Gospel in a Box

So a few weeks ago I was bummed to realize that I was bringing un-Christian friends to church to "hear the Gospel." I know that sounds weird, but I was honestly disappointed. You know why? Becasue I started beleiveing the lie that I have to take people to a place, a building, essentially a box with four walls and a professional speaker in order to deliver the gospel message. Since when did the Gospel happen only in a box?

The reality is that the Gospel is a story. Stories are so much bigger than places. Stories can be told whether you're in a building or in your neighbor's front yard. As soon as you start beleiveing that you have to bring your un-Christian friends to "church" to hear the Gospel is the instant you have an anorexic view of the God who is everywhere. If you want to share the Gospel, simply live out your story. I promise you, people will experience the gospel, but it will not be bound by a time or a location.

I play volleyball with a bunch of un-Christians on Saturday mornings. One thing I've noticed is how bold they are when they talk about their sexual escapades and how amazingly stupid drunk they got the night before. One time, a dude named Ty I was playing with turned around in between plays and said, "Hey beautiful, I wanna lick your pussy"' to a random girl walking by. I finally spoke up! "If you ever fucking say shit like that on my fucking court, you're not gonna play Ty. That is so fucking disrespectful." Unbelievably, the guy apologized to me.

Why did it take me that long to speak up for what I believe? Because somewhere deep inside, I am not convinced that God and his story is something that people actually need. The walls of unbelief inside us all, keep us from living the Gospel. If I have not experienced the whole gospel as a freeing, life-changing, counter-cultural gift from the loving God, I will share it with a half-passion or no passion at all. So here's my challenge: If you are not living the gospel, check and see if you actually have experienced the full gospel.

What do I mean the full gospel? I mean the gospel where people get healed of their diseases, emotional wounds are turned to scars that no longer hurt, demons are being exposed and cast out, and your life is one big adventure that cannot be explained apart from a risk-taking God. If you have expereinced this, you will not hesitate to share it. The Gospel will be like a baby that you have actually given birth to, with all it's joy and pain, and now all you want to do is show it off, tell how much it weighs and let people hold it. If you are like me, I have miles on the journey to go in experiencing that kind of gospel. But as I experience more and more, I am further convinced that the gospel is not simply told, it is experienced, lived, and given away. My life is becoming exposed, outside the walls of a building, my story is becoming living, breathing, and transformative because I am experiencing the transformative God. Sharing the gospel is becoming a lifestyle that happens when I'm at the bar, in my home, surfing, watching a movie, reading, getting coffee, and laughing. My story, swallowed whole by the story of Jesus, is the Gospel. My "Gospel in a Box" just became the "Gospel that is Everywhere and Anytime."

Pastor This

A couple years ago I used to lead a small group. We had one girl named Ru who was an amazing evangelist. She brought new people almost every week. After a while though, she started going out with a Buddhist guy she was trying to convert. Also during this time, she began to question parts of her faith that she had taken for granted before. She also began sleeping with her Buddhist boyfriend and I think she was a little ashamed of her lifestyle. Instead of coming to the people who she should have been able to trust the most, however, she ran. Our evangelist eventually stopped coming to group all together. As I've reflected on this and other incidents, it seems to me that people do not see the Church as a safe place to air their dirty laundry. People do not feel accepted if they really let people into their messy, doubting lives. And like Ru, they feel that they must leave the Church to explore their freedom! Why, is this the case?

You know why? Because the Church can't handle messy, searching, questioning people. The Church is threatened by doubters and question askers and intelligently searching people. And I think we're threatened because we just might not have asked that question and the foundation of our own faith may be rocked and split in half from the foundation if we do. So what do we do with doubters? We tell them to doubt outside the Church! We tell them to search elsewhere. And when young people asking questions get shut down, "elsewhere" is exactly where they go.

So here's what I say. Let people be messy in the Church. Allow people who've never felt ok cussing to cuss a little, let people figure out how far the purity line is. Let people drink. Let people mess up. Let people fail. Let people explore, question, search, and be messy, and let them do it in the Church!

The Christian life is not about keeping sin out of Christians. When we focus on getting rid of sin, we ultimately focus on getting rid of sinners. And unfortunately we unknowingly send the message, "Don't come back til you're done asking your questions. You can come back when you don't challenge the status quo."

This is exactly why our churches are filled with people who are dull and boring because they are people that never felt inwardly strong enough to ask the hard questions about God and life. If we want alive people, we need to be a Church that invites people who push the line. We need to be ready to pastor people on the edge of failure and unbelief. If we don't, we will not have sin in the Church, but we will also not have many people. So pastors, if you want alive Christians, then pastor the people who make life challenging. Pastor people who with hands in your face are screaming, "Don't come any closer," because underneath is a heart that says, "I'm so afraid to be loved." Pastor this.