Pressure To Conform (Or “Why Do People Really Wash Their Hands In The Bathroom?”)

The other day I was in the bathroom at work. 

Since  that’s established we can now move on…….

Anyhoo…….Most of you know that during the week I work in a hospital.  I’m not in the "critical" areas.  I’m part of a support team that works with video and conferencing technology.  Thus said I found myself in the bathroom the other day and encountered something that I had not seen while working there.  Someone walked out without washing their hands.

Now, I’m not going to rail on the importance of "cleanliness after bathroominess" or discuss the tremendous number of unseen life forms that were now being transferred through the hospital by this gentleman’s impromptu decision.  I was actually struck by something that I’ve never realized before:  I’ve never seen anyone NOT wash their hands in the hospital.  I started looking around for signage.  You know the kind I’m talking about.  "Employees must wash their hands before returning to work", that sort of thing.  There wasn’t any in this bathroom.  Of course, the building that I’m in isn’t an area that we see any patients.  It’s an office building, for all practical purposes.  But even though that’s the case you always see people wash their hands.  It’s somewhat of an "unwritten code" around there.  I started thinking that I would never want anyone to see me walk out without washing mine.  It’s not the hand washing itself.  It’s the location.  It’s a hospital.  Things should be clean, pristine.  No one wants to be known as the "pee hand person" of the hospital. (excuse me for that one….)  It just doesn’t seem right, you know?

Then I started to realize how many times I’ve walked into the bathroom, not for the obvious reasons, but to just straighten my clothes or make sure there wasn’t something in my teeth.  I noticed that I STILL washed my hands.  It’s like I felt compelled to do it no matter what.

Why was this important to me?  Most of you would not figure me to be compulsive about hygiene.  (That sounds bad.  I bathe regularly for anyone who wants to know.  I just don’t keep a log to verify it later.)  It’s just that guys don’t always wash their hands.  I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a bathroom at the movies, at a store, a ballgame.  Even at restaurants guys walk out without any thought.  It happens all the time.  You might notice for moment (especially in the restaurant because you then want to make sure they don’t work there), but then you go on.  Not at the hospital, though.  EVERYONE WASHES THEIR HANDS!!!!  It’s simply unheard of to walk out without doing it.  I have to wonder, then, if everyone does it because of hygiene or because of social pressure.  If we were that concerned about little bugs on our hands then why wouldn’t we do it all the time? (I know some of you do.  I do too.  This is just a moment of brutal honesty that will make people not want to shake my hand.  We must transcend beyond our boundaries and embrace honesty.)  We react to the environment that surrounds us and adjust or conform ourselves to fit in.

As unusual as this whole discussion sounds it really made me think about our relationship to Christ and the church.  How many times have we done certain things, not told people things about ourselves, or even changed the way that we act because we are around other Christians?  Sometimes it has been in our church where we feel there are certain "unspoken rules" that we are supposed to adhere to.  Other times it has just been in passing where we met someone who goes to church and we purposely put on the "good, Christian face".  In other words we stop being ourselves and become this caricature of what we believe people want a Christian to look like.  It’s different from showing respect for someone else and we all know it.  We change!  We’re different because we’ve been told that we’re supposed to be.  Then we go home and RELAX……

I want to always be relaxed.  Relaxed WITH God.  It’s amazing that the only one that matters when it comes down to it IS God and He sees us acting both ways.  What if we could be a church that is so honest, so real, so gritty that people are amazed that you would ever "put on a good face".  A place where "acting like a Christian"  is an alien concept in light of acting like ourselves.  Being true to God AND myself.  I guess in retrospect I started understanding that it doesn’t matter what anyone reading this thinks of me.  As long as I am pursuing God with honesty then the acceptance of the society around me isn’t really relevant,  even if it IS the religious society or conservatives or liberals or whatever.  It only matters what God thinks.

That’s hard to swallow.  It’s hard to take our eyes off of the world surrounding us, no matter what world it is.  Paul wrote often to churches that were dealing with that very issue.  His plea to them was to focus in the right direction and reject the importance of our fellow man’s opinion.  I must be pleasing to God, not to you.  I must be willing to build a relationship that gives God pleasure, not pursue your acceptance.  That’s hard.  Really hard.

May we all become a community of individuals, directing our gaze towards God’s own heart and pursuing satisfaction in knowing that we have been real to the world around us.  May we open our hearts and lives to the eyes of our peers in a way that we are seen naked in front of them, but never concerned about whether that is ok or not.  May God bless your life because you are real with HIM over everything else.

