Jack’s Buzz

Disengagement Signals Abnormality

Not to be engaged is to be weird. You do not want to be weird do you? You do not want to deny the image of God any more than I do.

Staying with Acts, Luke outlines a surprisingly unsophisticated, ongoing training regimen. He tells his readers that the early church met together to eat a meal, pray, and hear the apostles’ teaching (Ac 2:42). We do not know line-by-line the precise content of the apostles’ teaching, but we know that it results in apostolic engagement. The Christians consistently engage non-Christians with the Gospel.

Moreover, there is no sense that the engagement is in any way obnoxious or overbearing, for they enjoyed “favor with all the people” (Ac 2:47). Their engagement must have been engaging—they must have been kind. We know that the early Christians were heavily engaged in reducing poverty and healing the sick, often miraculously. Healing the sick and feeding the poor tend to earn the favor of one’s neighbors.

Even after the religious oppressors persecuted the Christians, the pattern continued in every town to which they dispersed. Apostolic engagement led to healing and freedom from demonic torment. Wherever they went, Christians normally engaged people with kindness and the Gospel of Jesus followed immediately.

At the beginning of this exercise, we noticed that most people asked about engagement think of different things, but do they really? I think not—not at the core of what we are all saying—because it is in our human DNA to engage people so that we might become related to them. The average person thinks of engagement as something that comes before the wedding. People engage, and then they become related. Evangelists think about trained witnesses engaging others with the Gospel. They witness to become related as brothers and sisters in Christ. Church planters do the work of the evangelist, and then add to that the relatedness that comes from gathering for worship and growing in discipleship. We all engage others because all want so badly to have relationships. We want those relationships because God designs us to need them.

To desire to remain disengaged from others is a sign that something is wrong. For a Christ-follower not to desire to engage and relate to others signals a malady. Something is wrong. Dare I say that a disengaged Christian is a hurting Christian? A Christian not engaging people who wander in darkness, lost without Christ, is an ill Christian. He or she has something wrong. The DNA wires them to engage, but the wiring broke, and we represent the Physician. Rather than sit broken, hurting Christians in classrooms, we might need to offer them healing and deliverance from their malady. If I have a brother or sister in Christ who disengages others (or has become habitually disengaged from others), a sickness holds him or her captive. Engagement helps sick Christians and sick non-Christians get well.

Perhaps you can think of other ways to engage people for Christ. The GPS web site offers ideas. Each of the four is worth exploring.

First, imagine trained Christ-followers effectively sharing the gospel as they go.[1] The biblical texts that we examined above demonstrate little about the training program of the early church. Perhaps they had no program, at least in the sense of the systematically organized modules that we see today. Still, the evidence indicates that believers consistently engaged non-believers, verbally witnessed their experiences regarding the resurrected Christ, and that many people, both Jews and Gentiles, put their faith in Christ as a result. The pattern of engagement is so consistent that one can only conclude that elder believers trained their younger brothers and sisters to engage people and tell them about Jesus. Simply stated, mature believers took new believers along as they engaged their communities. Do that.

Second, imagine starting small groups to intentionally present the gospel to lost people. Small discipleship groups form the heart of first century Christian engagement. Evidence suggests that the believers purposely chose small, mobile groups as their church model. A good exercise might include examining whether a person can join a small discipleship group without first committing himself or herself to Christ. Can one follow Christ without having made a commitment to him as Savior? Can a person be a disciple, in the sense that the word means follower, with the intention of merely investigating Christ? I want to say yes based on Christ’s many invitations to test his teaching and see if it is from God (Jn 7:16-17).

If a believing group accepts nonbelievers in their gathering (with the intention of witnessing to them at the appropriate time), they will engage dozens of people who will later commit their lives to Christ. The small, discipleship group method for starting churches may hold the most promise for growing Christ’s kingdom in the West. The obvious implication is that we need to start more discipleship groups faster. Waiting to send people out to start new groups until they complete training is like not planting on a windy day (Ec 11:4). Bad idea. On one hand, the Spirit can correct, and on the other hand, no one says that leaders cannot hold group starters accountable for their teaching. For that matter, where does the Scripture say that every group needs a teacher? It doesn’t; stop making excuses and start something.

