Would you like to come to church with me?

October 14 06 Steve Huber 10 comments

Notice how this simple question can mean one of several things:

  1. I have been brainwashed. You too might like to be brainwashed. Thinking for yourself is lame. Keep your eyes on the black spot and take this pill. Obey. Drink the KoolAid. Come to church with me.
  2. You seem like a pathetic person with a lot of problems. You need help from someone “put-together” like me. I am freaking awesome. Let me help you. Come to church with me.
  3. Our church is a gathering of folks who are just…. well…. swell. You seem like you have the potential to be swell too. Come join our elite-innercircle-extra-special-insider club. Come to church with me. Swell.
  4. Jesus Christ is someone who is real to me. The spiritual life in Jesus has been very life-giving to me. I’ve actually got a lot of sins and problems, but there is joy, peace and direction in my life that’s from Jesus. I’m excited about that. I’m so into it, I would love for you to be able to experience this as well. I’ve actually investigated the whole thing and wrestled with many intellectual questions. I realize that I am on a pilgrimage and am “in-process” and that I don’t have it all figured out—- so it’s okay if you disagree with me and I will be respectful as we dialogue. I would love for you to have the chance to investigate the person of Jesus. Would you come to my church with me??

Every Christian should be rightfully afraid of giving anyone the impression of 1-3.

Impressions 1-3 all represent perversions of the message of Jesus that unfortunately exist. I wrestle with this a lot as I talk to folks about Jesus. I’m also aware that being a pastor can make things doubly weird to folks.

“oh…so you are a pastor…awesome..”(silent moonwalk backward out of room)

But I am firmly convinced that basic Gospel humility demolishes bad Christian stereotypes. A willingness to talk about your problems and struggles and how you depend on the grace of Jesus everyday is something that few people expect to hear. I like to preempt a self-righteous impression by letting people know how badly I need Jesus everyday.

I like to tell people that Christine and I have been married 13 years.

Then I like to tell them that it’s a miracle. “What do you mean, that it’s a miracle?“, they’ll ask. I usually reply, “If Jesus can teach a guy as self-centered as me to be more forgiving and gentle —- wow, that’s a miracle.” Christine and I forgive each other daily. It’s really a lifestyle of forgiveness and grace expressed in relationship. This is something we have been learning about God and from God for all these 13 years. Often we still don’t get it and we struggle. We certainly haven’t mastered this forgiveness thing. Yet forgiveness and grace from Jesus is a miracle that we have seen and felt in our marriage.

So yeah, if you are a Christian, talk about your weakness and how Jesus meets you.

Being honest about your weakness and desperate need of grace is a natural, normal, honest way to share Jesus with others. Being honest in your weakness and yet hopeful because of God’s grace will help you to avoid two extremes.

The first extreme

is being people who talk about Jesus and do a hard sell about the Gospel all the time… Every day… No matter what the context or conversation… “Great eagles game…so is God your ultimate hope in life?” This is like the stranger who decided that the check-out line at CVS was a good place to start talking to me about the end-times and God’s plan for the conclusion of history (very loudly and passionately). I didn’t want to discuss the end-times and God’s plan for the conclusion of human history, I wanted to get a small number of needed toiletries. I didn’t know this guy. He didn’t ask me what I thought, he didn’t care. I actually ended up saying “hey, I’m actually a Christian and a student of the Bible and I would definitely be willing to have this conversation, but you’re freaking me out a little bit.” (The situation was actually freaking me out more than a little bit….I was embarrassed for him, for myself, for Jesus.) Has this kind of thing ever happened to you? Ever been embarrassed for Jesus’ sake because of some random thing done in the name of Jesus? If you have, it’s easy to overreact and actually end up at another extreme.

The second extreme

This opposite extreme is being that person who has found some hope, joy, and peace in Jesus….yet you are afraid to share it because you don’t want to be associated with Christian weirdness, be it Jerry Falwell, TBN, pseudo-spiritual politics, or being in line at CVS at being entreated to “end-times” talk.

