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When the Church Creates, Not Little Christs, But Little Accountants

St. Francis of Assisi from Flickr via Wylio
© 2007 Randy OHC, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

My four oldest children and I walk slowly along the sidewalk on our way to church, the morning sun just beginning to rise above the buildings that line Queen Street. Maile is feeding Leo and they will walk to church later. The city is quiet on Sunday mornings, like the silence after a long sigh. Nights here are busy, cars always moving, people coming and going from one streetlight to the next. But on Sunday morning you could just about walk down the middle of the street and no one would notice.

There is a man sitting on his front stoop, newspaper in hand. He looks up at us through defeated eyes. I say hello. He nods and looks back down at his paper. Abra runs ahead of us, skipping over the cracks in the sidewalk. Sam reaches up and holds my hand. So does Lucy. Cade tells old stories about our family, stories that have become a kind of folklore.

There is the story about when Rosy the Rabbit tried to eat Sam alive. There is the story about how Abra found the hidden stash of 4,652 chicken eggs under the log pile. They talk about the house where we lived on Belmont Street, how Abra fell and hit her head on the bus during our cross-country trip, how I was the only one to see the bear at Yellowstone.

Story after story, and I realize something: every time these stories are retold, they reinforce our family identity. They strengthen the foundation of acceptance and love that these children feel in our home. I laugh and ask more questions.

“Do you remember the time…”

* * * * *

We arrive at St. James and I drop them off for children’s choir practice, then wander into one of the neighboring buildings. There’s a class being held on St. Francis, so I slip in and listen. Father David hands me a card. On one side is a beautiful image of a crucifix surrounded by images of prayer. On the other side this is written:

Prayer of St. Francis
Before the Crucifix

Most high, glorious God,
Enlighten the darkness
of my heart
and give me true faith,
certain hope
and perfect charity,
sense and knowledge, Lord,
that I may carry out
Your Holy and
true command.

* * * * *

“The evidence of our Christianity,” Father David says during the sermon, “is not found primarily in the financial gifts we give to this church. The evidence of our Christianity is found in our coming together and offering of our selves, our talents, and our time to one another and to the world.”

I think he is right. The primary act of Christ on this earth was not the giving of financial resources, but the giving of himself. I think the American church, in spending so much time asking for money and so little time asking that each Christian give themselves, is missing the mark and creating, not little Christs, but little accountants.

* * * * *

We walk home and Leo starts to cry a little because he is hungry. The sun is a bright light behind us now, high in the sky, hot for a late September day in Lancaster. Sammy runs towards a trash can to throw away his water bottle, and he trips and falls, scuffing his hands. He cries, I pick him up, and the rest of the kids circle around him.

“Are you okay, Sammy?” one of them asks.

“Did you hurt yourself?” another one inquires.

He is okay, and we continue our walk. When we get close to the house we see my parents sitting on the porch, waiting to eat lunch.

* * * * *

Late that night I take out the dog (yes, we have a dog – that’s another story), and listen to the city at night: trucks rumbling through, sirens screaming from the hospital, someone shouting to someone else out on James Street. And I think about one line from that prayer on the card Father David handed to me:

that I may carry out
Your Holy and
true command.

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I am a Christian Because of Owen Meany

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“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”

Sometimes I think I could say the same thing, that I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

Today I’m over at SheLovesMagazine leading a discussion about what is perhaps my favorite book of all time, A Prayer For Owen Meany. You can read the rest of my post HERE.

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“Our Great Big American God” (or, Why You Should Read Matthew Paul Turner’s New Book)

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A friend of mine, on finding out that I’m friends with Matthew Paul Turner, asked me a rather pointed question one day.

“So is he as cynical in real life as he is online?”

I guess I can understand why that might be a first impression, but let me tell you this: I’ve gotten to know Matthew pretty well over the last few years and “cynical” is the last word I would use to describe him.

Matthew Paul Turner is one of the good souls in the world.

* * * * *

I was going to Nashville and a friend of mine knew Matthew. I thought to myself, now there’s an interesting fellow. I’d like to have coffee with him.

So I sent him an email. And he agreed to have coffee with a total stranger. We hit it off, spent a few hours getting to know one another, and have stayed in touch ever since.

It’s something I haven’t forgotten, that an author like him, with multiple books under his belt and a large platform, would take the time to meet with a complete unknown like me.