Third, imagine starting new churches. All of us see the data that newer churches tend to engage and reach more people for Christ faster than even ten-year-old churches. Yet, the latest statistics indicate that only three percent of established SBC churches sponsor new works.[2] We cannot demand $250,000 in the bank or full-time pastoral staff to start a church when the apostles had none of that. Start discipleship groups with leaders who have jobs, and let them become churches. Start them.

Fourth, imagine believers living with a passion for lost people that comes out of the overflow of an intimate walk with God. The first century church spent enormous amounts of time in prayer, worship, engaging, witnessing, and running. They spent no time in seminary. Passion to see lost people come to Christ does not come from academic papers, books, sermons, or wishing. Passion for the things of God comes from the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit fills any believer who makes the time to be filled. Walking with Christ takes time, and God offers no substitute method. Spend time with God and look around to see what he is doing. Stop wasting time and resources on things God is not rewarding.

None of us wants to live unfulfilled, unproductive lives. We know that we will have a conversation with Jesus someday, and that he will ask us to make an account of what we produced with what he gave us (Mt 25:14-46, Ro 14:12, Heb 4:13). We all want a pleasant conversation. It seems important, therefore, that disciples creatively engage others.

God made us to engage. Jesus and the early church modeled engagement. We can simply act accordingly and creatively. I recently read that the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, calls for a complete reorganization of the medium (just when you learned to use the current iteration, yes?). He wants a new structure to engage the needs of a new generation.[3] Perhaps we should try to catch up to the secular culture’s engaging attitude.

Apostolic Activity Imitates Divine Engagement

Observing the lives of the apostles, one cannot help but think that Christian engagement is normal. Jesus said that his followers would do greater things than he did (Jn 14:12). He did some amazing things. Do you think he might have been mistaken? Misquoted? Either he was mistaken, or there was more than surface value to his words. I do not think he was mistaken or misquoted. I think he was dead on—that he knew exactly what he was saying.

Is it possible that Jesus was telling us that we engage people without having the ability to feed them on nothing, heal their diseases without medicine, or raise the dead? Yes, I realize that we can find many examples of regular Christians seeing miracles, but miracles are not the norm. None of us can think of miraculous outpourings of God’s power as the normal way things go, can we? For Jesus, the shock of the miraculous was normal, for us, it is not, and I wonder if that was his meaning when he said we would do greater things. We will engage people by the power of the Spirit without the shock factor. It is just a thought, and not meant to get you off track. When did you last observe Christ move powerfully in someone’s life without anything resembling a sign or wonder? Most of my experiences with changed lives (mine or others’) seem to occur under almost mundane circumstances. The Spirit moves quietly most of the time; do you agree?

In the lives of the apostles, we see far fewer miracles preceding engagement than we see in Christ’s life. Peter has the healing touch to be sure. Paul raises a dead guy—not something one sees very often unless there are paddles and massive amounts of electricity involved. The Bible tells readers that many signs and wonders accompanied the work of the apostles in the early church. The early church, however, saw nowhere near the number of miracles per capita as those portrayed in Jesus’ life.

What we see modeled by early Christians is not so much the miraculous as it is the simple, consistent, and frequent engagement of others. The early church did not win their neighbors as much by miracles as they did by doing good works. In this way, they imitated Jesus as he “went about doing good” (Ac 10:38). They enjoyed the favor of all the people, and their favor diminished only after religious oppressors came after them for teaching Jesus as the Way (Ac 2:47, 8:1-3).