Let’s encourage each other not to do that. Don’t shrink back from talking about your Savior because of Christian and sub-christian weirdness out there. Avoid giving a self-righteous impression by being the first person in the room to admit that you often fail to love others well, that you need forgiveness, that you don’t have it all figured out.

This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine

I heard the kids at liberti singing that song recently. It’s true, you’ve got a “little light”. I’ve got a “little light.” I don’t have the universe comprehensively figured out. I don’t have myself figured out. I’m not perfect—I’m actually fighting my sin and weakness every day. I actually paused during the writing of this blog to have a spat with my 11 year old daughter that looked like it was staged on the set of a pathetic sitcom.

But Jesus is a great Savior. Life, light, hope, peace, and joy, it’s there for people who wake up to their need and who wake up to taste the reality of Jesus. As imperfect as I am and as often as I’m messed up, I don’t want to forget to introduce people to Jesus.

Whoever you are and wherever you are at, I would love to introduce you to Jesus. Do you want to come to church with me.

October 16 06 Dave Braud wrote:

Steve,
One more perspective that may be worth bringing into the picture:

“Our church has pastors who dress up like the rock band KISS and do bluegrass-ish renditions of Beatles tunes. Come to church with me.” (Can you say “revival?”)

Seriously though… Great post! This really challenges my fears of being labeled. I’m often surprised at the generous response of the culture when I’m honest, genuine, up-front about being a Christian. There are those who assume that if you’re a Christian you must be friends with Jerry Falwell and George Bush and watch TBN instead of LOST, but I’m finding that most people are not thinking like that. In general people are more likely to judge our belief system based on how well we are loving others, serving our community and being authentic— and as you rightly remind us— being authentic often times looks like brokenness, weakness and not having it all figured out.

I think that humility is a huge part of the paradigm shift in sharing our faith (inviting people to check out Jesus) in the 21st century, but I’d love it if the comments/dialogue in this blog thread would flesh out the others dynamics that we need to consider.

October 16 06 Susan Bertolino wrote:

Good post, Steve. I agree that more humility is always in order. One day I asked my students very bluntly what they couldn’t stand about Christians: Even the Christians ones answered. Here is a sampling:

1. I will practice THIS part of the Bible, but not that. (Christian guy)
2. You’re going to hell, you know. (non-Christian.)
3. You cannot have any real morals if you don’t accept Christ. (non-Christian)
4. There is only one truth. (non-Christian and me as well—Jesus may be truth, but truth is still cloaked in mysteries—who are we to presume we understand everything about the mind of God.)
5. You aren’t Christian if you vote for….
(Christian)
6. You will never know happiness without Jesus. (both Christian and non Christian—God never said that life would be easy.)

I could go on, but you get my drift.

October 17 06 garver wrote:

Very helpful reflections. Thanks.

As a college professor I’m in the odd position of often having students who want to be told what to think and to be given the “right answers.” And as a philosophy professor, there’s a huge temptation to think I actually do have it all figured out.

Still, I find that, in the end I’m better off admitting how limited my own perspectives can be and how having faith convictions doesn’t mean I have to know how all the details fit together.

Commanding awe may be handy for controlling a classroom, but confessing finitude and weakness is better for building relationships where the Spirit can work.

October 17 06 mike m wrote:

The thing that I run from is, when the subject of religion/god/christianity surfaces at my job. It is typically in a mocking or “ I can’t believe how stupid or close minded those people are” fashion. I know these people have come across sterotypical evangelical right wing nuts. So I sit there and remain quiet, because i do not want to be portrayed as one of these conservative nut jobs. I get a weird feeling in my gut and just sit there. Knowing I should say something but terrified of coming across as “That guy”

I think alot of the same things about these kinds of christians, and i do not want to perpetuate the stereotype by trying to defend christians or “organized religion”. My fear is giving them more ammunition in their arsenal of idiot christian people that they have come across in their lives.

More and more in small circles in my workplace i am letting people into my circle and lettting them in on my secret. But I have been selectively finding people who I think I can trust and who I feel I can let in. I am simply terrified of being the same old “christian” that people hate.

I want people to know jesus the way I do. I want to let people know that being a christian is hard, that my life has at times sucked in huge ways and that No jesus does not promise to make your life “happy”.

