Strange But True
While my dad was visiting California several months ago, he made the observation that the church had become my community. It was an innocent enough observation, but it troubled me greatly. I did not initially go to the church in search of community, I was looking for truth. Yet I realized that he was absolutely right, I still had not found truth, but I had grow (relatively) comfortable in my community. For that reason, I seriously considered leaving that church and that community to start over somewhere else. I decided against it at that time, mainly because I recognized that there was just a little too much “I’ll show him,” and not enough honest searching in my motivation.
A month or two later, there was great concern over the diminishing attendance in our Sunday night group, and they began a series of meetings to discuss the future direction of the ministry. After the first of these, it suddenly seemed as though I would not even need to make the decision to leave, for they were throwing out everything I came for anyway. Of course, by that point, I was considering leaving, not to go a different church, but simply to go away.
As I said, there were a series of meetings. Over the course of these, different opinions were expressed, and it was eventually decided that the Sunday night meetings would take on a variable format with different people responsible for one evening a month. It was further decided that this new format would launch the Sunday following the Superbowl, with the first session being a discussion group led by… me. That’s right, me.
Now just try to tell me that God does not have a sense of humor. This is exactly the kind of crap that made me believe in God in the first place. Honestly, though- how would you like to walk in to a church on a Sunday evening, bright eyed, Bible in hand and ready to be fed the word of God, only to find me in charge? Me, who wouldn’t know Jesus if He spit on the ground and rubbed mud in my eyes? What were they thinking? Desperate times all around, I suppose.
Well, if you’ve done the math, you may have figured out that the first Sunday after the Superbowl was last weekend. So what in the world did I talk about? Why… U2 of course… what else?