After my shower I sat down on the couch and rubbed my newly trimmed face as I laughed about what had just happened. (Oh, if you didn’t read the beard story, you should probably do that now. Consider this the scene at the beginning of the second movie where you flashback in order to understand the back story. I know, part I is kind of long and rambling, but it may help part II make more sense….maybe).

That experience reminded me of a comedian who once had a bit about the names we give to neighborhoods, and how those names have nothing to do with the place where we live. So you live in the “Pheasant Hills” neighborhood where there are neither pheasants nor hills. Or you rent an apartment at “Willow Run”, where there are no willows for miles.

Sometimes the church does this with the names we come up with. I cannot explain it any better than Jon Acuff does on his site, “Stuff Christians Like”. (Take a look, I’ll wait). We call ourselves “Life Church” though we are the deadest place in town. We use terms like “Grace”  but we only offer it to ourselves, or “Community” when we have no intention of sharing life, real life, with the people who attend there. Our church signs and local paper advertisements speak of our place of worship as “a loving place” when it’s members are feuding and gossiping; we declare, “all are welcome” but if certain parts of the “all” would ever come and visit, they would quickly learn they were not part of the “all” the sign meant….you get the idea.

Day after day in a million different ways, through our signs, logos, bulletins, and vision statements, we make claims about who we are — we put certain things on the menu, but when push comes to shove, we are not ready for the person who enters the building and actually asks for it.  We fumble, make excuses, defer, and then we say, “well, I think we’re done here, what do you think?” And like a beard trim gone bad at Great Clips, the person just wants out, realizing very quickly that we use words like grace, and faith, and hope and love and community, and a hundred other “church words”, but we have no idea what to do with them.

But church criticism is easy. What about me? What about you? Am I experiencing and walking in any of the things that I talk about? The things I put up on the menu board? Grace, hope, love, faith, hospitality (love of stranger), joy, peace, patience….power….Jesus. Ultimately, most people will not be repulsed by a cliché church name, but they will be by another cliché disciple who knows the way to live, the cost to live, but still refuses to live it. The church is people. People who have surrendered their all to the Lordship of Jesus….right?

So what do we do? Where do we go from here?

That’s tomorrow’s post…..baaaaa duuuuummmmmmmmmmm

PS. Minutes after I posted yesterdays thoughts, I received a very nice tweet from Great Clips looking in to my experience. You see they are good people, and I just want them to know if they (or their lawyers) are reading this, that I will still continue to visit their
establishment for a great haircut at a comfortable price.   And if anyone wanted to find them they could go to www.greatclips.com and set up an appointment online today….I think that’s all I agreed to say. I know one thing, I am not going to mention the hack job with the beard and the clippers….unless there are some free haircuts involved….eh?….Great Clips?….happy customer is a return customer?…Talk it over and get back to me.