Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

Over our last couple of Alabama Christian Freaks get-togethers, we’d developed a consensus that we needed to move forward with a different kind of event — “we” meaning S, J and me, since the our last hanging-out occasion came during a violent storm so it was just their family and me.

This time, again, circumstances conspired to keep several key participants away, so I really wasn’t sure how things would turn out. But as it happened, S and J brought their family and a couple of friends, and we had a nice little rag-tag band to do outreach. We looked around some of the standard squatting places around Birmingham, all of them under overpasses. Maybe it’s just that my previous homeless outreach was in Boston and Cambridge with plenty of other nooks to hide in, but the Magic City sure seems to have a ton of overpasses. In the first place we looked, there were a ton of clothes spread all over the place, a couple of mattresses, and a Bible, but nobody was there! We left several pairs of socks anyway. At our second stop we met a nice gentleman with his tent set up next to a friend’s; apparently the friend had started living at the first of a new series of veterans’ shelters. At our third stop we met a couple who told us about their visit to church that morning — the woman seemed very self-conscious about the clothes she’d worn there. This kicked off a discussion about how God doesn’t care about our appearance when we come to worship him. Then one of our group realized that he’d grown up with the guy’s brother.

One cool aspect was that S and Js kids accompanied us when we got out of the car — first the older two hanging around the guy with the tent, then all three including the 2-year-old at the next stop. However, after that stop, the kids were understandably pretty worn out and hard to deal with, so we needed to wind down, and we still had some 20 to 30 pairs of socks. Fortunately we happened upon a church downtown (one that clearly bills itself as multiracial; I would recognize it if I saw the sign again) that had some sort of food and clothing distribution set up in front of their building. Yet despite all the clothes being handed out, everyone still rushed over to get a pair of socks!

So we were able to get rid of all but maybe a half-dozen of the 50 or so pairs we started with. It seems we met a very real need that was underserved by existing outreach efforts. Much credit to S for proposing this idea!

I feel like something spiritual is bubbling just beneath my surface, but it hasn’t yet exploded into enough to actually affect the way I live.

I should step back and explain. A few years ago — actually, starting in 2000, to be precise — I started praying in the conviction that God somehow, in ways far beyond my comprehension, wanted me to be involved in reaching out to those on the margins. At the time it was the kids in Harvard Square who were the focus of those prayers, and over the next few years I came to be involved in doing a street outreach in that particular setting. At this point I was continuing to pray for the next step, convinced that somehow this sort of thing was my life’s calling.

Then in 2005 I had a profoundly negative experience that we’re not going to discuss here, except to say that I never processed it very well.

So from then, I had a ready excuse for not pursuing that “calling” — now that word was a cruel mockery of my previous naivete, but not nearly as distasteful to me as “ministry”. At first I was recovering from the pain. Then I was in the same geographical location where I’d been hurt, so I didn’t feel that I could start up any sort of “underground” outreach without conflicting with the people who’d hurt me. Then I moved to my hometown, and didn’t know anyone else with interest in brainstorming ways to collaborate to do this sort of project. And now I live in Memphis and am in the same boat.

I already classified these as excuses, but to be honest, I’m not even sure if that’s the best way to describe them, especially that last one. There is some validity there. I really don’t believe that God wants us to be lone rangers, and I really in some sense believe that if I were supposed to be acting on these thoughts and impulses, God would already have put me in a place with people who share these values. I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to work, right? That’s how it worked when I prayed and ended up finding people doing a sort of outreach I didn’t yet even know existed. But so far, despite a couple of forays into building up

[EDIT: I realized months later that I never finished this paragraph. Let's go with this: despite a couple of forays into building up a community, including making some contacts in the state's largest city a couple of hours away, nothing really ever materialized.]

So what brings this to my mind, rather than just retreating into a mundane world where I think about college football or poker or whatever brings some little modicum of excitement to my life, is that I’ve been slowly reading that Tony Jones book I mentioned in my last post. (I’m reading it slowly because frankly, I get more interested in other stupid stuff and don’t think to read it.) To be honest, that book makes me feel wistful, as though I missed out getting in on the ground floor of some huge movement because I just wasn’t creative enough or committed enough to be one of the early adopters. (That’s a silly way to feel, but I feel it about career issues and entrepreneurship so it’s natural I would apply that to spiritual issues too.) Also, yesterday I happened to read a post from Dan Kimball that reminded me how much I enjoy hanging out in certain places and settings with an evangelistic intent, albeit a vaguely-defined one.

I stress that italicized part — though of course, I’m not talking about beat-people-over-the-head evangelism, rather about hanging out with the intent of discussing spirituality in a positive and non-threatening way — because I’ve been hanging out in those places now. I hang out in the hipster coffee shops in the artsy part of town. That’s where I do most of my work! But I’m painfully, excruciatingly aware that I don’t actually know anyone in those settings. It’s not like I’m meeting people and talking about music, or art, or politics, or whatever, much less talking about spirituality.

In any event, ultimately it’s my responsibility to pray about this stuff, not to try to force something into happening.

Often I get in conversations with other people about churches and sermons. I guess this is because of my obsession with macro-level thinking, with always considering how to improve institutions that matter to me.

In any case, I find this conversations often going down well-worn paths, to the question of whether a church ought to be “aiming low” in its spiritual content, trying to clarify the basics so that any non-Christian coming in feels at ease; or “aiming high” so that the staunch believers making up most of the congregation will feel that the spiritual content continues to challenge them. (It should hopefully be obvious from the scare quotes that when I call this “aiming high”, I’m only talking about level of theological knowledge, not implying that the theologically knowledgeable are better or even more moral people.)

My position is typically that treating the question this way forces a false dichotomy. I think it’s plausible that a talented pastor can “aim low” by teaching the same fundamental truths of the Gospel again and again, but do it in such a way as to also “aim high” by illustrating those truths in ways that cause that jaded portion of the flock to think, “Wow, I’d never quite thought of that truth in those terms.” To be sure it takes talent, and it’s not like it happens every day. But there is a supernatural aspect to the Bible that renews it with every reading, so it’s not like the preacher is left to his own devices. Hopefully he’s calling on the Holy Spirit for help!

In any case, this came to mind last week at the church where I’m getting settled in, Redeemer Memphis. Jeffrey Lancaster gave a sermon on the beginning of Isaiah 6, and in my notes I transcribed his overview as:
“God is convicting, overwhelming, and the one who calls us.”

Now, none of these characteristics of God is exactly novel to me. I know God convicts; I know God is overwhelmingly holy; and I know God is the one who calls us. I’d probably even thought of each of the three in isolation in reference to that passage! But I’d not really thought of the three together, and certainly not with the particular illustrations that Jeffrey chose from his own experience.

I just wanted to get my position out there on the Internets: You can ask for preaching that does it all, both reiterating the fundamental truths and illuminating them for those who’ve already heard it all. How many preachers do that, though, or how the Holy Spirit interacts with the individual talents of the preacher, I wouldn’t venture to guess.