* * * * *

Then, a year or so later. I remember where I was when he sent me a particular text: sitting in the back yard of my parents’ house. I had no writing work at the time, very little money, and my wife and I were trying to figure out where life was leading us. It was the summer of 2012, and I was starting to wonder if my decision to try to write full time was a mistake. Then I got a text message from Matthew:

“You want to go to Sri Lanka?”

I called him and he asked me some questions and told me to hold tight. Within a few weeks I was scheduled to go to Sri Lanka with him and a World Vision team of bloggers. Within six weeks I was on the plane, layover in JFK, layover in Dubai, landing in Colombo. It would turn out to be a turning point in my life.

But one of the things I remember the most about the trip is Matthew taking pictures, always wearing his fedora hat cockeyed on his head. You could tell he loved the Sri Lankan people, and he tried everything and anything to get the right photo, because he truly believed that the difference between a child sponsorship and no child sponsorship could be the quality of the photos he took. I’d come around the corner and he’d be laying in the dirt, aiming his camera into a particular filter of light. I’d look around later and he’d be spread out on the floor of a hut, getting the little children to laugh.

Cynical? No, not Matthew. Loving. Sincere. Desperate to find good somewhere, even in the darkest places.

* * * * *

Matthew can be highly critical of the church – sometimes it stings, because it hits so close to home. But I think Matthew is critical, not because he wants to bring the church down, but because he wants to, in the end, see it built back up again. I really believe this. Beneath the sarcasm and the sometimes biting humor is someone who loves Jesus, who hurts for those who have been hurt by the church, and who wants to see people find peace and grace.

Enter his new book, releasing today, Our Great Big American God.

Here’s the description:

Whip-smart and provocative, Turner explores the United States’ vast influence on God, told through an amazing true history of faith, politics, and evangelical pyrotechnics. From Puritans to Pentecostals, from progressives to mega-pastors, Turner examines how American history and ideals transformed our perception of God-for better and worse.

Fearless and funny, this is the definitive guide to the American experience of the Almighty-a story so bizarre and incredible that it could only be made in the U.S.A. Regardless of political affiliation, it will make readers reconsider the way they think about America as a “Christian nation,” and help them reimagine a better future for God and country.

It’s a book that every Christian in America should read, because too many of us have turned God into an American, and Christianity into a nationalist movement. If you’re a conservative evangelical, this book will probably offend you. It will definitely make you uncomfortable.

And that’s why you should read it.

Thanks, Matthew, for writing the book that Christians in America need to read.

Check it out HERE.

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When Ferguson is Across the Street

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This is me straining to take a selfie with the two men who helped me when our truck had a fuel leak somewhere in South Carolina this spring. The one on the left pulled an oxygen tank around with him, and the one on the right climbed right under the truck without a second thought. Two kinder gentlemen I don’t think I’ll ever meet.

We scrambled out the door the way families do in order to get to church, with our youngest daughter proclaiming in a panicked voice, “I forgot to brush my hair!” and our middle son still protesting the decision to drive the five blocks (instead of walking through the rain). We crossed the street in frantic fashion and tumbled inside the truck. Because we drove, we parked at the library and walked through the cemetery, then dashed through the rain while Maile fed Leo before coming inside.

Slightly wet, we took a seat at the back of St. James, just as the music began. We take up an entire pew now, the seven of us, and I can become slightly obsessed with trying to maintain order in that small space.

“Abra, please be careful with the Book of Common Prayer – you’ll tear the pages.”

“No, Sam, you can’t fold that down. That’s for kneeling and praying on, not standing on. It’s not a bleacher.”

Abra leans back and bumps her head against some poor woman trying to pray behind her. Sam drops the hymnal with a bang. Finally, the children go to their class and, since Maile hasn’t yet come in, I’m sitting alone. There is the reading from Matthew. Then the prayer.

My insides feel scattered. My heart is not centered. But the person leading the prayer says one word that captures me.

“Ferguson.”

He prays for peace, and when I think of the turmoil there, swirling in the Midwest, I find myself getting emotional. There is a dead young man, and a community torn, and chaos. There is violence and there are deep wounds. Suddenly the chaos in my own life seems slight in comparison.

But what can I do? I ask, and above me the church stretches high in the air and the light filters in through the stained-glass windows but all I can hear is the silence between the prayer and the response of the congregation.

