CHURCH IS NOT A BUILDING

I had the most amazing experience a few weeks ago. I can't count the number of times I have stepped inside of a church...but this time was like none other. In fact, it wasn't a church at all. I had stepped into a "Transition" ceremony at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. One whom I have loved and have gone before the Throne of God many times for, was celebrating his new birth of sorts and I was blessed to partake. I had no idea how in a moment, in a rural country setting where men come and hope to leave changed forever,  would forever leave me changed. I don't pretend to know what went on behind closed doors there ...all I know is that it was holy. 

I watched grown men, some old enough to be great-grandfathers, bear their souls in a way I have never observed. There was NO pretense. No hyperbole. No lies, but rather the rawest form of truth I think I've ever seen. The kind of truth one is finally at peace of sharing as if they had just stared death in the face and by the grace of God were given a second chance to live. We can spend our whole lives running from that sort of truth. But there was something so beautiful about sitting in a room where no one was running. Not only had they stopped running but they also had the strength and courage to tell their own stories...the stories you would hope would never be told. And when the last details were disclosed there was acceptance. There was empathy. There was understanding. There was "real church". No one pointing the finger, because they had already told their own truth and had no desire to pick up a stone.  

Could it be that we are all running because there is no safe place to stop? We run through life as hard and furious as we can hoping no one will see what it is we are running from. It looms behind us like a maddening shadow. But these men had stopped. No one is more courageous than the one who stops and stares the haunting shadow in the face. Eye to eye, live or die...but refusing to run any longer.  Refusing to keep their story silent any longer, no matter how haunting.

I watched these men, who had become brothers, do something both the world and the church so desperately needs.  They didn't rehearse my loved ones broken story...rather they called out all of the treasure they saw in him. They rehearsed the times he got it right. With great honesty and passion they spoke of his true character and potential...as if their eyes had been reborn during their time there. They saw the good...the very good and they weren't ashamed to declare it so...one man to another. 

I walked away from that moment on my time-line and couldn't help but wonder what would the world look like if we all stopped running and pointing the finger and just simply began calling out the good in another...not focusing on where they hadn't gotten it right...but declaring where they had. How much truth would prevail if we all told our own stories and refused to judge another when they finally had the courage to share their own. We are all on a journey...and we all get there one step at a time. We all know failure. We all know shame. What if we stopped acting like we didn't? Our words are a gift we give to others.We can withhold them and add to the shadows of life or we can learn a lesson from a group of brothers, who have come to realize the value they call out in one another makes them more in touch with their own. These men were far from minimizing the pain of their past, both their pain and the pain they had caused others...but it was no longer their prison. We build our futures with words of hope and aspiration...the same way we help others build theirs. So go ahead and speak life with abandonment and watch it begin to grow! Church is not a building, but a building up of the beauty we each carry and when we stop to recognize that beauty and speak into it...it can't help but grow! Imagine how beautiful the world would become!

Photo Credit: Martin Sattler