Sunday’s “Black & White” Service was a welcomed kind of Sunday for me and my family.  We were just getting back after taking a road trip to Colonial Williamsburg last week.  The trip was nice, but it was a lot of driving…fourteen hours in a minivan over two days.  It probably would take others less time, but with little kids and motion sickness we required some extra stops if you catch my drift.

After this trip you could say that we were glad to get “down to basics.”  And that is exactly what Sunday’s message was all about…getting down to the basics of what Christ demands from Christians. No flair, just a raw and penetrating call to follow Christ’s example to serve people.  First Scott said it, and then he modeled it by taking a group to serve a friend in need.

Let us never forget the mission that Team Church is here to do in the Kershaw Area…it’s simple really… to reach out to people where they are and lead them to full devotion in Jesus Christ.  How do we do that?  We reach them, first, by serving them.

Next week, expect our setup and service to be the “not so basic” norm, but don’t see it as overly complicated either.  The things we provide with children ministries, connection cafe, and fun and awesome worship is merely serving those who need a place to walk straight into from life and meet Jesus without feeling like they’re intruding on a family meeting. I hope that communicates.  I know from my personal experience that walking into a church for the first time in a long time is a lot of pressure.  Some things we do on Sunday is for our own comfort and preference, but a majority of what we do is to serve those whose names we don’t even know yet!

I’ve made up my mind to serve the Kershaw community through Team Church…for Jesus Christ.  And that’s pretty black & white to me.

Sometimes I hurt.  I am not talking about pain in the joints or headaches (although I have those too), but about emotional discomfort, mental weariness, or just soul-scorching, hard biting pain.  Sometimes I feel that pain within myself, but often it is cast upon me by listening to the pain of others.  And it sucks.  It sucks worse than anything I can imagine.

I am by nature a sympathetic person.  I usually root for the underdog.  I like rags-to-riches success stories.  But those are so rare.  People talk to me and I listen and they share some great stories that inspire me to be more.  But they also share their pain.  And let me be absolutely clear: that is perfectly fine.  Please share your pain with me, and if not with me then with someone.  I cannot tell you I have answers to heal you on the spot, but I can listen and hold you up and pray that it will all work out.  I can do that.  And I will do that.

You see there is a lot of talk about living like Jesus.  “What would He do?” and that kind of thing.  I wonder why we never ask ourselves, “What would He feel?”.  He hung on a cross and that is bad enough.  I cannot imagine hanging on a cross with railroad spikes in my hands and feet.  But even worse is the pain of having every sin ever committed past, present or future on my shoulders.  I would absolutely collapse under that weight.  And rising from the dead after an epic struggle with Death and Hell?  Forget about it.  I will be sleeping a lot when I am dead because I am worn out now.  But Jesus set an example there.  The world is not easy and people are even harder.  But we must bear with one another.  I will hear of your pain.  Will you do the same for me?

Church…Fun???  Our humor is one of the things that I love about my church.  For many who had lots of fun in their youth groups of the past, I wonder why do we have to give up having so much fun just because we moved up to “big church?”  My plan for Team Church is to keep having fun.  But, that doesn’t mean that we’re not serious about our mission “to reach out to people where they are, and lead them to full devotion in Jesus Christ.”

Reaching out to those around us means that we need to be approachable. These people that we’re reaching out to need to be inclined to us before we can connect.  That’s where a fun atmosphere can help bring people to a point where they can be lead to Jesus.

Mark Driscoll wrote in Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions, “Humor is incredibly helpful to the gospel.” And for the culture he is reaching in one of the least churched cities in America, he believes, “humor is a missiological tool that is necessary for successful evangelism in our culture.”

If you find that hard to swallow that humor is necessary, just give some thought to how you might measure up to the common Seattle resident described by Driscoll.

The average person listens to talk radio comedic banter on the way to work, downloads funny YouTube videos during break, listens to more drive-time radio banter on the commute home, watches a sitcom after dinner, possibly tunes in to a stand-up comic on Comedy Central, and watches someone like Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, or David Letterman before dozing off. To reach people, we need to speak their language, and their language obviously includes comedy.

I remember visiting a few churches when Alison and I got married.  A couple times a “visitation group” of men dressed in suits came calling at our apartment after we had visited their church.  Awkward!  They were nice enough, but they weren’t a lot like us.  I wasn’t inclined to go back to that church because we didn’t share much in common with them.

However, we did end up going to a church where the Sunday School was filled with young married couples that enjoyed going out to eat after church, playing ball, and video games.  In other words, we enjoyed doing some of the same fun things together.

I’m not going to say that lost people are sitting around thinking, “If only church were more fun, then I’d get saved.” They’re not. But those of us who are going are enjoying church more than ever. It’s not the only reason, but it’s one more reason to share my faith experience with others.

Today I believe I am going to just give you a link to someone else’s blog.  Recently I have been struggling with my own identity in my professional life.  That term “professional life” sounds funny to me, because I really don’t see myself as professional at anything.  I really like being a husband and a dad.  I enjoy writing stuff like this each week.  I enjoy teaching others a variety of different things from Jesus to American history.  But mostly I just like being alive and free to talk to people I encounter.  So all those thoughts pile up and I start wondering where is my “professional life” taking me?  My wife stumbled upon this blog of one of my favorite authors and it really struck me.  I am not trying to cop out of writing a full-length blog on my own (after all what is a full-length blog?).  I just really wanted to share this with you and see if it speaks to you like it spoke to me.  I hope you enjoy it.

http://donmilleris.com/2010/02/14/following-god-and-farming/

On the Journey with You,

Scott