I want to tell people that He did come to “give us life to the full” and that after reluctantly submittinng my every single day to the prospect of knowing the gospel in each and every breath, that my life has been full and i am satisfied. I want to tell people that this is a process that has taken years to surface and it has only come with being completley levelled and broken and forced into loving and submitting to jesus.

But asking the simple question “hey, you wanna come to church with me?” is nearly impossible.

So thanks steve for putting this out there. I want to know how other people think about this.

October 18 06 mike m wrote:

P.S. >>>

After reading my own comment i feel like i need to clarify my statements.

I do not think i have “it” all figured out.

Submitting my every single breath to jesus is hard and takes work and makes me crazy half the time.

It has only been snce i realized that i “NEED” to do this everyday that i have known satisfaction. Seriously my life, and marriage have been completley transformed.

I am a human still in process, i need jesus everyday.

My satisfaction must come from him, and not what I am trying to accomplish – (which for me has been satisfaction)

Anyhow- I think I am veering way off topic, but I did think I needed to clarify.

I now return you to your regularly sceduled blog-cast.

October 18 06 Denise Malagari wrote:

Great post!
I’ve taken some flack in my family, work, and school for being a Bible believing Christian because their minds went right to the stero-type. It’s a sad thing.
However in my own pursuit to live like and for Jesus I’ve found it crucial to be weary and not become those we complain about. Personally it is so easy to complain my way into becoming the sterotypical whitey-white American evangelical. All I have to do is keep quiet and hide my light and poof, I’ve done it! I’ve become the kind of person I dread the most: man’s idea of a Christian. It truly is a priviledge to grow and educate people on what Christ is really all about!

October 19 06 Susan Bertolino wrote:

Mike,

I understand how you feel. At my job, people know I am a Christian, and I do get flak. What can I say? Am I responsible for the behavior of all Christians? One believer at my job and I were talking about how we sometimes feel the need to apologize for the right wing nuts. And my co-workers see me often behave in a non-Christian way. I’m human. But we have to learn to fear people less and fear God more—I read this again in an Ed Welch book, my hero. And boy, that’s not easy. But I believe that our lives, not our words, have to be sermons to the goodness of Jesus. We reflect him in our behavior, not our words. That is the greatest testimony we can do.Unfortunately, it is the hardest.

October 20 06 Todd Carll wrote:

I have a slightly older friend who’s a big Italian construction job foreman, bear of a man, who the Lord saved and who has a fervor to honestly walk with Him. I went to a small men’s Bible study with him years back and his workers knew he was a Christian. Well, this fellow, who we’ll call Jeff… (uh, cause his names Jeff), would often come into the study after a tough day and speak to how things went badly that day and he snapped on his guys and let ’em have it for their incompetence with the occasional use of colorful expletives to drive home the point. Well, after cooling off a bit, he called these guys in and apologized and would tell them that he had received forgiveness as he was a Christian and shouldn’t have acted as he did (or some words like these). Typically, the guys wouldn’t know how to react to this as you can imagine, for bosses do not seek the forgiveness of their crew. (I’ve been in my share of construction trailers thru my work, and let’s say that they are rarely known for their tact and genteel conversation, let alone for grace and forgiveness.) Well, Jeff would be pretty broken up, and would bemoan his “faulty walk” with the Lord revealed by his sometimes uncontrollable temper (his view of himself). But don’t you see Jeff, (we’d say) yes, your sin was real, and as ugly as it was (is), so much more beautiful was the Spirit there in your ad hoc confession and there is where Christ was glorified.
The point here I guess is a “walk with talk” type thing where, though we may clearly, daily betray our sinfulness to those around us, there is then how we respond to that before others that may reflect our “Christianess” best because it points to His work and not ours. His strength thru our weakness kind of thing, if I’m not misapplying that scripture. We show ourselves to be “forgiveness receivers” as well as “Jesus-likes”. The latter without the former will almost definitely wrongly repel unbelievers. Remembering of course, that even then some tend to celebrate the fall of the Christian under circumstances like Jeff’s and the cry of “Hypocrite!” is heard (re Susan “behaving in a non-Christian way”). It is rare that good behavior alone draws any persecution to us, except when either it creates guilt in those acting differently and/or better yet, when the Message attached to the behavior is the Gospel which convicts and leads to repentance. 11Cor.2-15″For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.“ I like the line I heard from someone once that said something like, "there is offense enough in the Gospel alone (and we should never seek to remove that), but let’s be careful not to add unnecessary offense (thru our actions or inconsistent words)”. It was much more poetic than that, but it’s close enough. So, (and I can’t see myself saying this but I need to be able to, and that is) “Come to church with me fellow sinner, because that’s where Jesus is, and where Jesus is is where true forgiveness is, and if you need that, then that’s where we both should be, agree?”
-btw, Susan I had started some long thread for the first post that I bailed on because I tend to ramble and I couldn’t shrink it enough (hard to believe eh?) but I hope some day to ramble with you some more on that topic. I hope you got into both links ultimately – I tried them both again thru a cut and paste and they worked, so…?
Anyway, thanks for the good words all and what a great way this is to learn about each other and challenge ourselves thru the truths of the Word.

