" I Love This Church"

Those of you who read this blog from time to time know that I like to listen to music! All types. Just recently in this area we have been given access to a comtemporary Christian music station, and I LOVE it! I have confessed on an earlier post that I don't have the appreciation for this beautiful music that I should, and that I wish I had listened to it with my boys and instilled a love for it in them. On that, I failed. But because of this new station, my heart is being filled with some wonderful songs of praise and worship. For any in the Searcy area not familiar with it, the setting is 101.5 on your FM dial.

Having said that, yes........I still listen to other kinds of music. And before this new station came to town, I fell in love last year with Toby Keith's song "I love this Bar". Every time I heard it....yeah, all 5 million times....I thought of two things. One, the theme song from "Cheers" (a bar, for you young folks) that had the lyrics "Sometimes you wanta go where everybody knows your name". Second, I thought how wonderful it would be for us to be able to sing some of Toby's lyrics describing our churches and the people we have drawn to fellowship with us. I wonder how many of us could truthfully sing about our congregations "We got losers, chain smokers, boozers, bikers, thirsty hitch-hikers, broken hearted fools, suckers, hustlers, fighters, short skirts, blue collar boys, rednecks, dancing girls, and hookers." And if we did, how many of them would be singing the refrain of the song "I love this church, it's my kind of place! Just walk in through the front door puts a big smile on my face. It ain't too far, come as you are! I love this church!"

Yeah, it's an old plea......but the truth is still in it. And that plea is we have to be about the business of drawing people to Jesus. We may do it thru all kinds of ways, but it has to be HIM that we are pushing and advocating and talking about. Remember Donald Miller telling in "Blue Like Jazz" about trying to plant a church in the inner city of Portland, and after several weeks or months they were just about to throw in the towel? Then they tried one last desperate strategy........ they just started telling people about Jesus. Seems like he said just within a few short weeks they had over 500 people coming! Jesus is the Gospel, Jesus is the Good News. And getting back to the first part of my post, these are the people whom HE was drawn to. "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. For I have not come to call the the righteous, but sinners."

When will our churches become as welcoming and as attractive to the down and out as our bars? Here's a suggestion.......maybe when we love those people MORE than we love being "unique and distinct". If we truly wanted to be distinct, we should be filling our membership books with ex-hookers, druggies, alcoholics, and homosexuals. That would qualify under the heading of "unique". That is what is going on at North Atlanta. I am sure it is going on in other places too. People are excited about having hope again, about having life again! Abundant life. And the good news is too good to keep to themselves, and they are telling others! Imagine that! :)

And it is there for anybody and everybody.....including the ones in the bars. I believe He would have been in there with them, not just knowing their name, but even the number of hairs on their head.

"Feed my sheep."