Full Throttle

My pastor likes NASCAR.
I like my pastor anyway.
He is so full of passion!
Thrills! Spills!
The lost are saved!
I really like him.

And I have always loved the church. There is something about the Church - the corporate body of Jesus - that seems magnificent to me. I used to get very caught up in serving at church. Not for any of the right reasons. Just to be part of it all - the Thrills, the Spills!

I soon found I was so worn out from serving that I started not to care very much anymore. The same sorts of things kept happening. Like a revolving door the same issues and questions came around again and again. The music was too loud. The nursery was disorganized. I became critical. Nothing was good enough for me. I wasn't good enough for me. I just sort of felt like sleeping in when Sunday rolled around.

But I kept attending. I kept seeing those lovely faces. And those lovely moments that surprised us all every time. The altar call. The testimony. The renewed committment. The great big thermometer with mercury squirting out the top! Lovely.

It helped so much to step back. I didn't step out, just back. One step. I slowed myself. I breathed. I thought. I stopped. No longer a Mover or a Shaker, I felt content to be a helper. It was a life-changing thing for me. To let the others thrill and spill. To walk gently among them. Quiet. Peculiar. Slow.

We arrived at church last Sunday to find that the annual fall mobilization is on. The vision has been cast. The direction plotted. And our motto for the year is this:

"Racing Into The Future Full Throttle"

The husband smiled at me and I smiled back. Kindness. It is very nearly the exact antithesis of my philosophy of life!

For a few days after hearing it, I walked around the house saying things like, "Okay you, slow down there. Why are you racing into the future full throttle? Let's all just speak quietly and move slowly." We laughed and I shook my head.

And yet, there is a sort of style in the whole thing. The banner across the front of the sanctuary. The pastor in full NASCAR gear. The countdown clock running. It is not really about beauty. But it is about hearts set on a prize. It is about resisting inertia. It is about passion and love for those lovely lost.

And I am right in the middle of it. Oh, maybe standing toward the back. Maybe listening instead of speaking. Maybe playing my bass just a little behind the drummer. Maybe I'm just the one who stands holding the door.

zoom zoom.

Big Jesus

On a road trip down I-75 this summer,
I saw Big Jesus.

I stared, gape-mouthed, out the window of our SUV at the immense and oddly proportioned statue of Jesus on the side of the highway. This Big Jesus had thick arms raised to heaven, and behind him was the church that built him.

I wondered if the statue turned out the way they thought it would.

I wondered, because for one thing, the statue is terrible. And I wondered because I have often made big plans and then watched them grow and grow and grow into something much bigger and much worse than the grand idea I had in the first place.

I thought about those church people in the conference room of the church, planning something new. I thought about the first person who suggested it, and the others who excitedly joined in, and the pastor who endorsed it. I thought of all the reasons these good people had for building a big Jesus in front of their church. Most likely honorable reasons. Most likely for the glory of God! But I think that God's glory is a bit out of our control as humans.

We tend to think of God's glory, when we're working in the church, as a little bit of a public relations opportunity. So we write a song that will help everybody really capture the idea of his greatness. We construct a building that will mirror his immensity by its size. And we create a church service that is all fashioned around drawing people in to feel his welcoming arms, and his love.

What's wrong with that? Nothing except when we start thinking that maybe he actually needs a little help with his glory. Because God's got the glory already, you know.

We're just the ones wandering around trying to think up the best ways that we can to tell the world about it, that's all.

And as long as we're human, we'll be writing cheesy songs about Jesus, and we'll be awkwardly Welcoming people to Jesus, and building expensively huge churches for Jesus. And it'll be all wrong, and clumsy, and out of proportion and off-key, as long as we're human.

I think Big Jesus can handle that.