Jesus is for Quitters: Why the Church Has No More Room for God
Whenever I am walking along a crowded city street, pushing my way through shoulders on packed sidewalks, I often daydream about where people are headed. Are they late for a business meeting, or having drinks with friends? Does she have a blind date? Is he going home to an empty apartment? Are they headed into work, or is the day finally over? I often overhear ecstatic conversations about all the parties that night. I see people dressed in their Sunday’s best and their Saturday’s sexiest skirts. If it’s a Friday, the city blocks vibrate with the excitement of the weekend.
And I think to myself, “What would this look like right now if every one of these individuals had just quit everything and started following Jesus?”
It would be a celebration. There would be music. Dancing. And hugging. Lots and lots of hugging. Laughter. You would know everyone and actually like them all too. You’d have all these inside jokes with them, and enough energy to last you all weekend.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s what heaven will be like. It’s always the weekend there.
And sometimes I wonder if that’s what God originally intended Earth to be like before that whole incident with the snake and the apple and Eve. (And in Adam’s defense, what man has ever thought clearly about anything with a naked woman in his direct line of sight?)
And what about church? Is the church supposed to look like that sort of celebration every Sunday?
Now, I’ve never had a bad experience with the church. I’ve never been burned, betrayed, or treated poorly. I grew up in the church, and I grew up indifferent to it. And when I was old enough to drive, my mother told me I didn’t have to go to anymore if I didn’t want to. She would still be going every Sunday, and the invitation to join her always stood, but she would never force me.
When I think of church today, I immediately find myself thinking of offerings and flashing lights, guest speakers, clever messages, community events, and HD video presentations.
On a Thursday afternoon in Portland during my first few weeks of travel, I saw the man next to me searching Google: “How do I know the Bible is legit?” We ended up talking about faith, love, porn, and God over the next few hours. He invited me to a church service later that night. I gladly accepted.
On the road I have encountered churches with worship so loud it will tear through your eardrums and knock you off balance. I’ve seen services that spend only 20 minutes on worship, 15 minutes talking about the offering, 10 minutes discussing upcoming events, and the rest of the time is filled with advertisements for next month’s series. And once or twice I’ve heard a message in there somewhere.
But this church in Portland was different. The walls were bare, void of decoration. Just an entire wall of mugs grabbed by those walking in through the doors, filling them with the coffee available in the lobby. The sanctuary: empty except for a hundred or so chairs; an old wooden piano, two stools, and a drum set.
No stage. No pulpit. No video equipment or lighting. Just chairs and instruments. Service began with worship lead by their long-haired, tattooed pastor who took up one of the stools with his acoustic guitar. After worship was a message preached straight from the Bible. Then we prayed, but the pastor did not lead us nor ask us to repeat after him. Instead, someone sat at the old piano, someone else at the drums, and they played quietly while the rest of us prayed by ourselves or with the strangers next to us. We formed large groups of twenties, and small groups of two or three. There was a final song of worship, and the service was over.
No one asked me if I’d just been saved. No one asked me to join a group, a Bible study, or to attend a conference. No one asked for my address, and no one made any announcements about what was going to be talked about next week. No one told me where I could find the prayer team because if you stand in that room you are the prayer team.
If we removed the lights and sounds, the performances, the videos, the special presentations, would you still go to church?
Why is God simply not enough to draw an attendance? The creator of the Universe. The God that halts the waves, designed the veins that run to your heart, the blood cells that clot to keep you alive, and breathed every flaming violent star in the sky into existence?
Because the church is not making enough room for God.
We should not need to advertise that for the next 3 to 6 weeks we will be talking about sex or faith or another study on the books of Philippians and Romans. When a Pastor lays out an entire year’s worth of sermons, does he keep himself open to hearing God say, “I know you are smack in the middle of that killer relationship series you planned, but I need you to talk about something else this Sunday.”
Last week in South Carolina, the man I was staying with, Brian, said to me over breakfast: “Pastors today are obsessed with their message, not God’s.”
After one of the services I attended on the road, when Lauren Lankford was still traveling with me, she asked, “Why is it not enough to know when you go to church you are going to hear from a Godly man reading from the Word and that’s it?”
I asked her to explain.
“If I knew every Sunday I was going to hear from someone who completely immersed their life into God’s word and openly talked about their struggles, doubts, fears, and successes, and applied them to the Bible, explaining what he learned that week, I would be eager to attend church. Why must we advertise what we are going to talk about?”
Because we aren’t ready for God to show up in our churches.
“We aren’t ready to watch a man with one leg be supernaturally healed and have his missing leg grow back,” Brian said.
If we allowed God to be fully present in our churches, I think there would be miracles and healing and tears every single day.
We are attending churches that have a schedule, an agenda that sometimes becomes more important than preaching God’s truth and creating disciples. After the resurrection, isn’t that the one thing Jesus asked of us before he left us?
I’ve got a Twitter account. A few times a day I try to say something half clever 140 characters. It’s my own personal writing challenge to tell a story in one sentence or less.
Back in March I stopped through Denver and visited with Mike Sares, pastor of Scum of the Earth church. A church where, “…the smokers are the designated greeters because they are already out front.” He is the author of the book Pure Scum. “Don’t scare people away,” he tells his greeters. “Just offer them a cigarette.” You can read about my experience with him and the blog it inspired right here —> We Are the Scum of the Earth with the Greatest Stories to Tell.
I’ve got a large list of books to get through, and Mike’s has been in it since we met. This last week I finally got the chance to sit and start reading, and Mike has a few brilliant things to say in there about the church. One of them: “Jesus is for quitters.”
I tweeted it. Within seconds I had certain folks asking me for an explanation. How could I say such a thing? Was I going to give a followup Tweet to clarify myself?
Sure.
Jesus is for quitters. Quit your life. Quit your ways because your ways are no good. Quit everything and follow him. Yeah, Jesus is for quitters.
So why are we doing church our way? Why are we doing church the way we think is best? They way we think will reach as many people as possible?
Because we haven’t yet worked up the nerve to quit. There is too much “us” in the church. Too much of our plans and our sermons and our noise.
I think God is absent in the church as a whole. I believe he is showing up for certain individuals, but the congregation as one body is missing him entirely. Now, I believe that rock ‘n roll worship and great videos have their place in the larger church–absolutely–but I’m not sure to what extent. After all, that presentation is what opened my heart back up to the church after I left it. Church was cool again. What was an electric guitar doing on stage? And videos? I got saved. I got baptized. I fell in love.
But how far do we take it on a Sunday morning? We must be careful not to create a flashy church full of watered down truth. If God was fully present in our church on Sunday morning, we’d all be dropping to our knees during worship instead of just lifting a few random hands in the air. Because he is worthy to be feared. And if God was leading worship instead of the worship leaders, I imagine the band would be playing for hours with no concern for time or the pastor’s message that day.
This is why I hit the road. Because I couldn’t develop a relationship with God in the church. So I went looking for Him in the streets. Because I didn’t fear him. And because I didn’t fear him, I didn’t know him. And if I don’t know him, how can I confidently invite him into my heart? Into my worship?
Two weeks ago in Tampa I had dinner with a mother of three, a wife who recently became a Christian. A woman who has died twice. Literally.
She said to me, “I finally fear God. And because of that, I can finally get to know him for real.”
And maybe we don’t fear God because we’ve created a Jesus that is comfortable with materialism and claims that all your problems will go away once you’ve been saved.
God let his own son die for every single one of us to get our attention.
That obviously hasn’t worked.
Which begs the question,” Brian said as we finished breakfast, “What is He going to have to do to get our attention now?”
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