Intersections

Every day I encounter people.  Some of them I know or have spent time with.  Others I’ve never met before.  As a matter of fact I meet alot of new people every single day.  It’s not that I "get to know" each of them, though.  Most of them are just people that I see in passing and acknowledge.  They don’t really have any impact on my life except for reminding me that I’m not in this life alone.

There are the other people, though, that impact my day.  People that I’ve built relationships with or that I interact with on  regular basis.  Friends of mine, co-workers, acquaintances.   These are the people that can change the direction of a day with a simple comment or action.  We have a vested interest in the relationship.  It means something to us.  What they say or do causes ripples in our lives.

I’m constantly fascinated by the idea that there are people out there that will eventually cross my path and make a major difference, but I have no idea who they are as of this moment.  There are people out there that I have never met that will someday cause a major shift in the way that I think or act.  Their life and their beliefs will cause me to look at my own and question certain aspects.  Sometimes they are affecting me in a way that I have to really define my core beliefs.  I have to press myself to understand "who I am" in reference to a certain issue or idea.  They often cause turmoil in this otherwise perfect existence that I’ve created around me.  The shakeup might be minuscule or total destruction, but the lasting effects are there no matter what.

I wonder what God’s point of view is about these unknown relationships.  When a person comes into my life that causes me to think am I supposed to actually question myself or push them to the side?  If someone has ideas or beliefs that are contrary to my own am I supposed to keep them at arms length so that my world stays the way it is?  Does God allow people to impact our lives that could feasibly totally change the way that we look at, worship, and believe in Him?

I know that He could and would.  I find it interesting that most of my life in church was spent "staying away" from anyone that might make me think differently.  I recently heard a sermon by a pastor who stated that we need to totally keep away from anything that might be detrimental to our faith.  Though I agree with protecting our beliefs I have a concern about the underlying message.  The idea that "I can’t touch the world because it is dirty and I will need to clean myself afterwards" is a little messed up, in my opinion.  The sermon went on where the pastor stated that "Participating in the life of people in sin does no good for you as a Christian.  I don’t need to spend time with them.  I need to spend time with good, Christian people."  I guess that means that we should wait for them to come to us so that we don’t take the risk of messing up our faith.

How strong is our faith if the slightest contact or deed can change it?  I’ve heard it’s inappropriate to hang out with a non-believer in a bar because it does no good for our witness.  But who is our witness for?  Is it for the non-believer or for the people in church with pre-conceived notions of what a Christian is supposed to look like?

I guess in the end I keep coming back to this thought that has radically changed the way I view things.  It’s simply this:  There were no Christians before Christ.  Basically said, we have this idea of what a "Christian" looks like, but the image is distorted.  It’s distorted by our opinions, our environment, and our background.  The funny thing is that Christ didn’t act or do the things that the church leadership wanted Him to do.  He did not "look" like a good, church fearing follower.  He changed the image.  Along the way he also touched the people and areas that the church told him were forbidden.

Why is it important to remember that there were no Christians before Christ?  Because that sets the standard for who we design ourselves after.  I am a Christian.  I am a follower of Christ.  My goal is to look that Him, not like the other people around me.  Christ was not subject to the pressure of other people’s opinions of Him.  He simply went out and did the right thing.

Would Christ be in the places that most of today’s Christians would tell you that you shouldn’t be?  If it meant that someone would know him better, absolutely.

Isn’t it funny that most of us would be concerned about whether Christ was actually a Christian or not because of his "image"?

The irony is incredible.

Is Tom Cruise nuts?

Ah yes.  Pop culture has now engulfed my senses.  I’m actually concerned about Tom Cruise.  I know this probably bothers most of you, but I started thinking that the man has actually lost it.  You’ve got the whole jumping on the couch episode, his really weird behavior around Katey Holmes, his attack on the mental health field during the interview on the Today Show, and then the secrecy about the new "Baby Cruise" that we haven’t even seen yet. (Dude, I sound like I’m totally addicted, don’t I?)  I know that this isn’t really deep theological material and I’m sure that someone will look at this and wonder if I’m "postmodern enough" or something like that, but I just had to do some research into what was happening with this guy.

So I started to check out Scientology…….

Hee, hee…..

Here’s the "cliff notes" version of what I’ve learned:

Scientology was started by Ron L. Hubbard, the science fiction writer.  The belief behind it is (remember, this is condensed) that there was a ruler around 75 million years ago on another planet that wanted total control.  He tricked all these other alien races into coming to him and then he trapped them.  They were brought to earth (it wasn’t called that at the time) in large plane type ships and planted around volcanoes.  The idea was to destroy them so he set off basically H bombs to kill them all.  The only problem was that they had souls (or "thetans" as he calls them) that needed to be taken care of also.  The thetans were captured and brought to another place where they were forced to watch images that reprogrammed their "minds".  These images included concepts of God, heaven, hell, and the such.  The thetans then believed this new reality and believed they were all the same race.  Since they had no where to go they were allowed to take over the bodies of human beings on earth.  All of the problems that people have today are associated with these thetans.  You’re insecurities, mental problems, and such are actually residuals of the lives of these "souls" that now live in you.  When a person dies the thetan has to have another body to live in so they go to another.  Now that person carries all of the "thetan baggage" of millions of years of oppression.  To get rid of your problems you have to get rid of the thetans. 

