For those of you who have been following the site for some time now, you’ll notice a distinct shift in the content that is being put up on the site. For the next 9 weeks, I’ll be posting material that I use in my grade 10 and 12 Social Studies class, my World Religions, and my Ethics classes. Then we’ll be returning to our regular scheduled programming.

For now, this is a cartoon series that I’m using in my World Religions class – a cartoon series developed by a Muslim cartoonist on the 99 names of God found within the Muslim religion.

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Set to David Crowder…How He Loves.

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I’m excited to go to church. I’ve woken early, driven 45 minutes down the highway, and arrived at church with time to shake the greeters’ hands, make small talk in the foyer, and find a comfortable seat.

How very spiritual of me.

I listen to great worship music, engage with a thoughtful and informative speaker, and  leave with the five-hundred other very spiritual people who have made the trek to church this morning.  I walk across the street to a coffee shop, sit down in huge comfy chair and think:

“Why is this church stuff so important?”

Attending church has been a mixed blessing for me.  As a former youth pastor, church has been both a sanctuary of thoughtful challenge, healing, and creativity as well as a battleground of intimidation, pressure, and mistrust.  I have participated in church services where protection-ism and tradition dominate.  I’ve sat in services where the greeting from the front is about as authentic as the soap-water coffee in the back.

I’ve also had the joy of experiencing seasons of patient healing, where a body of people has surrounded me and loved me back to health.  I’ve seen what church can look like when people drop the agenda and engage in relationship.  I’ve experienced church where the overriding desire was to live life together, and to be real and authentic and it has all happened, surprisingly, within the walls of a church.

Mixing the C’s

When talking about church, it’s important not to get confused between big ‘C’ Church and small ‘c’ church.  So often, I hear that it’s important to attend church on Sunday morning, as if that’s as far as affiliation needs to go.  And so many people approach Sunday as the day given to God, and walk out the doors having completed their duty of faith.  They focus on the small ‘c’ church, where programs and outreaches and bible studies take place.  It reduces faith to a to do item in my calendar.

If that’s the apex of the Christian faith, then I’m not interested.

Church is more than just a meeting. Church is all about being a community where inspiration to do greater good takes place, where deeper love is explored, where enriching relationships occur, where authentic living is the goal.   Church is supposed to be a community where individuals are cared for, where gifts are used effectively, where I am challenged to grow beyond myself.  This is the capital ‘C’ Church that I so frequently yearn for.

I have heard the analogies that the church is like a campfire, where I need to return on a weekly basis to warm up my soul.  Or that the church is a well of water, where I can drink and be refreshed and then reenter the weekly desert.  The reality, however, is that church can become a bit mundane, and I struggle to keep it from becoming a religious duty.  In my own years of youth ministry, there were many times when I found myself glancing at my watch, waiting for the end of the service.  I was frequently more refreshed by the football game after church than by the service itself.  And again, the question arose:

Why is church so important?

The small ‘c’ church can be a time where we  catch a glimpse the capital ‘C’ church, even amidst the programmed service.

Programmed whispering

1 Kings 19:11-12 reads The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”  Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.”

A gentle whisper.  I expect God to show Himself using the grandest methods available.  After all, He is God, isn’t He?  So in my own life, I look for the powerful wind, the earthquake, the fire.  In church services, I have defaulted to looking for God in the sermons, in the worship music, in the altar call.  And that is good, and God can be found there, but sometimes, God is calling me to something quieter.

A whisper.

If you find yourself at church, looking for God in the big elements of the service and not finding Him, consider that God may be there whispering.  The problem with whispering is that it requires effort to hear.  It involves an expectant perceptivity where you and I believe God will speak to us in any circumstance – even if it’s not in the schedule.  Whether you feel your church is the best in the world, or needs improvement, as long as it’s biblical, God is in that service.  Remember Matthew 18:20.  In The Message it looks like this, “when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”  One of the main reasons church is important is simply this – we go because God is there.

Hiding the Church in the foyer

For me, hearing the whisper of God at church happened quite by accident.  I was running in between the sound booth and the stage (ah, the life of a youth pastor) and was stopped by an elderly woman who wanted to talk.  And as we talked, we talked about meaningful things.  Amidst the rush and pressure of the church Sunday program, I was met with someone who wanted to engage meaningfully.

We missed the worship, and we very nearly missed the sermon (and I was preaching).  Yet I went away from the service with a taste of God’s vision for the church.  Through the moment with my elderly friend, God whispered truths of love, meaning, and hope into my life.  I witnessed a miracle in the foyer, while the worshippers filled the sanctuary with music.

Since that time, I’ve learned to be more attentive to the capital ‘C’ church.  I watch for those moments when God’s vision for the Church comes alive.  I anticipate moments when we get it right, when people who are hurting, who are thriving, who are living life surround me and together we listen for the voice of God.  If that happens on Sunday morning, or in a Bible study, or as while throwing a frisbee together with friends in the park, God is whispering.  This is the lifeblood of the Church.

