“You hear about this new church downtown in your city, from someone you never dreamed would ever attend church. Amidst high-rise buildings filled with successful business people, nightclubs filled with fashionistas and influential twenty-somethings, a church has started. This church attracts all sorts of people and the buzz spreads across the city, even across the country. You don’t know anyone who has been there yet. This weekend, you decide you will go and see what the noise is all about.
Of course, the church has rented out the coolest venue in the city on Sunday nights (the slowest night of the week). You meet some people on the street, greeting people as they wait in line. Yes, there is a line to get into church! This keeps getting odder and odder. The greeters may all wear the same church tshirts, but they seem like normal people. No fake smiles here! You hear lots of profanity in the lobby – this is not a normal church! A guy bumps into you in the lobby as the crowd surges into the room. Where have you seen him before? Isn’t he that guy who embezzled money from that big corporation headquartered in the suburbs like 10 years ago? What’s he doing at church?
You find your seat as the service begins with a video. The girl in the video looks like that actress who you saw in that raunchy romantic-comedy with your ex-girlfriend last year. Now she’s doing announcements for a church?! As you listen closer, you hear her share how she met Jesus through the woman who cleaned her trailer and the man who brought her coffee during breaks in filming. She now leads a small group in the church.
As the video ends, the band begins to play. This is the best band you’ve ever heard in a church. The female singer has pipes – she can belt it. As the spotlight hits her face, you almost laugh out loud. You pinch yourself – this must be a dream. It’s Lady Gaga! No meat dress this time. As the first song ends, you realize you don’t remember the words because you’re still in shock that Lady Gaga is leading music at a church. (No wonder they are attracting this kind of crowd). The band plays a couple more songs. For the final song, the crowd is seated and Gaga introduces it by telling the short version of her own spiritual journey, including the part where a band she was touring with shared about how their faith motivated their passion for art and creativity. The words of the song came out of her first days of faith, as catchy as her songs, Born This Way or Poker Face, yet there is a different vibe to them. Something has changed.
As you sit down, the pastor (you assume) comes on stage and you drop your iPhone on the ground. This has to be a joke. It’s Howard-freaking-Stern. He starts by telling the story of his friendship with a pastor who appeared on his show nearly 10 years ago. How that pastor befriended him and waded through all the anger and jabs Stern could throw at him. How Stern’s heart opened and he became a follower of Jesus. How he has invited everyone he knows to this new church. Stern then invites the pastor to join him on stage. The pastor shares his side of the story along with a couple thoughts from something that happened in the life of Jesus. The pastor gives an invitation for people to make the same decision Howard made. Models, actors, DJs, entrepreneurs, designers, moms, college students and homeless guys go forward to pray with volunteer counselors. The pastor shares about the opportunity to partner with the church in showing and sharing God’s love with the city. Ushers pass offering plates and the pastor lets people know you can give online or via iPads with Square in the lobby.
You walk out of the service that night, in disbelief that a church like that exists and that Lady Gaga and Howard Stern are leading it.”
Does that story seem far-fetched to you? Unbelievable? You say it will never happen?
In other words, Howard Stern and Lady Gaga are beyond God’s reach? God couldn’t move in their hearts? Well, I am glad someone else didn’t say the same thing about you. I am glad God and your friends and family didn’t write you off.
Here’s the thing. There are several times a year in which people are more likely to have spiritual conversations. After a national crisis like 9/11, around holidays like Christmas and Easter or during a crisis in their own personal life. Sadly, though, many of the people around us won’t be in a dialogue with us about who Jesus is, why He came to live and walk among us. These people won’t get a conversation like that because they are past the edge of our faith. They are past the reach of God’s love and His ability to transform a life. We brush past them without another thought.
I know we say that God created every person who walks on earth. We talk about how He made them in His image and loves them. We recite verses and sing songs about God’s love for EVERY ONE. But if you walked into a church and Lady Gaga was the worship leader and Howard Stern brought the sermon, what would you do?
What if “that person” (you know the one who is beyond God’s reach) handed you your program or passed the offering plate down your row? What if you walked forward, looking for someone to pray for you and the person you met was the person you had stopped praying for so long ago?
Every person in that dream sequence shared about how they were transformed. Each time their story included an encounter with someone who loved them unconditionally, served them or shared about the faith, hope and love they had because of their faith in Jesus.
I don’t mean to beat you up or kick you in the face with this obscenely long post. But I am completely convinced that this season is about God doing ridiculous, unbelievable things to redeem and restore the broken and sinful world we find ourselves in. A pregnant teenage girl, her good-kid fiancee, some stuck-in-poverty field workers and some scientists from a foreign country all get a front row seat to the world premiere of God in the flesh.
Maybe it’s just me. But I think Christmas should hit the reset button on my perspective and faith every year. I need to establish new edges for my faith. I need to actually live what I read, sing and memorize.
This Christmas, I am re-connecting with a story of a God who came near humanity and from his very first breath said, “I have not come to be serve, but to serve and give my life as a ransom for many.”
How about you? Who is on the outside of your view? Who is beyond the edge of God’s love and reach?
What if you decided to present with them this holiday season and asked God to begin opening your eyes to see how He sees the people he created in His image to be people who receive His love? What might God do?
