Point Number Two & What I Didn't Know

Next Post coming soon... Life as a Teenage Super Christian

So now, for my second point. Do you remember it from way back there? It was this: My first real encounter with Jesus came somewhere along my 8th year of life. I know it was real for at least two reasons. One... (read "The Long Walk I Didn't Know About) Two, at the moment my surrender came there was the most unquestionable transition in my thinking and the way I felt. There is a part of me that wonders if my reflection on this memory is really accurate. I know I was only eight years old but I really had a sense that in that moment something dramatic happened. Let me be quick to say that the setting was not dramatic at all. Sometime during the previously mentioned Sunday morning war with the back of the pew God clued my oldest brother in to what was happening. I find this fairly amazing for a number of reasons. Mostly, unlike you might assume, my brother did not attend the same church. So there was no opportunity for him to "witness" (pun intended) my Sunday struggle. He didn't see my tearful face or grieving spirit. But somehow, he knew it was time.

One day, very simply, we knelt by the bunk beds and he shared with me Jesus' love, my eight year old brokenness and my need for God to save me. We prayed a very traditional prayer, I wept like baby and when I stood up I felt lighter than air! I can't imagine what great load of guilt I was carrying at such a young age. I was one of those really good kids who never did much wrong. I liked the way "adult" words bounced around in my mouth on the playground, and snitching an extra cookie when I wasn't supposed to. But that was about it. But no kidding, when I prayed to God to become real to me, some massive darkness lifted from my soul. And there my problem began.

I didn't notice it right away, but the seeds of it were planted long before that moment. Years of churchiness before and after coalesced into a flawed understanding of the life I had just entered. I toddled along into my teen years and got active in a church youth ministry and in a church that was focused on what I now realize were "engineered ministry moments". It's that word "moment" that would become the source of my struggle. In this same church, years later, I would become one of the staff members who was devoted to engineering even greater, more dazzling moments than the ones that came before. I had grown up in an era of church musicals with orchestras and acting. The latest greatest names in church music performed on our stage. The most notable evangelists provoked us to more faithful service. And over time each successive event had to outdo the next. It was like a drug addiction, or eating chocolate. The first taste is sweet, the initial high is gigantic. But over time it takes more and more of your particular drug to satisfy you. in my ministry and Christian life the monkey on my back had become pursuing the next big event, or moment, and it absolutely HAD to be bigger and better than before. Sometimes I find myself being lured back in the direction of doing ministry that way. No doubt, it was exciting. There were some great times, and thank God! There were many times that in spite of my own stupidity and lust for recognition God even used my silly pursuits as His avenue to touch people's lives. You may be asking yourself, "What's wrong with all that anyway? Isn't that how a lot of churches still do things?" I guess some of my answers would go like this.

At least in my own life, both as a "regular" Joe working in the church and, later as a Pastor, I spent so much of my time chasing the next high. And when it didn't happen, or my efforts fell short the crash was personally devastating. I attached so much of my value to how well these events came off that when something was lacking, I was lacking. I can recall times getting so upset over missed lighting cues, blown musical notes, feedback, poor attendance and a countless host of other things that were beyond my own control. In the process of getting upset I trampled the spirit a number of wonderful people who bore the focus of my ire.

God began to speak to my heart about how wrong that all was about 2 years into full time ministry. A lot of churches do still operate in a way that looks, at least in appearance, just like what I've described. All I can say is that I hope their hearts are in a different place than mine and my church's were. I'm speaking in fairly broad terms here, but the end result of being who we were was that people and their eternal condition became a commodity that we tried to buy with glitz, glamour and nifty tricks. As soon as we completed the transaction in the form of church membership or "salvation", we had a church culture that moved on to the next transaction. And most of those who came, if they stayed, seemed to be caught in some kind of holding pattern. They, along with me, never really seemed to get "better", or closer to God, or more Christlike than when they first arrived. In fact, in so many cases, they seemed to become worse people.

Collectively, I think we were all really grumpy about that fact that we were racing from one big moment or event to the next. The amount of effort was huge, the sense of community was as fleeting as the moments. I knew in my own heart that I had been tricked somehow into believing that this way of living the "Christian" life was how God intended it. Tons of frenetic effort. One big moment after another. What I didn't know was that God had said repeatedly that this was not what He intended at all. If anything, this life was supposed to be a journey. A long walk. A marathon. Endurance was the motto of the trip. I realized his other great metaphors were equally long term, slow producing and ultimately satisfying. Birth, gardening, trees, fruit, wine. Sure, all of these metaphors have "moments" before, after and within them. But anyone who is intimate with these ideas and experiences will tell you that you can't separate them from one another.

For instance, if you separate the moment of birth from everything that comes before you end up with a paradigm that only cares about the arrival of offspring. This denies the thrill of conception, the nurturing of the growing life in the mother's womb, the wonder at the miracle of fetal development and so on. A wine maker loves more than the bottle of wine. In fact, for those who know how, the taste of the wine reminds them of all of the qualities and conditions that went into making the wine. Weather patterns, soil composition, aging barrels, aeration. Hundreds of variables that came into play in the process of making the wine. In the same way, when I look at my sons, I simultaneously recall the joys, pains, heartbreaks and celebrations of their existence, not just the moment they were born.

It is in these examples that the picture of life in Christ is revealed. It is not intended to be a succession of one moment greater than the last. But rather, a tapestry of landmarks woven together to create a whole. A journey where each step moves the sojourner but the next step is informed an enriched by all of the ones that came before. It is a journey of awareness and revelation as much as destination. Destination may even be completely divorced from the idea. Since we are said to be living in Christ, it could be said that it is about proximity, not destination. How do you see these ideas in your own Christian history? Do you find yourself today running from one big moment toward the next? Have you discovered the simple luxury of walking the journey?