How do we become more aware of the voice of God through the Church?  It’s less spiritual than you might think.  Here are the things that I’ve found are helpful in my own life:

> Live Expectantly. Pray that God would allow you to hear from Him today.  As you walk through your day, don’t attempt to manufacture some deep spiritual experience.  It will happen, and it may be something as simple as a two-minute conversation.

> Watch Actively. This is key to the whole experience. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah is instructed to go out and stand.  Watch for the voice of God, but let His gentle Spirit be your guide.  To often I wait for the momentous movements of God and I miss out on the small intimate moments.

> Reflect Wholeheartedly. When those wonderful gentle whispers happen in my own life, I make sure to say thanks to God, because He speaks so much love into my life in those moments.  This is not a forced moment of long prayer times; it often is more heartfelt with a simple thank you for God’s goodness.  It is these moments that keep my own spirit gentle and tuned in to God’s voice.

I’m excited to go to Church this week.  I’m looking forward to meaningfully engaging with those around me.  But most of all, I’m excited to hear from the gentle whisper of God.  After all, that’s the foundational essence of the Church.

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We live in an age of entitlement.  The plans of our lives need to happen, and they need to happen immediately.  If we want something, there is very little to stop us from purchasing it.  Getting in shape, making more money, achieving our goals – all of these are accomplishments that, if we had our way, we would have now (or in the next week) with as little effort as possible.  This sort of thought is evidenced in our culture, as found in this article on CNN.

What happens when life doesn’t play by our rules?  I love the ending line of the article, “this is not what we had planned.”  It’s as though putting time into advancing our education, investing our effort into some unseen future, or planning for a favorable event to occur automatically guarantees success.

Coming out of college, I felt letdown by the fact that I couldn’t make the transition from four years of higher education into the exact job that I wanted.  I invested the time, effort and money into my future.  Yet my place of employment, while not terrible, was not the dream job I’d envisioned.

How could life be so unpredictable?

I’ve found that these same feelings of entitlement often creep up in my faith.  So often, I feel discouraged by the fact that my relationship with God “isn’t good enough”.  It is not deep enough, emotionally-involved enough, flashy enough.  Even during times when I’ve checked off all my spiritual guidelines for the week, I frequently find that my faith chooses not to move any discernable mountains.

Thankfully, God builds in to us using more impacting, long-term methods.  2 Peter 1:5-7 tells us that we are to “make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.”  These are the working tools of a God who wants to see us grow into mature brother and sisters in Christ.  So I need to constantly remind myself that God knows better than my tyrannical feelings of entitlement do.  And I need to ask myself, am I living the life that God wants for me, or am I listening to the voice of entitlement? God wants to build into me a character that will last, no matter what life chooses to throw at me.  And that is more than enough.

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Moments.

They show themselves in the morning cup of coffee, through a friend, in the warm sun. They resonate to the deepest part of my soul. They surface throughout the day, brush past my emotions, and linger. They are stories of people who have loved and been loved. Moments. They nudge.

I recently read about a mother from Edmonton who was living her last Mother’s Day. On the front of the Edmonton Journal was a picture of her and her two kids, 13 year old son Brett and 16 year old daughter Taryn.

Her name was Tamara Campbell. She talked about loving her kids and, in her unique circumstance, about taking no moment for granted. The picture in the headline of the article shows her smiling and being close to her kids. And in that smile I see an authentic love of a mother who cherishes every moment with her children and loved ones. This picture was, after all, taken before her last Mother’s Day. She was fully aware of this. She had terminal cancer.

She passed away two days after Mother’s Day, two days after sharing her story with the world.

This shared moment has deeply impacted me. Her story touched the community of Edmonton. And yet it was compellingly simple. She loved her kids, her family, her friends. She served as a nurse at a children’s hospital, caring for families with kids afflicted with cancer. Most importantly, she loved. This is her legacy.

It is in these moments of simple realization that I am drawn to understand what is truly important. I spend so much of my day dreaming of something I’d love to own, or an activity I’d like to do, or who I’d like to talk to, or how much money I’d like to make. As Henry Thoreau wrote, It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

The simple reality is this: God surrounds me with people that I can love right now. My legacy is not who I coached, or what I accomplished, or what I built or scratched together. My legacy is who I loved and how I did it.

So as I plan out my next steps in today or tomorrow, and schedule how I am planning to live the next few moments or days of my life, I need to remember the simple realities. The legacy of my life. I need to remember to play with my kids with reckless abandon, to love my family with boundless passion, to embrace my friends with grateful joy, and to welcome those strangers that have been put in my path with endless hope.

These are the moments that move me.

(If you’d like to read the original story, it’s found here)

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