churches typically have 'famous' Pastors (even just in their local context). These churches tend to be patterned on American churches (I'm a Canadian FYI). These churches typically have lame worship but they don't really care 'cause their doctrine is RIGHT. I gotta' stop talking about these churches before I start getting mean.

The 'BE EMOTIONAL' Church...

Ahhh, the Charismatics. I feel okay about naming this group 'cause, for many years, I was part of this group. I (affectionately) call these churches 'Crazy-Churches'. These churches have BANNERS and people dancing in the aisles. The kids in these churches are usually underfoot and more poorly behaved than the kids from the 'BE GOOD' or 'BE RIGHT' churches. The 'BE EMOTIONAL' church will talk long and loud about 'Male Leadership' but will (most of the time) secretly be led by the domineering wives of the church. The 'BE EMOTIONAL' church service is the LONGEST of all the churches on this list. They will worship (well) for 45 minutes to an hour. The preaching will usually be lousy and not really drawn from a consistent or coherent passage of Scripture. Instead, the preacher will usually cherry-pick a few verses that support the theme or idea of the 'message' ('cause I daren't call it a 'sermon') and lean heavily on their personal experience or some kind of 'revelation' that came to them. (notice I used 'gender-neutral' language to describe the preacher? You're onto me!) This church will have what I (also affectionately) call 'Prophecy Hour'. This is a designated (but they'll try to make it feel spontaneous) moment in the service where a small (and often 'select') group of people will take turns bringing 'The World of the Lord...' to the congregation. On the surface, I'm totally cool with prophecy, as long as we stick to the Biblical pattern when it comes to FALSE prophets (look it up). The 'BE EMOTIONAL' church REALLY wants you to have an EMOTIONAL experience at church. If you don't cry, or at least get the goosebumps, this church thinks it's failed you. These churches talk a lot about 'The Bride of Christ' and 'Israel'. They're full of really nice people who get really excited talking about 'Living in community' and the 'End Times'. God bless the 'BE EMOTIONAL' church.

The 'BE JUST' Church...

There's not much to hate about these churches. They want to be, JUST. They're incredibly connected in their community, they care for the poor, they reach out to the needy, the are champions of the weak. The only 'imbalance' I often see in these churches is that they can get a little 'strident' with their constant intensity (and they would say 'shame on me for thinking we can take our foot off the gas for even a minute, look at all the NEED out there!!') and they don't seem to really preach the BROAD spectrum of God's story that exists in the Bible; instead focusing everything about the Bible through the lens of doing Justice. My Dad would yell at me if he read this post 'cause he thinks "Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God..." is about as clear as it gets, and he's right; but I'd love to suggest to the 'BE JUST' church that they 'BE JUST' while having FUN and wrestling with the ENTIRETY of the Biblical message. That way they might become less-inclined to look down their noses at anyone who doesn't drive a 1982 Volvo station wagon filled with six 'un-schooled' kids who've never tasted refined sugar in their lives. You also better like labyrinths, beards and art if you're gonna' go to this type of church.

The 'BE AWESOME' Church...

There are very few of these churches where I live. Most of these churches are in Texas, or Georgia. These churches have good looking preachers with very white teeth. Everything about these churches is AWESOME. They have awesomely-large staffs (usually well over 100 people) and awesome worship and an awesome kids ministry housed in an awesome facility. I don't know how these people get so awesome, they just are. Thing is, I've met LOTS of people who attend these awesome churches and here's my observation. They tend to be awesomely shallow. I'm not 'sayin', I'm just sayin'. The message from the pulpit tends to be laced with the underlying idea that, "...if you just DO what I TELL you to do, you TOO can become AWESOME!" My problem with this kind of church is grief. Awesome churches don't talk about grief much. What about the mom dying of cancer? What about the girl who's getting sexually abused at home? What about the guy whose IQ just isn't that high and who, truly, is just 'destined' be a roofer or, better yet, a sanitation worker? What about the nerd who will NEVER find a wife or the businessman who is totally unscrupulous in his business dealings but never thinks twice about it 'cause he's on a path to awesome-ness? These churches (almost always) have multiple one-hour services on the weekend and, if you happen to miss church, you can watch it on their awesome website. Heck, there's probably even a countdown online telling you when the next AWESOME service is starting. You'll see it right next to the 'automated giving' button.

Okay, I've about said my piece here.

Lemme' just say that I KNOW that there are EXCEPTIONS to these rules. Please don't argue with me about that, I know there are some churches that fit into one of the above 'molds' who haven't forsaken the essence, or deep and abiding truth of the story of Jesus. I know.

Lastly. I bet you're wondering what kind of 'BE' I am?

I'm a 'BE FREE' slash 'BE HONEST' guy.

I believe that Jesus came to set us free. ("He whom Christ has set FREE is FREE indeed...") I believe that honesty is the best policy ("And you shall know the Truth--double entendre--and the truth shall make you free...). There's that FREE thing again. I believe that the Gospel of Christ should free you up to be free and be honest. This means to me that you don't have to pretend to be good, or fair, or right, or emotional or just or awesome; you can just BE.

Now, are there TIMES when the freedom in you should lead you to act in a way that is good? Yes. How about fair-ness? Does freedom in Christ lead to treating people equally? Yes. Right? Well now, I always defer to Jesus. He's the only one who's 'right'. If I seem 'right' it's by accident or association. Can being free include being emotional? Sure. Just don't force it. Freedom means you don't have to cry unless it just happens. You don't *have* to do anything, you're free. How about being awesome? Well, if you're truly awesome at something (like my son is at football) then, thank God for that, and be awesome. Just don't build your church on it or promise everybody that if they just jump through your preferred hoops that they TOO will end up awesome at football.

So, back to the beginning. When you're looking for a church, keep in mind that each church you visit wants (at its core) to BE something and wants you to BE something.

Which would suggest to me that you'd better be pretty sure about the answer to the first and last question in this post...

What kind of 'BE' are you?

Happy hopping.

T