Lord of mercy, hear our prayers.

* * * * *

We drive home and we stop to get a card for my cousin and we go by the market to pick up some eggs. The four oldest kids play a game of Life together while Maile works on a few projects and I take a nap. Then Sam, five years old, comes up to the bedroom and joins me, his blanket in tow. He looks like Linus from Charlie Brown, sucking his thumb, and he curls up against me. Soon he is asleep.

What did I do to deserve such peace?

And what can someone as insignificant as me do in the face of such chaos, such confusion? What can I do to help a place like Ferguson?

* * * * *

There is an African-American man who lives across the street from us. He looks to be about sixty. He sits on his porch just about every day, watching the traffic go by. When I sit and write on the front porch, I wave to him, and he waves back.

My mother-in-law, much more of an extrovert than I am, has already met him and spoken with him. She said he’s on dialysis. She said he’s a very nice man. For quite some time now, I’ve been thinking that I need to cross the street and talk to him, get to know him. Yesterday I wondered what he thought about Ferguson. I wondered what his teenage years were like in the 60s, where he lived, and what he saw.

This, I think, is the answer to the question, “What can I do about Ferguson?”: I can cross the street. This is not all that I can do, and it feels like such a small thing, but it also feels like the place for me to start.

It reminds me of the men who helped me when our truck started leaking fuel in South Carolina. There I was, stuck at a gas station. They didn’t have to do anything. But they walked over and did everything they could to help get me back on the road.

What are you doing to bring reconciliation to the world? To Ferguson? What else can we do?

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Honey, We Shouldn’t Pray For Him

Honey, we shouldn’t pray for him.

The words didn’t come out of my mouth, but they came close, derailed somewhere on the way from my brain to my tongue. And they stuck there, in the back of my throat, settling like ash. I was left staring down into my daughter’s eyes, not knowing what to say, surprised at my unchecked response.

That thought had never entered my mind about anyone else before in my life, that there were people you shouldn’t pray for. Her words stirred around in my mind.

Make sure you pray for him in prison, she had said. You know, pray that he’ll have a good night’s sleep.

* * * * *

Today, I’m posting over at Deeper Story. You can read the rest of the post HERE.

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What I Heard My Children Saying (or, What You Can Do With Ten Nails)

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I listened through the open window, and because I stopped and waited and listened I could hear their tiny voices dancing through the summer day, accentuated by the metallic strike of a hammer on a nail, the thunk of hammer on wood (missed!), the raspy sound of the shovel as it shoved into our narrow strip of city yard. They are five and six years old, the two of them, and their voices were serious.

I listened through the open window and they talked about building a tree house out of only a three-foot long board and the ten nails I had given them earlier, five in each dusty palm, five white nails that they held like magic seeds. They raced outside and one began digging and the other began nailing and that’s how it went for an hour or so as they planned and schemed the massive tree house they would build in the tiny tree that lines our city yard. Out of one small board. And ten nails.

This is what it means to be a child: to believe that even a tree house is possible, though you’ve never built one before, though you don’t have the tools or the materials, though you don’t know why or how. To believe it’s possible.

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

* * * * *

I spoke with Kelly Chripczuk the other day and we were talking about trust when she said something that made my ears perk up, something along the lines of,

“Until you lose your identity (as a writer or preacher or student or whatever), there’s so much pressure. Too much pressure. There are people to impress and a reputation to uphold. But once you can let go of that identity, it allows you to play again, like a little child, to create things and not worry about what anyone else will think.”

To play again, I thought to myself. This is what I have to allow myself to do.

* * * * *

I immediately thought of the novel I’m releasing this winter (I’m sorry if I’ve been talking about that too much, but it’s on my mind all the time, and to be honest I’m still terrified of freeing it into the world). But after talking with Kelly, I thought, That’s it! It’s all just play, this creating and conjuring and sharing of stories.

I enjoy writing stories too much to let what other people might think stop me from writing, from creating, from producing and sharing. When it’s me and all these potentially critical readers, I feel myself drawing inward. When it’s me and and the story, just us, and I’m making things up and chuckling to myself and nearly crying, that’s it. That is a life I could live and enjoy and be at peace.

That’s me in the back yard with not enough materials, not nearly the right tools, and ten measly nails. Making plans. Digging in the dirt. Climbing trees.

And believing.

What do you wish you could start believing for again?