paint it purple

I lay in bed last night staring into the darkness… after a midnight meeting discussing “how to attract suburbians to church.” 

I was accused of condemning suburbians as “capitalist pigs.”  That hurt — while I never used those words, I am probably guilty.  “You can’t get someone with a special needs child and $15,000 in debt to go serve in the inner city,” I was told. 

So I stared at the dark ceiling.  I feel like I don’t belong in suburbia, yet I am so suburban.  Suburbia is all about safety and comfort.  People move there to avoid crime, locate near good consumer services and remedies, and live the good life.  I think this is a “gospel.”  And I don’t think it is Jesus’ gospel.  I think Jesus says move into the dangerous place, go to be with the leftovers, the forgotten the oppressed.  Following Jesus is extremely expensive, dangerous and full of rich living - true humanity, world change.  I can’t shake this picture of the gospel.   But people who actually believe in Jesus’ gospel are viewed as crazy.

There in the dark it hit me:  nearly all the crazies leave the church.  Crazy Alex M isn’t in a traditional or non-traditional church, he left.  My monkish crazy contemplative friends who lead The Leadership Institute’s The Journey aren’t in churches, they left.  My good crazy friend Chris J moved to the inner city.  All the crazies can’t operate within the acceptable boundaries of “church.”  They start movements, but do not remain in the church.  

This is tragic.  If all the crazies leave the church then the church will just be full of culturally conditioned, normalized  uncrazy “Christians,” not Jesus followers - just believers, not followers.  As McManus says, “There are those who want to follow Jesus, and those who must.”  Seems to me all those who MUST, leave the church.  Tragic.  Should I stay or should I go?  Something tells me to stay, fight, pay the high “Jeremiah-price.”  Maybe us crazies (I don’t know if I qualify as a “crazy”) are just too impatient, or too chicken.  But as long as we leave the local church, the local church will stay the same — toothless, tame, unattractive — or worse:  attractive to ho-hum religious Americans, who want a domesticated religion that never really quite changes society… the hungry stay hungry, the oppressed remain, and the world discounts “Christianity” as ineffectual, a cultural oddity left over from an earlier time, now useless and outdated. 

I just think the church needs the crazies, more crazies.  Homeostasis kills the movement.  Synchronization slays the gospel’s warrior.