This, of course, costs money.  As you progress through the program, spending money along the way to advance yourself, you find out more and more about the beliefs.  Basically you don’t even find out about THIS concept until level 3, which is way late to be finding out the basics of a religion, I think.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Christianity and wondering if people think it’s really whack.  You know what I mean….. A man is born that is also God, has 3 years of ministry doing miracles, is killed and then comes back to life.  On top of that you add on a man living in the belly of a whale, a huge boat that carries all of the animal life on it, an army defeating a city by blowing horns.  It all seems pretty incredible when you think about it.  There’s a part of my logical mind that has to question the whole concept.  Of course, then I read about Scientology.

Tom Cruise isn’t nuts.  He just acts that way.  He’s being taught to live a life that is pretty out there and now we’re all getting to see it for the first time.  Do non-Christians see us the same way?  There’s no way to understand Tom until you understand what he believes.  Now that I’ve looked it over I’m not surprised that he’s acting pretty weird.  He believes some really crazy stuff, in my opinion.  So do my beliefs become something that changes me to where I’m not recognizable as a real person or do my beliefs stand in a way that other people look at me and see peace?

To believe that a man rose from the dead and did it for us?  Not that weird when you think of millions of alien beings living in each of us that need to be expelled.  Looking at all of this craziness gives me a sense of calm about my own beliefs.  If I can just be the person that I’m supposed to be, that I was born to be, and not some "stereotype" that’s not recognizable to others then I feel that I will have accomplished something.  Christ did not live as the weirdo that scared people away.  His manners and personality shined so that others were drawn to Him.  That’s what I really want to be like.

I wonder, though, if Tom has a little "thetan" emblem on the back of his car? 

Hmmmm………

The Connection Has Been Made!

Just an update:  We confirmed connection with Fort Worth last night from Expresso.Com.  This means that this Sunday we will be having the first gathering with the Portland NETChurch and the Fort Worth NETChurch interacting with each other.  This will be really cool.  The Fort Worth church will be able to see us on big screen and will be calling in comments as part of our discussion time.

We look forward to seeing everyone there Sunday to be a part of this amazing progression in our ministry.  Too Cool!!!

NETChurch: Fort Worth

 

I’m sitting in Burleson, TX @ Stephen and Amy Smotherman’s new house.  It’s a beautiful new home in a new housing edition that’s sitting on a hill AND it’s the new home of NETChurch: Fort Worth.  We’ve talked about this a little in our worship gatherings on Sundays, but let me explain what’s happening here.

As Stephen and Amy were in the process of finalizing things in Corpus Christi for the move to Fort Worth they were concerned about one thing with leaving:  How would they find a church like the one that they’ve grown to know and love?  We talked about this for some time and eventually came to the realization that there was a need here that was not being met.  The only problem was that with our discussion style of teaching it would be difficult to come up with an effective way to make a "satellite church" work.

Through some very creative thinking, technology advances, and God’s amazing provision we have been able to find a way to make this happen.  Hopefully starting this coming Sunday (if some technological hurdles can be jumped.  If not the next week.) we will be connecting from Expresso.Com in Portland with a new NETChurch group in Burleson meeting at the Smotherman’s house using internet technology.  They will be able to see us on big screen and will even be able to call in to us and include comments just as if they were in the coffee shop with us.  We will be hearing them through our sound system and they will even be in on the recordings for our podcast.

This idea is way beyond anything we could have imagined or hoped for.  Our drive at NETChurch really has nothing to do with building more churches so that we can be bigger or to find ways to stretch out in areas that we feel no one is doing anything.  We saw a need for people who are loved by our church and we’ve tried to find a way to meet that need.  That’s what NETChurch is all about.  The residual to this situation is that in the time Stephen and Amy have been in Burleson they have met quite a few people that are looking for something new like what we are already doing.  Now Stephen and Amy are going out and helping meet the needs of others that they know.  Stephen is now the site pastor of NETChurch: Fort Worth and Amy (hopefully along with others) will be working on worship needs for the new church.