Think about Pentecost again, but this time as an example of God shocking nonbelievers with something unusual followed by believers explaining what was happening. The amazing episode involved relatively simple engagement by people responding to God’s complex signs and wonders. The Holy Spirit caused people to speak in unknown languages (shocking complexity). Peter followed up with a rather simplistic sermon explaining what was happening (engagement). How was he so effective? He seems simply to answer their immediate need. They needed to know what the fire, wind, and languages were about. God caused their need, and Peter responded.

Is it possible that our engagement of people with the Gospel most easily follows their needs? Is it possible that God drives their needs along by using normal events that happen to everyone like loss of love, economic trials, or death of a friend to open them to the Gospel? Look at the text.

In Acts, chapter two, the church grows through kindness of members toward one another. The entire city notices that faith in Christ makes people treat their neighbors better.

In Acts three, Peter and John lead a man to health and to Jesus—the man’s poverty and disability opened him to their ministry. Granted, the story includes a miracle. The name of Jesus heals the man. God provides a miracle; the disciples explain it with the Gospel.

Chapter four finds the Jewish rulers threatening the disciples. The church prays for boldness. The Holy Spirit shakes the place and fills the believers (shock). As a result, the church shares everything to the point that they eradicate poverty (engaging and shocking?). They demonstrate kindness and the group grows.

Annanias and Sapphira begin chapter five by lying about a financial gift to the new church apparently trying to elevate their status. God shocks the believers by killing them. Evidently, the fear of the Lord is something the new church (and city) needs to remember. Later in the chapter, the religious authorities jail the apostles, the Spirit frees them (shock), and they respond by teaching Christ to people in the courtyard (engagement).

Acts six and seven begin with an account of how the early church administrates their affairs followed by the arrest of Stephen, his speech to the priests, and his stoning at their hands. Following Stephen’s shocking death, chapter eight recounts persecution of the church, Saul becomes the religious leaders’ chief hit man, and the church runs. No doubt, the new disciples felt a sense of shock at their predicament—one day they find favor with everyone and the next they are ripped from their homes, jailed, and scattered. One could hardly blame them for abandoning the faith, but they use their dispersion as a chance to engage people with the Gospel.

Christ shocks Saul into faith in chapter nine by knocking him to the ground and blinding him. Paul responds by becoming Christ’s Apostle to the Gentiles (engagement), and the other disciples respond by welcoming him (further engagement).

In chapter ten, Cornelius and Peter see visions from heaven (shock) and they respond by engaging one another and the Gentiles with the Gospel. This pattern repeats again and again throughout the New Testament.

Only in chapter seventeen do we find a passage that seems to break the pattern. Paul engages the philosophers at Athens, but no shocking miracles precede or follow his engagement. In fact, the most shocking thing we read is of Paul telling the philosophers that a resurrection from death occurred. The philosophers found it shocking that an intelligent man such as Paul believed such an illogical story. Evidently, however, Paul’s worldview does not offend all of the intellectual elite; the story closes with several people curious and a few converted to Christianity.

On Mars Hill, God does not shock anyone with anything more than Paul’s brilliant philosophical argument. The story reflects engagement more in tune with the kind we see in our North American context than the rest of Acts. Someone may wonder if Paul was unsuccessful in Athens or even if we should avoid the intellectual elite because so little seems to happen on the Mars Hill mission. The Bible, however, does not say anything to lead us away from intellectual engagement. Perhaps the story is included in the inspired text because while it was abnormal for First Century Greece (or Twenty-first Century Africa), it is quite normal for Twenty-first Century North America. The principle of engaging people on a level they understand holds in Mars Hill, Athens as well as College Park, USA.

At the end of the day, one can only conclude that consistent engagement of people in the name of Christ defined the early Christian community. Shocking signs and wonders, performed by the Holy Spirit through apostolic workers, intertwine most of their engagements. Some engagements, however, did not include miracles. Notable exceptions occur that make engagement today not at all unusual or even unpredictable. Philip’s engagement of the Treasurer of Ethiopia is not that different from the encounters that many of us experience (Ac 8). Paul’s intellectual conversation with Athenian philosophers happens daily in classrooms, boardrooms, and break rooms across North America.

