I attended the kick-off for a program called Alpha tonight.
I joined a 1000 young adults for dinner in this old traditional church in
downtown London and then listened to a wild-haired artist named Charlie
describe his “take” on Christianity. Years ago, Charlie had been visiting
Romania and was looking to buy a can of tuna. The store owner pointed him to
this:
“Crap in Tomato Sauce”
Not exactly what he was looking for. Turns out that Tuna, translated into Romanian,
is crap.
He and his friends looked at the can and laughed. They weren’t
sure if they could stomach eating something that was labelled “crap”. Charlie
laughed, opened the can and began to eat. He commented that this can was
actually kind of a great analogy for the church. We’ve messed it up so badly
that the exterior can look like crap, but the inside is exactly what we’re
looking for.
From this illustration, the thousand or so of us were sent
off to discuss our opinions on faith, what was important in life, and how we
all ended up in church talking about God, faith and tunafish.
It’s funny… yet also sad… that the analogy resonated so well
in the room. I was there with a visiting group of pastors to learn how a giant
Anglican cathedral style church is drawing thousands of young people who have
looked at church, people in churches and labelled it crap. They were there because
a friend had invited them to a place where their opinion would be listened to,
and where they could engage in open discussion about faith.
See the church really does have the message that people are
desperate to hear.
There is more to life than what we see.
We matter to the God.
God loves us
The problem is that we have wrapped the message in packing
that is making people feel like they can’t stomach the message because the
medium has ruined it. Crap in tomato sauce.
It’s easy to go off on the church and rail against all it’s
short-comings, and I’m not particularly of the opinion that the church is
completely messed up. But it’s an unmistakable reality that many people are
turned off by church.
Yet it’s a rare person that is turned off by love.
Love, that is the heart of the church. God described Himself
in total as “love”.
Love accepts people as they are, nit as we think they should be.
Love is an opened armed embrace.
In love there is no shame, no fear, no guilt.
When we present love - people are intrigued. Tonight I witnessed 1000 unbelieving, unchurched young people line up for an hour to get into an ancient building, because someone had presented love to them so well, they were ready to walk into a church to talk about it.
When we start by presenting church… well you follow the analogy through.
We can’t separate God and the church.
But neither can we pretend that the human institution of church is
the ideal representation of what Jesus established as His church.
Love is pure and true.
Love is what draws people.
Maybe we’d do better offering love first. Then offering
church.
(Thanks to Nikki, Charlie and the whole Alpha team in London for a great learning experience this past week)
Comments
Post a Comment