Hello: Here is this week’s Living Water. It is a sample chapter from a book proposal I put together a while back called, Second Chance Church: Becoming A Place of Grace.
There are doors…and then there are doors. A door can be beautifully crafted, can serve as a gateway and even communicate about those inside.
Think of the door or doors to your church. Or more specifically, the door to your worship space. This door is much more than a door.
For so many it is the line between holy and unholy, between saved and condemned, between living and dead.
Now that is a door.
But how did this door or any door like it become this powerful? It is one of those things that no one can really pinpoint when that door, that line, that wall was raised. But it is there and it is real.
A pastor tells the story of a young woman whom he invited to his church. She initially declined, explaining that with her tattoos and the way she looked, that she would never be welcomed. The pastor assured her that it would be okay and told her that he would have some members there to welcome her. Erica hoped and trusted and showed one Sunday and it went okay – the hosts did a good job. She came back again. Now, it was summer and so the third time she visited, she wore a summer dress and so some of her tattoos were visible.
Sadly, the looks and the judgment were too much. As she left, she said wistfully to the pastor, “I told you that it wouldn’t work.” She thanked him and never returned.
From tattoos to “visible” sins to disabilities to unkempt appearances, the door to the church, though often just wood can be as strong as steel, as cold and unforgiving as concrete.
But you see, usually not too far from the door of wood in the front of the church and the worship space is something else made of wood. And thank God, it is stronger than steel and concrete and anything else on earth, including death – and more forgiving than anything else on earth, including all of us.
The cross.
The cross that no one on earth can stand in front of without being convicted of their sins. The cross, which says, to anyone who would humbly come to it, no matter how many sins, no matter how many years or miles, “you are forgiven.”
The hymn “To God Be the Glory” sings,
“O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.
To be full of grace is to be a place where no one bothers to think anymore about who is a believer and who is the vilest offender – because in the grace and sight of the old, rugged cross of Jesus Christ, they are one in the same.
And so we have been talking about church doors from the outside in. But to be a place of grace – to be a Christian community full of grace, it doesn’t matter how many visitors come in through the doors. What matters is how abundantly the grace of Jesus Christ, the one whose blood and love flowed down from the cross, flows from the cross down through the pulpit, through the aisles and pews and hearts, hands and voices and out the doors into the streets.
When this grace flows with such a tide and such a momentum, those doors made of wood and judgment and lines and fear are washed clean and opened wider than ever thought possible.
There are doors…and then there are doors. The doors to a church were always meant to be channels for grace to come flooding and pouring out and thereby open…open like the outstretched and welcoming arms of Jesus.
Amen.
Discussion Questions
- If you belong to a church, how well does your church do according to this? How open are the doors?
- If you don’t belong to a church, does the first part of this chapter capture how you feel?
- What can individual Christians do to create a “place of grace?”
- What about the door to your life or your heart? How open is it to others? Why is this important?
No comments:
Post a Comment