What we still must deal with is the underlying principle—the thing that translates biblical incidents into contemporary, North American life. What do we do with these stories? We conclude that for the Christian, normality means engaging others to spread the Gospel, and abnormality means disengagement. One cannot conclude otherwise.

The Holy Spirit Facilitates Engagement

Jesus engages people by connecting his eternal, Holy Spirit to their limited spiritual nature. The Holy Spirit is God personally engaging us. He helps, comforts, reveals truth, and crosses barriers (Jn 14:17, 26).

John records Jesus breathing on the apostles, telling them to receive his Spirit as though he were something they could refuse. Perhaps he is. Paul tells believers not to quench the Spirit (1Th 5:19).

At Pentecost, we observe the Spirit coming in power as fulfillment of Christ’s promise to engage humanity with his Spirit. The Spirit engages all the disciples first, and the men and women in the city next. He overwhelms their senses with the sound of rushing wind and the appearance of fire from the air. He overcomes their cultural moorings by breaking the language barrier (Ac 2:2-12).

The text makes it clear that the miraculous gift of instantly speaking a foreign language is under the Spirit’s power and direction. Moreover, the words spoken are the Gospel. The Spirit gave believers the gift of languages to enable them to engage nonbelievers with the Gospel in a way that invited people to listen. Tongues of fire, rushing wind, foreign languages; I would think one’s response to be akin to shock. Would you not wonder what was going on?

Throughout Acts, whenever God engages humans, he uses powerful events that run against most peoples’ view of how things work. Pentecost offers the prime example. Tongues of fire from the air—was anyone expecting that? I think I might want to run away from that. Shocking, redefinitions of reality are nothing new for God. Nor is it new for God to invite his children to follow a miraculous sign with an engaging explanation to people who need to believe in his power.

God troubled a Pharaoh’s dreams and Joseph explained the meaning (Gen 41:1-36). God shocked another Pharaoh with all manner of plagues, and Moses explained (Ex 7-12). God shocked the people of Nineveh when a fish tossed up a man, and Jonah read the news from God (Jnh 2:10-3:3).

Jesus was the most shocking man who ever lived. He explained the reality of a new day, the good news day of the Lord’s favor (Lk 4:19). He gave dignity to the poor. He fed hungry crowds with fish and chips from air and baskets (Mt 14:21, 15:38). He risked his life to confront religious and political oppressors. He completed the Law, turning it from a punitive list into marks of grace (Lk 24:44, Col 2). He healed people of fevers, skin diseases, crumpled legs, blind eyes, deaf ears, and tormenting demons. He walked on water. He freed dead people from the final captivity. Then (as if all that were not enough), he took a ride with death and came out the winner. He walked through walls, offered peace that lasts, and lifted off to heaven. His final instruction to those watching was to tell others about what he did—to be his witness (Ac 1:8). With those experiences, how could they not be engaging?

One might easily interpret Christ’s statement as an instruction for us to engage others with the Good News when their lives do not make sense. Witnesses engage the poor with the riches of heaven, a slice of bread, a coat, and maybe a job. Witnesses offer the crowds something beyond a free show. Witnesses risk their status to push back on bullying oppressors whether political or religious. Have you done any of these things recently? Witnesses offer grace, healing, deliverance now, and the hope of heaven for tomorrow.

God’s Spirit engages people by shocking them. He leaves it to us—his witnesses—to explain what just happened.

Jesus Demonstrates Engagement

God created us in his image and gave us status as stewards of the rest of creation. Humanity is the keeper of God’s work. We engage the ground, the plants, the animals, the minerals, the water, for good or bad. Not only does our status as made in God’s image create our need to engage, God models engagement in a tangible way that leaves little confusion. He came to us as the person Jesus (Lk 2).

