Sam and Lew to Lexington

Sam and I went to Lexington and read 17 Psalms with the church there. The church there was crammed into Aaron Mansfield's house for a great spaghetti dinner. The kids watched Nacho Libre and plaaaaayed. I put a lot of "A's" in that because they had a lot of fun with each other, just one room over from us as we were reading the Psalms...

17 psalms. finised book IV of Psalms, there... Tonight they're doing Psalm 119! This group is really, really blessed. They love the Lord, love the Word, love each other. Their testimonies just flow out, over dinner, encouraging us to simply live with Jesus and let His Spirit birth in us the love that will bear fruit that lasts...

Mansfield is a cool guy. 38 years old. Salt and Pepper. Two cool kids... Hosting the Church at his house like that obviously brings life to them... to them the church is a people who love. People who love Jesus. People who love the Mansfields because Jesus loves...

Mansfield is also a Methodist Pastor. The Methodist Meeting-Building (MMB)(I hate to call such a thing a "church") is a Huge brick thing in downtown Lex, in a kinda rough neighborhood... Historically the largest MMB in KY, as some past time I think... I don't know... there're like 300 saints assembled in that building...

But this church building is sweetened by 3 congregations of Christians meeting in it! Every week, the thing gets chocked full of grace and love in three different languages: french african, Spanish, and English! Since I speak all of these languages, myself, I'm pretty stoked about these guys...

what we found in this methodist widower singledadman's house was the SAME thing we find in ours. Same exact. No kidding: the KINGDOM of JESUS established in hearts of everyday people who are simpling down into Him... i hope you just get it...

there's something very very powerful about returnign to the the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ (2 Cor. 11:3). Something so good about admitting it: that we're a people. We're not a corporate organization. We're not a political lobby. We're not a LOT of things. we ARE just a people...
We are a people whose distinctive is... SIMPLY BELONGING TO JESUS. Subjects of the King, servants of the Master...

We have been loved, and chosen by the Father. The Lord JEsus was crucified, dying an ignominious death for us on the cross, and we are called to fellowship with Him. Our dials are set to "the cross".

We preach Jesus, crucified. Come follow in the steps of the guy with holes. Not for the faint of heart, unless by that term you're referring to desperation's gasp for a savior.

There, in that little house, packed with actual people, I sensed that desperation. It was Aaron's 38th birthday. He just lost his wife to cancer this year. One dude there was celebrating his 33rd month off booze. After 30 years of HEAVY drinking. His wife, an awesome saint of God, works with troubled preschoolers (and i mean troubled). Some of the folk were seminarians, and you could feel hunger in them for something real, after their hours spent in ivory towers... They're more than ready to sink their teeth into real meat...

Stories flowed. Stories about loving people. Stories about prostitutes and pro wrestling and loss and love...

I hope and pray for peace upon this PEOPLE, in Lexington. They all live right there, near the church. They are almost all new to grace, if not church. They are amazed by Jesus and hungry for his touch.

In an institution like the Methodist church, there are influential folks having reservations about this influential influx of rough, Galilean fishermen. This Methodist church has been a bastion of Institutional History, and a fundamental shift in it's constituency could lead to a loss of prestige, especially if it fills up with whores and drunks whose only boast is that Jesus has loved them, crucified. Oh yeah, and Africans and Latinos to boot... and if those people become committee chairs and guiding voices from the Holy Spirit... What will become of us?

I have seen this tension rise and fall many times over the last two decades. Since 1991, I have been involved personally in several rounds of "what happens when Jesus comes to church". With a Crucified Savior as our main focus of attention, and example of life, what do we expect? He has paved the way. He has shown the way. He, Himself is the Way.

If I had been raised in a cushy experience of church, without the presence of the Smelly... If I had driven to church all my life, past "their" houses, I might feel a shock if "they" came in. "They" tend to RUIN a proper meeting. There's the smelliness, noisiness, out of order-ness, neediness, brokenness, failure, rebelliousness, and overall rowdiness of a crowd of folks pressing in to Jesus for their healings... It can be, admittedly, chaotic. And all that in the sanctuary of the church (or the foyer or the fellowship hall, or that most important place of all: the intangible idea of the church as an amalgam of fuzzy memories and historical pride).
Carpets get stained. Holes get punched in walls. stuff gets broken... there is loss. there is use, and using things up...

Yet, aversion to that chaos can be just as toxic as the alcohol and illegitimacy that the neighbors are going cold turkey from... for the congregations of such churches it may be time for a detox...
and a return to that darned simplicity...

Jesus is he Word.
Jesus is the Way.
jesus is the light and the life and the truth and the bread...
Jesus has called us to fellowship in his suffering. From where do we get any language of dominance and superiority, comfort and complacency? Jesus has invited us to become the scum of the earth, and gain a Kingdom and Priesthood for eternity.

That's Jesus, we're talking about... The one who was crucified. The guy surrounded with the sea-scum foam of human desperation...

this stuff is a no-brainer to the humble, broken on the rock...
this stuff is nonsense to those upon whom that rock will fall...(Luke 8:6)