THE BLATANT:
- A Baptist pastor in North Carolina leads his congregation to vote nine members out of the church. Their crime? They supported John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. The national media has a field day.
- Two competing churches in Northwest Florida put up opposing billboards. One declares, “There ain’t no hell!” The other counters with, “The hell there ain’t”
- A famous television evangelist is targeted in a prime-time documentary as he globe trots around the world, lavishly spending more in twenty-four hours than most of his constituents make in twenty-four months
THE DISCREET:
- A salesman walks into the corporate offices of an insurance company. He informs the secretary that he has an appointment with Mr. Watson, who is a rather high-profile Christian in the local business community. While standing there, he happens to notice Mr. Watson walking down a hallway towards the restroom. The secretary writes down the salesman’s name and proceeds to take it back to Mr. Watson’s office to see if he is available. A moment later she returns and informs the visitor, “I must have forgotten, Mr. Watson is out of town this week.” I know this story is factual because the salesman was none other than yours truly.
- The brand new Cadillac parks in the handicapped space nearest to the front door of Wal-Mart. A young woman gets out and hurriedly runs inside, her Christian t-shirt admonishing readers to “repent while there is still time!” Ted, whose mom is handicapped, observes the woman taking his parking spot. He detests it when people who are obviously not handicapped use those designated parking spaces… another notch in his “excuses for not considering Christianity” belt. Cha-ching !
- A newly ordained minister tells the attendees at a funeral, ”John has gone home to be with the Lord.” One of the attendees was Tad, a skeptic who had recently started attending church. At least he was seeking. But he knew the deceased well. As the two had recently discussed, John had never accepted Christ and had indicated no intention of doing so. But according to this clergyman, John was now in heaven. “If there is a heaven and John is now there,” he reasoned, “I will certainly be there someday. After all, I am a much better person than he was. So why do I need church?” And thanks in part to the minister’s words spoken during the service that day, it was the last time Tad ever stepped foot in church.
These are just a few actual examples that have led me to believe that some of us must interpret the Great Commission something like this: “Go into the world and scare off as many people from the Christian faith as we possibly can.” Let’s face it, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, when it comes to spreading the Gospel, we are often our own worst enemy. I am reminded of a joke that pretty much sums up the way we are often looked at from the secular world’s point of view-a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard was tailgating a man. Suddenly, the light turned yellow in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection with him. As she was still ranting and raving she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit the car with arms in the air and then handcuffed her. He escorted her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a cell.
A couple of hours later she was taken back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He apologetically explained, “I am very sorry for this mistake.”
“How could this possibly have happened?” she demanded.
“Well,” he began, “when I pulled up behind your car you were blowing your horn, flipping off the driver and appeared to be cussing a blue streak. I then noticed the ‘Choose Life’ license plate, the ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ bumper sticker, the ‘Follow Me To Sunday School’ decal and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the back of your vehicle. Naturally, I assumed the car was stolen.”
Funny, huh? But a lot of times, it’s not a joke. Yes, just as our aforementioned police officer had a rather unfortunate encounter with one of us Christians in a fictional setting, many in the secular world have also had their ”unfortunate encounter” with one of us in real-life setting, an encounter that some will remember and quite possibly use against Christianity for the rest of their lives.
Take Cheryl Gibson, for instance. First a little background: In 2002, my wife Vicki and I were asked by our church, Forest Park United Methodist in Panama City, Florida, to lead an Alpha class. Alpha is a rather innovative way to connect with the un-churched and unsaved. I was picked as a leader because of my checkered past. Let me explain. Before accepting Christ on February 26, 1997, at 10:33 a.m. (like anybody’s counting), I published one of the most disgusting newspapers in the nation. It was a national chain called Beach Bull. The Bull contained risque jokes and scantily clad women in string bikinis. But as God often does, he used my past to enable me to know and relate to the secular society. They had been my customers. I had been their hero… a role model, of sorts.
Now I was inviting them to an Alpha class. At this class we invited the skeptics, the atheists, the agnostics, the seekers, our neighbors and family… basically anyone that is either unchurched or unsaved. Yes, anybody that wants a free, world-class meal; anybody that wants to tell a dirty joke; or anybody that wants to vent about all of us hypocrites in the church. It doesn’t sound too churchy, huh? Well, that’s because it isn’t.
I remember the night of our first Alpha class. We had about twenty-five participants. Some of them came willingly and some had been tricked into thinking it was just a backyard cookout. Cheryl assumed she was attending a barbeque.
As folks began arriving, I remember Dave out back talking to another guest. A used-car salesman and self-professed shade-tree mechanic, he was attending as a result of one of my scams. I told him that he was invited to set us Christians straight… being the big bunch of hypocrites that we were. He couldn’t wait!
Soon after Dave arrived, he began telling some guy one of the most expletive-filled jokes I had ever heard. I’ll always remember what happened next. When he finished the joke, he introduced himself. By the way, my name is Dave Rich; what is your name and what do you do?” The guy answered, “My name is Don Woolley, I’m the pastor.” The look on Dave’s face was classic, a nice shade of red with just a touch of green. Fortunately, someone yelled it was time to eat and Dave ducked for cover.
Anyway, back to my story. As we do in every Alpha class, we went around the room and asked our guests what they thought about the church. Almost to a person, there was one horror story after another. The most memorable was from Cheryl Gibson, the gal who thought she was attending just your basic, run-of-the-mill backyard barbeque. When it came her turn to vent, she told us the story of what she called the “church Nazis, ” her name for a certain type of supposedly religious people. (By the way, I must thank Ed & Bev Wells for inviting Cheryl to the Alpha class. Her story about the “church Nazis” was the original inspiration for this book).
Church Nazis, according to Cheryl, are those folks that have a “holier than thou” type attitude. If we aren’t dressed right, they give us a stare. If we don’t know that the book of Carnations is actually the book of Corinthians, they roll their eyes. If we drive up in a beat up old 1979 Chevy Vega they snicker at us. And if we don’t know all the words to How Great Thou Art, we are obviously going to hell. And then, at the “meet and greet” part of the church service, if we’re not part of the clique, we might as well be invisible. Her exact words escape me, but they went something to the effect of: “There were more cliques in the church than in my high school.” She was also told that she didn’t know how to pray. Funny, I never knew there were rules for prayer etiquette. Rule #314: Never end a prayer with a preposition! I must have missed that one.
There is, however, a happy ending to this story. Several of the Alpha class members ended up accepting Christ and getting baptized in the Gulf of Mexico. And about two months later Cheryl, our Church Nazi Mama, began teaching a Sunday school class at our church. Thank the Lord she didn’t still drive up in that hideous old ’79 Chevy Vega! And, oh yeah, let’s not forget Dave, the “expletive not deleted” joke teller. He and his wife, Kathy, joined our church and Dave became head of the Outreach Ministry.
Does God work in mysterious ways or what?