Of all the words that have become arbitrary to me on the World Race (‘bathroom,’ ‘soon,’ ‘ready,’) church might be my favorite. It could be anywhere from 30 minutes to 7 hours. It could be sitting and drinking tea, chatting with high school kids, sharing testimonies and sermons, impromptu worship, or prayer that’s simultaneously translated into 4 different languages. It could be in an upstairs apartment flat, by candlelight in the middle of the Indian jungle, in a prayer hall in Swaziland, or under a canopy of sticks in the Mozambican village. It could be 5 people or 5000, and you should probably be ready to give introductions as well as a “special song item.” You’ll probably get there by way of an incredibly overcrowded bus or a motorbike; a long walk or a truck bed that can certainly hold 35 if you squeeze in tight enough.
Here I sit in a Nepali “church.” There’s a sleeping, feverish toddler to my right and a city view to my left. The bus horns blaring in from the open windows kind of drown out the sermon sometimes. My teammate is sharing a word through a translator at the front of the room. I’m sitting on a worn homemade cushion whose tired seams are coming apart at all four corners. Waves of nausea keep hitting me; it’s just a touch of the illness (plague?) that has stricken my team over the past week. I’m going strong on hour 3 of this “church” service. I couldn’t even give you an educated guess of when it will end, or how we’ll get home, or even what the Nepali words of the worship songs mean. Jesus is here though, right?
In Ephesians 5:25, Paul writes about how Christ loved the church, and he gave himself up for her; how he nourishes and cherishes the church. And it hits me in that nauseous, complacent moment: Christ loves this. Christ loves the community of believers gathered on the floor of this apartment flat of underground Kathmandu. Just as much as he loves the African women sitting on straw mats and doing their tribal dance back in Mozambique. He loves the out-of-tune voices joining in worship together, the mistranslations and the squirming children and the tarp that may or may not be dripping leaky rainwater down your back. He loves the city noise that’s not quite louder than the worship songs, and the dogs that wander down the front aisle, and the young girls twirling their flags in worship in the back. He loves my brothers and sisters. He loves my teammates sitting around me, the man playing drums to my right, the 6-year old kissing his little sister’s cheek in front of me. He loves the pastor sharing prayers, even if the only word I can understand is Amen. I think He loves the uncertainty. Maybe he even loves that the most.
It’s all about dropping your expectations, right? And I guess I wonder in this moment, “what if I weren’t here?” I’d probably be somewhere really safe. Really known and comfortable, where I know exactly what will happen next. And I wonder what would be happening if I were at home. There would probably be nothing unsure about my hour or my day; maybe even my week. And I think there are times when we romanticize comfort during adventure, just as much as we romanticize adventure during comfort. And, sitting there on the cushion-floor I wonder the most: why would I want that? Why would I want predictability when Jesus has so much more for me? More so, why would anyone want to know what happens next? Hasn’t that been so much of my life; of all of our lives?
The great prophet Taylor Swift once said, “We’re all bored; we’re all so tired of everything.” Aren’t we all getting a little bit tired of the known and comfortable? Maybe you get out of your warm bed every morning, you eat your breakfast that takes exactly 3.5 minutes to prepare before your morning commute. Maybe it takes between 12 and 16 minutes depending on the traffic. You get to work or school and you do your job and you drive home. And If you’re lucky, you get to see some of the people you love somewhere along the way. If you’re luckier, they love you back. Hopefully, you get to do something you enjoy or see a smile that warms your heart.
Taylor’s talking about our generation; maybe she’s talking about your life. But I think she could just as easily have been talking about the average definition of “church.” If you really think about it, aren’t you afraid of comfortable? Of normal? I think it’s important to admit you’re bored.
Sure, the World Race is pretty radical, but I think Jesus wants to change your life wherever you are. Jesus was a pretty radical guy himself, and I think the last thing He wants for you is predictability, boredom even. And I’d even venture to say that if you’re bored with your faith, something needs to change. That’s not faith at all.
So I’m not sure if I’ll give myself the authority to make a call to action, but I want to at least make a call to uncomfortability. A call against boredom. Not even a call to the church specifically, or to America, or to believers, but just to anyone. Take it or leave it, I suppose. Maybe it’s for you, and maybe it’s not. But promise me, at the very least, to stop being bored. Let Jesus make you uncomfortable. Go do something unpredictable; change your expectations for yourself.
Hey, just go out there and make Taylor Swift proud.