God made Adam aware of his presence and Eve painfully aware. He engaged Noah with boat plans when no one knew what a boat was. He burned a flameproof tree to engage Moses (try that one sometime). He engaged prophets with revelation, lepers with healing, and delivered those tormented by unclean spirits. Without God engaging us specifically, we stand wondering if he exists beyond the stars or within the intricacies of plants (Ps 19, Ro 1:19-20). The zenith of God’s engagement of humanity is Jesus Christ: God becoming human.

God engages us generally in nature, which, by the way, gives us an engagement point with naturalists, and specifically in Christ. God engages us in our experiences—an engagement point with people in other or no religious groups; everyone talks of unexplainable experiences with the spiritual realm. God engages us in the words, pronouncements, commands, propositions, narratives, songs, and poetry of the Bible—an engagement point with our spiritual parents the Jews, with other Christians, and with anyone interested in fine literature. God engages us in art, music, poetry, architecture, literature, nature, children, old folks, wisdom, foolishness, politics, government, community, kindness, evil, and even in the air with radio, television, and the Internet.

God loves to engage people, and he loves us to engage each other. He sent us his Son as a perfect model of engagement.

In Jesus, God is with us. His incarnation objectifies God’s engagement with humanity (Jn 3:31-36). When his disciples saw Jesus, they engaged the Father. He and the Father are one (Jn 10:30). When Jesus breathed on the apostles, he engaged them with his Holy Spirit, the same Spirit with whom he fills us (Jn 20:22, Ac 13:52, Eph 5:18). Jesus sets the standard for engagement with love that never manipulates, lies, keeps a record of wrongs, or tries to control others (1Co 13). Jesus’ love engaged—why else would so many people have followed him around?

I wonder, and perhaps you wonder, if Jesus’ command to love others is not just another way of telling us to be engaging? Why else would he have told us to love people (engage them) as he loved them? He set himself as the standard. His old command to “love others as you love yourself” allows one to set oneself as the standard for love (Mt 22:39). The new command to “love one another as I have loved you” sets the bar higher—so high that I confess I cannot reach it without a boost (Jn 13:34). I need the Holy Spirit to give me a lift over the love bar. 

Humans Carry the Engagement Gene

God’s nature engages in relationships. He engages himself in the Trinity. He created humanity in his image to be engaging, and he engages us through his Holy Spirit. Our secularist, humanist, atheist, and naturalist friends might disagree with my contention. They will say that the human drive to engage evolved to insure the continuance of social structures. Marriage and religion, they may add, bring order and comfort to peoples’ lives, and unite groups of people through ceremonies, rituals, and practices. History demonstrates pre-humanoid animals pairing off to mate, running in packs to hunt, and flocking and herding together for protection. The urge to engage extends back millennia, they will tell us.

Ah, but our God painted us an older picture. God’s engagement begins far, far before humans or animals. God’s Trinitarian engagement is eternal. God engages in three persons with perfect, non-hierarchical, non-modal, inseparable relationships with no beginning or end. Engagement is not only part of God’s nature, it is the essence of his image. God is love and love engages—it is just who he is. He cannot help but engage and he cannot help but create engaging people.

God made us in his image to be able to engage him and each other. We are built to relate. Our nature carries some of his nature—much of it actually. We humans are, by nature free beings. We have the ability to make our own choices. We can choose to engage or disengage; we can even choose to engage or disengage from God. Interesting, is it not, that when a human being chooses disengagement, people call him or her odd? We tend to judge a disengaged person as somehow off the mark, mentally unstable at least, and outright insane at worst. Some people disengage for religious reasons, of course, but a disengaged person—a hermit—is one generally considered abnormal. People naturally engage other people. We cannot help it; to engage others is in our nature, inherited from our Creator.

Can we mess that up, or what? People constantly engage others for all the wrong reasons. People engage to get something out of the other person. People—even those who confess Jesus as Lord—frequently lie to each other. They engage others to manipulate them or to try to control them. Humans are consistent in our ability to make a mess of our relationships. We engage people, hurt them, and then disengage and act as if the other person caused the problem.