We are so excited about all of this happening.  It’s a little mind blowing that all of this has come about, but we know that our plans are nothing compared to God’s.  Please keep the Smotherman’s and this new group in your prayers and continue to pray for NETChurch as God takes us into other completely uncharted territories.

I told everyone when we got started to get ready for an amazing ride.  It just keeps going on, and on, and on, and…………………………………

The Numbers Game

I’ve had some really interesting feelings that I’ve had to deal with lately.  For some reason the issue of size has been a prominent discussion with alot of people.  "How many people attend your church?"  "That’s not bad for where you started from!"  "What are your goals on people?"  "How many people do you have?"  "What’s your timeline for growth?"  "You’re never going to be able to grow if you stay where you are!"  "What are you going to do to reach more people?"

I don’t know what to think about most of these discussions.  Sometimes I tend to get a little red faced when I’m talking to people about it.  Not because I’m embarrassed.  Because the whole conversation makes me nervous and probably uncomfortable.  I also know that most people don’t think the way that I do.  Suddenly I’m tongue tied and not sure what to say.  If I say we have 45 – 50 people participating at any time then I get responses about "don’t worry because it will all happen sooner or later".  If I talk about where we’ve come from I start feeling like I’m trying to prove something to someone that I don’t have anything to prove to.  If I don’t say anything then it gets really awkward and people think that I’m trying to hide something.

I don’t have anything to hide, but society sure makes you feel like you do.  If we’re not the biggest, fastest growing church in the area then we’re not seen as a success.  Today you have to be able to say that we "grew from 32 to 3000 in 3 years" before anyone cares about what you’re doing.  Then you have people that come up to you saying "You really need to speak to my pastor because he knows what it takes to grow a church".  Everyone thinks that if your not big then you obviously aren’t doing anything.  Obviously God isn’t blessing you and the church.

Here’s an eye opener for most of us:  Church ministry used to be considered the one vocation where people handled stress the best.  Since 1980 there has been a steady and alarming increase in stress related drop outs by clergy.  Being a minister is now listed in the top 3 with doctors and lawyers as vocations most likely to have problems with alcoholism, drug use, and suicide.  Why?  As churches grow and ministries become more like businesses the responsibilities grow.  Pastors are giving way to structured management styles of leadership, much like the business boom of the 80’s and early 90’s.  Church ministries are so large that you can’t operate like a small, comfortable community any more.  To sustain the growth you have to always be excelling, always moving forward.  You can never stop pulling more people in.  Advertising has to be placed in a major line item on your budget so that you will always be able to keep a face in the community.  Ministers are expected to always be working on a 3 to 6 month schedule ahead of where they are right now so that the church doesn’t slow down.  Bigger is better and if you aren’t growing in attendance at a regular rate then you are about to come to a stand still and be passed by.  It’s not good enough to plan for 120 people.  We have to be exponential.  Add a zero to everything.  It’s now 1200 people.  And they all need to be here at this church, at this time, no matter what.  Then if only 400 show up we wonder what went wrong……..

Slap me for this if you want.  I’m a big boy.  I can take it.  Tell me what you want.  Tell me that Jesus expects us to be evangelists.  Say all you want but listen to this one thing:

God doesn’t give a crap if your goal is to have 1000 people in the next 2 years.

(Oh my gosh!  He said it!!!  Stand back!!)

Please listen to what I’m saying.  There’s nothing wrong with there being large numbers of people in a church.  There is something wrong when THAT becomes your motivation for everything that you do.  Dragging people to church services and promoting the size of the church based on attendance has absolutely no biblical reference at all.  There’s nothing to base it on.  Saying that we are just reaching more people for Christ doesn’t mean much when you are constantly in a state of having to "reach more" because the back door is larger than your front.  Entertainment has NOTHING to do with worship or godliness.  The bible has no commandment that tells us to "get big".  It calls us to be real and worshipful, though.

So to ease everyone’s fears out there about this ministry……NETChurch is growing.  Growing deeper.  Relationships are bonding and spreading.  People’s eyes and hearts are being opened.  Our growth cannot be measured in the numbers of unknown people who sit in one of multiple worship services on any given Sunday.  It’s measured in the creative depth of love and understanding that each individual comes to know through their experiences of questioning and discovery.  Jesus said to "go and make disciples".  Disciples are students, not spectators that show up whenever the big event is happening.  Once we have lost the idea that the individual is important then we have lost the heart of God’s love.  We might have 20 people.  We might have 200.  We might have 2000.  We don’t really know.  But we do know that every life is important to us.  Every person is a benefit to God.  Every person we come in contact with has a name and a life and a family and an amazing story to tell.

Don’t tell me that NETChurch is small.  NETChurch is huge.  You’re just looking in the wrong place.