People Like Us

Yesterday afternoon, a bunch of us went out for lunch after church--Ed and Jodi, their 13-year-old son Ethan, another couple, my friend Lori, and I. It was a long, happy lunch, with lots of laughter--maybe it was all the bright sunshine, or maybe it was the celebratory feeling of having had a service where all kinds of good things happened that morning.

From the call to worship onward, church had felt sort of breathlessly expectant. Even during the "introduce yourself to somebody new" moment (reliably my very least favorite of any event), the room exploded with friendliness and warmth and chatter, as if people had been just waiting for the chance to greet one another. Worship was participatory, and Jodi preached a sermon of great conviction. In it, she quoted the missionary C.T. Studds: "Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell. I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell." That's the sense of priority that I think drives her and Ed and those of us who love this church so much, who are tired of going to tidy little Sunday services and resting in our neat theology, who believe that it's our brokenness and God's rescue of our sorry selves that bind us.

At the service, we also prayed for Ed and Jodi; everyone who had been blessed by them in some way was invited to gather around them to lay hands on them and pray. The whole congregation got up out of their seats and pressed forward and circled around them--there were only about 10 people left in their seats--and everybody had their arms around one another, or their hands on one another's shoulders, and there was a sense of heartfelt longing and built-up gratitude for these two people who have changed each of our lives.

Of course, since it's our special little church, the prayers themselves were interesting--our addicts, whom we love but who can just go on and on talking forever, always provide situations where you're silently cheering for them and yet also wondering if something weird or inappropriate is about to happen. But the whole time, it was just kind of neat to be in a press of all these very different people eager to surround our pastors in prayer.

Later that afternoon, I felt even more convinced of the love I felt for our church that morning. Apparently, there is another local church in our town that is planning to move to a more upscale, suburban community: "You can have the addicts," their minister (allegedly) said. "We want to be a place for families."

Whew. I can't tell you how fiercely defiant I felt hearing that story. I wanted to stand up and shout, "Heck yeah, we'll take 'em!" They're ours, they're Christ's, and if all of His preaching and all of the witness of the cross doesn't say that He came for them, and not for smug, exclusionary religious folks, then I don't know Him at all--because the Jesus I read about went around saying things like, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:17). I don't mean to be prideful about our church; it's not that, I don't think. But I feel a sense of desperate gratitude that it's here, like it's saving my life. How then could I try to escape those who need it just as badly as I do?

And there's a stunning contradiction, I think, between that pastor's attitude and what people said over and over again in the pastor appreciation videos. One after another, people from all walks of life (a couple of our former addicts, our Hollister-model pre-med college student, our math professor, our high school girls' sports coach, our businessman) said that Ed and Jodi had made them feel like they had a family. That other pastor wants his church to be a place where people can come bring their nice families--and what our pastors are doing is taking people who have lost their families or who never even had a real family, and welcoming them into the family of Christ.