A CHURCH OF ONE ANOTHERS

The buzz word for these days and times is BUSY.  Almost everyone I talk to tells me how busy they are when I ask how they are.  This seems to be a goal in life…being busy and productive.  It stands out to me because at this point in my life I am anything but busy.  Most of the time I love that status.  Everyone in awhile I feel concerned that I am not productive.  I am old and my body is not functioning the way it did in my youth.  I can’t be busy; but does that mean I am not productive?

Looking back over the 40+ years I have been walking the Christian Journey I realize in my youth I was very busy…busy for God.  Looking back I see some if not most of the busy was really for me and not God.  That’s what maturity does for one…give us wisdom to see the difference.  In my heart I was busy serving God and I am sticking to that story.

I did a lot of work in many different churches.  I loved most of the work I did.  Some of it I recognized as a waste of precious time and energy and stopped doing that.  As an example, I sat at a church board meeting for three hours discussing what the size of the pledge envelopes should be; smaller was better because it was less bulkier in the collection plate; but if people had to fold there money to fit in a smaller envelope would they end up giving less?  That was pretty much it for me and being on the church board.

The work I loved was one on one work with the young people, especially those kids on the fringe that didn’t really want to be at a church function and hung around outside.  Being an ‘outside looking in’ kid I got it, and I got them.  So I would go out and join them, talk with them in their language, and became friends with them.  It made sense to me because I saw that was the way Jesus did most of His ministry.  People were more important than programs and that’s pretty much how I did what I did.

As time went on I found myself spending my time going to Bible College, workshops and conferences, and even seminary, learning how to be a good Christian, learning how to build churches, learning how to preach, teach, and serve.  As I have said before, “When all is said and done there is more said then done”.  Those good things kept me busy and well educated; but something seemed strange to me.  It was like I was sitting on the beach fully engrossed in reading a book all about the beach; it just didn’t make sense to me.  I didn’t have time to simply hang out with people.  I was too busy.

Maybe that works for other people; but it was making me sad.  So I stopped.

I like my life now.  I have a lot of time to spend time with God in my quiet time, read and write about God and the Christian Life; but along with that I have time to simply hang out with people, go out for a meal and just talk, sit for hours in my living room with a friend and share life with her or him.  I am not busy but in my heart of hearts I know I am productive.

Looking back over my church experience I know that there was one time I really experienced church.  It was back in the seventies when a group of high school kids and adults met together in the living room of a family that truly loved God and opened their home.  We would sing songs, read the Bible, share our lives with one another, pray with and for one another, and simply were there for one another.  We used to go on Retreats and have fun with one another.  We were truly a group of people, not busy, but simply being “One Anothers”.

I have been making contact with some of these folks and catching up on their lives.  When we get together after all those years, it is as if we are picking up on a conversation we had just yesterday.  We sit and talk about those evenings in the living room and times on Retreat and we all smile and know how sacred those times were and how much what we are now came from the seeds sown during those times.  I sit and marvel at the good fruit and I know it was God’s Church, the church that Jesus talked about building, the church that the gates of hell would not destroy.  I am eternally grateful for those days and know in my heart of hearts that I experienced the real deal of what church is meant to be…”One Anothers, loving God, loving each other, and inviting others to be a part of all of love.