October 21 06 Susan Bertolino wrote:

Todd,

Rambling is good. It helps you think. I will try the second again—the first was with my work computer. Have you read Ed Welch—he teaches at Westminster (I think so) and works at CCEF. I got my idea about the self-esteem notion from his book When People are Big and God is Small, plus one of his pamplets, I think on depression. Anyway, I’ve read all his books and if you ever want to borrow one, you are most welcome. And sure, let’s continue the thread.

Interesting you bring up construction since my husband works in carpentry and rehab. He comes home dead tired, and now that we are in covenant, we want to consistently go to a home church. But the other day, he just couldn’t do it (it got cancelled anyway) because he was so tired. And he has a boss that he prays for because he is the opposite of the person you describe; he cannot admit an error and takes a lot of his issues out on my husband. I think for men in that line of work, as Christians they are constantly struggling with the sacred and the profane: my husband dealt with it in the Army where he got saved. I wish more people would play up to the reality that Jesus was also a carpenter, and I know what carpenters look like. He dealt with a world of machismo, money issues and doing work that very well he may not have receoved payment. I’m not sure where I am going with this, but something in your writing made me think of this, since as a wife, I’ve seen the contracting world and it’s among the last places you could imagine Jesus, but there he was.

October 23 06 Liz K wrote:

I am encouraged by the the thoughts shared here. This is something I’ve been wrestling with a lot recently. I’m realizing that one reason I shy away from telling others about Jesus is that I often forget that I desperately need him. This “forgetfulness” may be better said as being dishonest. Honesty…I don’t want to go there daily in my heart and see my evil thoughts, my brokenness, my sin, see how often I don’t love those God has put in my life…let alone tell others about all this stuff. I don’t want to believe the fact that it is enough that God cares to enter in to my mess and save me from the eternal consequences of my sin. I want to believe what the world tells me is good…that I just need to seek certain things to be happy and that I’m basically an o.k. person. Faith. Yet thankfully God doesn’t let me stay there and shows me that it is amazing that the God of the universe cares to forgive me and enter into relationship with me and this true God cares to do that with others. So I’m glad that I don’t have to conjure up feelings that I believe this stuff…because often I don’t “feel” it, but thankfully God gives us faith and helps us be honest with ourselves. Purpose. So this is all fine and good, but a bit selfish…this me and God thing. So it only makes sense that I would want to tell others how God has transformed my heart and given me life and peace, right? If God has done this work in our hearts, shouldn’t we just want to let others know about it? And isn’t this what God tells us to do? Yet I don’t do it. And I don’t want to enter into other people’s lives because that takes being real, vulnerable and honest. Recently, a friend who is asking a lot of questions about truth and about the Bible asked me why I don’t tell more people about Jesus if what he has done for me is such good news? That was convicting. So I ask for prayer and pray this for others…that we would be honest about our own brokenness-before God and before others. That God would help our unbelief…those feelings that waver. And that we would thank God for giving us and others faith. Romans 15: 25-27 “Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ…so that all nations might believe and obey him-to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ. Amen.”

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