We engage God when we need help, and then we try to tell him how to act, how to interpret right from wrong, or we set terms under which we will continue to engage him as his friend. We actually seem to think that God needs us more than we need him. God put it in our nature to be engaging, but we use it for selfish gain.

Despite all this, God draws us in, redeems our selfishness, and gives us the ability to become selflessly engaging. He does all this through the person of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. God sent us a perfect model for engagement: Jesus.

Engagement: what a wonderful word. Last week, one of my students announced his engagement on Facebook. Within a few hours, he received dozens of best wishes, virtual verbal roses for him and his fiancé. If you or I walked around downtown and asked passersby, “Have you been engaged,” we would have a wonderful time. Of course, some people might answer gruffly, and others might just say, “No,” but as we pressed on, we would certainly hear some engaging stories. Perhaps you agree that most people would look at us with a smile and talk about a love, peace, happiness, and how he asked or she responded, or perhaps, given the times, she asked and he responded, not to mention him asking and him responding; well, you get the idea. We have no idea what we would hear if we asked people about engagement, but it sounds like fun, yes?

We might see a tear of joy and hear a touching story. We might also see tears of sadness, revelations of love lost. We might see faces stuck on what could have or should have been.

Ask the same question of a crowd of business professionals and they might begin discussing marketing concepts for engaging their customers. Evidently, the Internet enables soaring opportunities for companies to engage more people with their products. Ironically, all this virtual engagement results in a new emphasis on personal engagement. As Ecclesiastes tells us, there is nothing new under the sun. At the end of the day, people respond to people who meet their personal needs in a personal way.

Ask around the church staff crowd, and not even a prophet can predict what we might hear. Several of you might react exactly as the average man or woman on the street if I asked, “Have you been engaged?” Before I wrote this paper, I think I might have told you a lovely story about a young girl, a wolf, and a red plate, but now study and academic diligence ruins me. My first thoughts go to meanings refined and filtered by evangelism teams through church planting teams.

What does engagement mean in our crowd? Is it “every believer sharing as a trained witness”? Can you, this week, think through and buy into the idea that every single converted Christian can engage someone with his or her faith as a matter of course, as a normal part of his or her day? Can you see a day when all Christians welcome the thought of sharing Christ with others? Can the word engagement go viral? Can it become a Twenty-first Century catch phrase for spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ?

Sorry, did I hear you say, “Not so fast”? Are you thinking I am pushing another program? Hmm, maybe we need to think about this together—universal buy-in is not the easiest of projects. Just because Ken Weathersby preaches it, Van Kicklighter emails it, and Geoff Hammond ties your paycheck to it, does not mean you will buy-in, does it?

Wait! Put down that stone! Please, before someone accuses me of insubordination, let me finish my thought. I have noticed that even if God tells people to engage others with Good News, they freely ignore him. Passive aggression is a well-worn human tactic. People like us flock to conferences and sermons, nod in agreement, but year after year we see little or no return on the investment. We know people do not engage their neighbors for Christ. The evidence is clear. We simply do not see much engagement happening between North American Christians and North American non-Christians. Obviously, simply telling you to train Christians to engage will do more than saying nothing, but just as obviously, telling you to do something is not enough.

In this paper, I will outline for you the biblical basis of engagement as it precedes spreading the Gospel. Engagement is a biblical idea, and you will have a difficult time disagreeing. Engagement follows prayer; well, it does not have to follow prayer, but I hope you will agree that prayer makes engagement easier. Prayer is one of four aspects of the North American Mission Board’s evangelism emphasis God’s Plan for Sharing (GPS). My assignment, engagement, follows prayer, and is in turn, followed by sowing the Gospel and harvesting souls.

