How Jesus Would Do Church

Over the past weekend, Americans celebrated our nation’s Independence Day.  As I was perusing through some of the thoughts and sayings of the founding fathers and Presidents past, I came across something that sums up what America is all about.  The inscription is found on the Statue of Liberty, next the place where many immigrants entered the country for the very first time.  Part of the inscription reads:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

What strikes me is that this is the church that Jesus called His disciples to establish.  This, on the doorway to America, sums up what church is supposed to be about!

Today in our country, there are many tired, poor people.  People who have been laid off, and are now under a mountain of debt.  Every day people, living 20 to a room in a one bedroom apartment if they’re lucky, living on the street if they’re not.  These people yearn to breathe the free air, to find a place to belong.

So where are we, then, church?  Are we holding up the lamp to invite these people in?  Are we welcoming them into our community with open arms?  Are we doing anything at all?

The answer, sadly, is no.  We have our own problems, and that we can find the time to come to church an hour each week is a stretch.  We don’t have time to worry about other people.  Heck, we can’t even get away from our cell phones for a whole hour, let alone help anyone else.  It’s just too inconvenient. 

Odds are, there are plenty of people who sit next to us each week that are in dire situations.  We don’t care, because we just got a text message to meet up at the Olive Garden for lunch of Pastor Dany would ever get done with the sermon.  And the people who need help, they don’t dare ask for it because it might offend the rest of us sitting through the worship service, waiting for it to be over so we can get back to our lives.

Pastor Bill hit on it this past Sabbath.  Our church, even our Deeper service, has gone into entropy.  We just…don’t have the time for…anything, really.  We come each week for our “church fix” and if we’re not quite entertained enough, we gripe about how the service sucked this week.  We’ve hit entropy, and we’re so apathetic about it that we really don’t care.

But what if it weren’t like that?  What if we took a genuine interest in the people around us?  What if we shut off the cell phones, stopped talking to our friends, and got to know the people sitting in front and behind us each week?  Got to know their story and shared our story with them. 

If someone was having a great week, we’d know it and celebrate it TOGETHER!  If someone was going through hardship or suffering, we’d be there for them and we’d go through it TOGETHER.  What if we reached out to the poor, the tired, the down-trodden, the homeless, the disenfranchised and said “Join our community!  We’re broken, tired sinners, too!  Let’s go through this journey of life TOGETHER!”

Can you imagine what worship would be like then?  We’d come to Deeper each week, not out of some feeling of obligation, but because that’s where our FAMILY is going to be!  They are there for you, and you want to be there for them!  Each week, we come together and thank God for giving us all the people around us!  What kind of place would Deeper be if everyone there knew that they were accepted, no matter what?  That Jesus LOVES us in spite of ourselves! 

And now the big question: How do we make that happen?