{Disclaimer–These next 2 blogs are a bit lengthier than normal, but totally worth your while. Do read on.}
My shoe-lace gets caught, I get tripped up, and fall down an escalator in a crowded building, with people bustling about. You know: the ugly, catastrophic fall where everyone stops, gasps so hard the air in the room is sucked out, and all stare directly at you, wondering who will be the first to ask if you’re okay?
In all honesty, that’s already happened to me. I’m clumsy, so it was bound to. And it wasn’t all that bad {except for the fact that I bruise really easily}. Hello black and blue, and a dose of bruised pride too.
But an even greater fear still is settling. Settling for untruths from people and from satan. Settling for the norm. Settling for what society deems as important or necessary. Just…settling.
I know I’ve already begun to settle for the “American dream”. I’ve let myself become comfortable and complacent with what society says my life should look. Worse still is that I’ve let society define for me the way church should look,the way church should act, and how church is so accessible and easy to “get into”. Not that it’s some secret society or club, but very few churches are making membership a key priority these days. They’re okay with people coming in and out, because they’re more concerned with quantity rather than quality. And I know that I could pick a corner {any corner, really, because in America, churches are erected faster than most other buildings or organizations}, and step into that place on any given Sunday morning, afternoon, or evening {because congregations are growing so quickly, we now need to have 5 services to accommodate our agenda, pallet, and preference}. I could stare down at my cell phone and pretend I’m preoccupied with texting someone, grab some free coffee without glancing up from my Splenda packet, fill up a seat with my consumerist self-motives, jot down notes quickly like I’m back in college again, and slip out, completely unnoticed, without having said a word to anyone, but getting refueled just enough to get me through my next stressful week of work and life.
In all honesty, this is a reality for me, or at least it used to be. Before I started going to a church in the Westport area of Kansas City, church was, self-admittedly, something I felt obligated to do, a game to play, something to fill up the “Sunday” space in my Planner {because who loves an efficient, well-filled-out Planner? This lady does.}
But then I got a healthy dose of medicine that my soul needed.
And longed for {if we’re still being real}.
The pastors at this church were different; they teach richly about what life with Jesus should & can look like, but they also challenged me a lot, and didn’t allow me to fall into the norm. As a matter of fact, what they did was so contrasting and almost contradicted what most people think churches should do: they encouraged people like me to get out. I’m serious—but they did so in the most humble, loving way possible, all the while encouraging me to stop taking up a seat that could be utilized by someone who truly wanted to gain something from the Lord, with pure motives and a zealous heart for the Gospel.
Looking back now, I think that challenge was a huge turning point for me. And I began to view church at face value—which is to say I began to see clearly, perhaps for the first time ever, that church is not confined to four walls and a concert each week; initially, The Church in the first century was created to be a group of people who were radically seeking to follow Jesus with all of their heart. The implications of that were vast and great; just take a look at the book of Acts, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Those implications were and have sense changed things drastically for the Kingdom of God.
So I took a step back and asked myself, “Suz, what are you really doing here?” It was a humbling question, to say the least, but The Body of Christ was challenging me to really dig in and invest in something greater than myself, regardless of the cost or risk. {My business mind is quickly drifting to “Any investment requires great risk; but great risk often yields great reward.”} So like with any good investment, I was finally ready to “buy-in”, so to speak.
Being on The World Race has solidified in me this great need within American Churches. The church is not a building–it's a group of people who are willing to go deep and go far and wide to the ends of the earth to share love. Or sit still and really pour into their surrounding community. The church isn't a destination or an end point. It's a means. Or it should be, right? I’ve been reading an amazing book that has been on my “To-Read List” for months now titled Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, by pastor and author David Platt. I’m only on chapter three and it’s already changing something in me. David “challenges Christians to wake up, trade in false values rooted in the American dream, and embrace the notion that each of us is blessed by God for a global purpose” {Wess Stafford}.
I’m only on month 2 of my Race, and this change is beginning to take root in all that I’ve witnessed and experienced in regards to church in other regions of the world. Being in the beautiful, but sweltering hot country of El Salvador has already proven to be a tougher month than last. I sweat when we only walk 50 yards with our small packs on. I sweat sitting down in the shade. I sweat when I merely think about sweating. It’s stupid, really, but we are in the bosom of the equator, so what did I expect?
And more than that, we're blessed immensely.
…TO BE CONTINUED…