My assignment is not difficult—all I need to do is show you the biblical framework for making a friend. Making friends is the essence of biblical engagement. Most of you already agree with the propositions the Bible makes on doing good works that lead to engaging others for Christ (my boss gives me easy tasks for obvious reasons).

I, however, like challenges, so I am upping the ante. I know that your agreement with the biblical foundation of engagement is not enough to get you to engage, much less to train others to engage. Rather than simply gaining your agreement that engagement blooms from a biblical branch, I am going to help you see that you were born to engage others. You already are engaging. By the time we are done, you will think that not to engage is weird, and no one wants to be weird.

Kudos to the folks at Champion Sportwear. They sent me this nice note a few days ago. 

Hi Jack,
We saw your blog post – we’re sorry for the bad experience.  It was actually a mistake and we’re looking into.  The banner ads that you saw should have taken you to this site - http://www.hoodieremix.com
Hoodie Remix is a design competition that recently launched where the winner of the competition will receive $500 and their design may be produced by Champion in limited edition.
We think you’ll find it to be what you were looking for.  No bad intent on the “bait and switch” as you’ve identified.  Just a simple mishap – and we apologize for that.  We’re actually quite happy you found it and commented on it, as we’re now looking into solving the problem to make sure it doesn’t happen again! Further, the Championusa website plans to have a link on the homepage on or before 2/2 to showcase Hoodie Remix.
Thanks very much, and we hope you’ll consider Champion in the future.
Regards,
The Champion Hoodie Remix Team

That’s how you handle a problem. That’s how you keep loyal customers, attenders, members, friends, and employees. You messed up? You clean up. Simple.

Let’s reward the Champion hoodie team by clicking on their link and entering their contest. Next time you need cool exercise gear (yes, friend, you need to hit the pavement), think seriously about Champion.

I just returned from San Francisco. I understand why people feel like they left their hearts there. It’s one of my favorite cities. 

While there, I attended a gathering of a few believers, a handful of crazy people, and I am very sure the Holy Spirit also attended. A fine Christian man from India led singing and Bible study.He was a pretty good singer, I was terrible, and the rest of the bunch was not much better than me. I made the rejects from first three weeks of American Idol look like The Supremes with special guests Tony Bennett and Luciano Pavarotti. I have a number of really spiritual friends who would tell you that Jesus loved our singing because it was all praising his name. Maybe that’s so, but only because Jesus has some wild, divine earplugs that can do to sound the same thing he did to leprous skin–make it clean.

The crazy people were at different levels of crazy. None was mean, but several of them might be able to get that way real fast. Some needed medicine. Some needed to stop taking street candy and start taking their medicine. Some needed to stop taking each others’ medicine and take no medicine at all for several months. All of them were broken in one way or another. All of them had been cast off from polite society. All of them have friends in low places. I’ve been in the physical neighborhoods like the ones where they live, and I have watched people in their mental neighborhoods, and it ain’t pretty. But I have friends in low places too, so that does not really bother me. 

We prepared some food together. My faith got a little weak a few times. There seemed to be a lot of dirt. The girl who helped me peel potatoes; well, I just knew there’d be a finger in the pot to flavor once they went in the kitchen to boil. There wasn’t even a nail shaving. One guy wanted to shake hands with my wife, but noticed that he had some food on his hand. So, he licked the food off his hand and offered it to her. She shook it. I went looking for the Purell.

One guy mistook me for guy who made a comment he did not like. It was really clear that he was confused, but I just had to apologize. Reminded me of parts of my family.

I was deeply impressed with the people who invited me to this gathering. They showed so much kindness and acceptance of people who were very different from themselves. They have connected with Jesus at a level that sees the people I’m describing as treasure. Not lip-service treasure. Not “look at me, I work with people on the down” treasure. Real treasure. Unlike me most of the time, they see people like God sees people. I will not say more about them except that they have a better handle on Christ’s love than I do. It made me want to go live in San Francisco so I could learn from them. 

Most of my students, friends, and family are very uncomfortable with and avoid this type of gathering. I know that working with the zanies is not the focus of my ministry, but I like going to these gatherings. I come away energized.

I usually leave wishing sane Christians measured faith more by the acts of people like the ones with whom I gathered (and sang badly) than by the cool, pretty measurements that we use. This will make sense in just a minute. I had my core shaken, and I think you should know how.

One of the people there–we will call her Lin–seemed close to normal. She had a pretty smile, and was genuinely helpful. Some of her mannerisms revealed a slight quirk, but nothing all that far out of whack. She maintained eye contact. She spoke beautifully, but was obviously shy. Janet and I found her endearing. Her clothing was a bit ragged but not dirty, nor did she carry a bad odor (neither did anyone else–this was not an entirely homeless crowd). In the middle of all the singing a guy came in who was lit up like Chinese New Year (which we witnessed in Chinatown earlier in the day). He tried to give her a peck on the cheek and she cringed like someone who did not want a peck on the cheek but was used to getting one whether she wanted it or not. She whispered something that made our new attender shuffle away. During our Bible study time, Lin spoke slowly and intelligently. 

After the gathering, as we were leaving, we met a man in the parking lot who claimed to have gone to Golden Gate and Southwestern Seminaries. He was deeply intoxicated, and had somehow lost his shoes and traveled what looked like a long way in a pair of tube socks. (My mind is racing with comments about seminarians, but I need to get us to a conclusion.) Someone told him there was food inside and he lost interest in us. Our ride needed to go. We left.

A couple hours later one of our hosts called to tell me what happened inside after we left. Lin caught the inebriated seminarian at the door, sat him down, and served him a plate of food. No one asked her to do this. 

When he finished eating, she sat at his feet, carefully removed his socks, and washed his feet. No one asked her to do this either. Then, she tended his sores and helped him put on a clean pair of socks. I cried when I heard the story and I was not even there–still crying as I try to retell it.

Sometimes you get to meet a disciple of Christ. A real one–one who cannot talk the talk as well as you or me, but who walks with Jesus. It is a shaking experience. Maybe Lin causes earthquakes in San Francisco; she gave me one. If you think of it, pray for her (Lin is not her name, but God will know who you’re asking about). Pray for me too, if you think of it.

One of my former students wrote to tell me several things. Some good, some not so good–this is life, right? But one of them stopped me. He wrote, “I still need a drummer [for my church].”

In responding, I hope I was not too harsh. I told him that no, he does not need a drummer–and it’s none of your business who “him” is, so stop trying to guess.

None of you hip dudes need a drummer, ax master, sound man, or sultry singer for your church. You’re not putting together a band, but many of us who plant (me included) seem to forget this stuff. We think that we have to be uber cool or no one will come to our gatherings. That’s true is you’re starting a restaurant or night club. To start a church, you walk with Jesus, do what he says, act like he acts, and he gathers the people through you.

There is not one smidge of evidence in the New Testament that a drummer is required or even particularly desired for a church! A church craves disciples. It needs people who want to know Jesus. A church needs broken, hurting, needy, uncool, self-conscience, unconfident, addicted, divorced, shot-through-the-heart, painful, messy, questioning, longing, lonely, knot heads like…me.

So, stop that stinky “I need (blah blah blah) to get it done” thinking. It sounds like the kind of “this is mine” thinking that Jesus hated. It leads to all sorts of problems, phobias, and stress. Stress is usually at the core of burnout, failure, marriage problems, money problems, and addictions. To be honest, it does not reflect well on Jesus when his disciples run about all stressed out, wringing their hands, telling the world “if I only had…” then immediately following it with “you should act like me!” Why would anyone want THAT life? That’s no life at all. 

People crave peace, love, and happiness. They write songs to peace, love, and happiness. Jesus came to offer us his…peace, love, and joy.

The church belongs to Jesus. Let him find a drummer, or not. Love ya, mean it…