“For Rent”

Driving through town, I love to see new construction taking place. The people hired out for the various construction jobs love to “see” this even more, I’m sure. Setting the debate about consumerism and American culture aside for a moment, seeing new construction builds in my heart a reassurance that fresh vision and passionate dreams still abound. There are risk-takers still among us, and there are energetic human support beams lining these cathedrals of leadership innovation.

By contrast, a wet, mildewy insulation fills my heart, when I glance upon a worn-out building, overgrown with weedy-shrubbery and posting a sign “For Rent.” I wonder who in their right minds would buy into such a venture. And yet the building’s owner is hoping against hope for someone to do just that.

A few miles outside the city-limits of Lamar, SC, such a building exists (or existed, depending on your view point). At one time it was a double drive-thru for hamburgers and hotdogs. Yet, that “one time” was quite a distance into yesteryear. It looked as if The History Channel might have wanted to use it in the next episode of their recent series, “Life without People.” Recently, it has been acquired and spruced up. It is now the sprawling hub of a weekend flea-market.

Yet, there are many more buildings that weep tears of broken glass and chipped paint, mourning the days of yesteryear, when someone with vision birthed them into existence. The only brightness that remains for many of these buildings flows from the newly changed out “For Rent” signs. Maybe, just maybe, some resourceful entrepreneur will set up shop to the Burger King tune of “If you build it, they will come.” At that dire state, the owner of the building no longer has the Burger King luxury of having it his way. He is at the mercy of the entrepreneur’s golden wisdom.

Many of our churches are now “For Rent.” The “owners” are hoping against hope. Perhaps their resourceful pastoral entrepreneurs can whip up some measure of life, sunny-side up, with a side of comfy-ness and all served on platters of antique traditions by beaming, complaisant young people. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer pastoral entrepreneurs (especially younger ones) willing to submit their resourcefulness to such a vacuum of reality. Is it possible that waiting for young pastoral entrepreneurs to ride into town in their limousine ideas to save our churches is nothing more than a pipe dream? After all if their limousine ideas do not fit our Model-T assumptions, then we slit their tires.

“Choosing to Love Thy Neighbor Also” is our denominational theme this year. While we are waiting on our young, pastoral entrepreneurs that are long in coming, if even at all, perhaps ”choosing to love thy neighbor as thyself” is the entrepreneurial model for church growth that we plain country folk can live. In so doing, perhaps it will be our new customers and patrons working with us that will enable us to remove the “For Rent” signs with optimistic integrity. Yet, this means that we, the regular church folk, “the owners,” actually have to have meaningful contact with potential customers that look, sound, and taste differently than we do. Let’s face it, if we, “the owners,” don’t learn to encourage patronage from “different” customers, we will be replacing our “For Rent” signs with ones more onimously labeled, “For Sale.” Likewise, we must not only learn to encourage patronage from “different” customers, but we must learn to embrace a lifestyle of loving-service to them. This is our calling now; not simply the calling of those we pay to be spiritual for us.

Such prospects are intimidating for many of us. Yet, our pastors are not the only ones with resourceful and resilient hearts among us. If most of us can find creative ways to still make it to the local buffet in this economy, then I know finding creative ways to love our neighbors, even our neighbors that are “different,” is doable.

Serving in the military provides ample opportunity to practice this novel idea of “choosing to love thy neighbor as thyself.” The military rarely runs a shortage of pagans (aka. ministry opportunities). One drill weekend I was digging fighting holes with my squad leader. He was digging holes of despair. Seemingly out of nowhere he began to express his deep frustrations in his marriage. His emotions were raw. Not being married, myself, my comfort was raw. The stakes were high. He was hell-bent on going to the divorce lawyer that Wednesday. He hated her.

Yet, the Spirit impressed upon me to simply listen, to be a redemptive harbor of peace onto which his emotional hurricane could safely land. Eventually, I confessed that I had no advice to offer, but that I could see he was desperately hurting. I offered to pray for him, right there on the spot. I told him that I believed God could save his marriage. He graciously let me pray over him that God would heal his marriage. The next drill weekend, a month later, he found me among several of my friends. With the bark of your friendly, neighborhood drill instructor he said, “Hey, if Daniel wants to pray for y’all, let him! My wife and I were going to the divorce lawyer, but now we’ve decided to work things out.”

 Several months later he proudly brought his wife and little boy, his intact and healing family, to Family Day. I don’t know the exact extent to which my prayers over him and his family played into God’s redemption of that family. I do know that when I made the decision to be involved in his messy situation, I was not Rev. Daniel. I was merely Lance Corporal Daniel of the Marine Reserves, who simply loved Jesus with a passion that propelled me to actively love my vile, but hurting, neighbor with my ears and heart.

Our culture rarely runs a shortage of pagans with glaring needs. These folks are our neighbors. They are our neighbors to love. They are our neighbors to redemptively love. They are our neighbors to redemptively love with no strings attached. They, not the mirage of young, entrepreneurial pastors, are the means by which we shall remove the “For Rent” signs from what will become our formerly dilapidated churches.

“More than Meets the Eye”

“More than meets the eye,” was the tag line from the old Transformers cartoon way-back-when. Despite the fact that most people went to see the latest Transformers movie simply because of the signature Michael-Bay-massive-cool graphics and Megan Fox, there is more to this movie than meets the eye.

Michael Bay has a penchant for playing a Where’s Waldo social commentary game with many of his movies, like “The Island.” This is no different. While The Fallen is strategizing for his buddy-Deceptacons, the Obama administration (in the film) sends an official (that looks a lot like Press Sec. Robert Gibbs) to the special ops military group working with the Autobots. They are to categorically suspend all activity. The Obama administration (in the film) wants to dialogue with the Deceptacons and send the Autobots away from earth. Yeah … we in the audience see there is nothing-more-here-than-inviting-a-black-eye. The officer-in-charge asks the Obama Administration official, “what if you’re wrong?”

A good question for our own real-life situation. During the heating up phase of the Deceptacon major offensive President Obama is wisked away to a “secure” location, while normal peon “global citizens” must suffer the consequences of his gross miscalculations. Where is Uncle Mordecai when we need him?

During a news conference with the Autobot special ops unit and Optimus Prime, an officer whispers to his friend about Prime: “If God made us in his image, who made him?” The voice-over Prime assures us, like in the previous Transformer movie, that we’re not alone in the universe. Knowing all there is to know in a universe of icy and stale reductionism is a lony place. As a rationalistic and scientifically-precise culture, we have never been more hungry for unexplainable mystery that is bigger. We’re leaving organized, pansy religion by the droves, but we’re hungry for a God, who is big enough to be untamable and is beyond complete explanation. We Christians would do well to take notice that there is more to our God-hungry culture than meets the eye.

A “New” Beginning

Some phrases in our common usage are tossed about like worn underwear. You realize you’re handling it, but you don’t especially pay that much attention to the details. A “new” beginning is such a phrase. By definition each beginning is new. And yet, we don’t seem to mind the redundancy. We’re hoping to emphasize that “this” beginning is newer than most in that it will exact more cleansing power for yesterday’s dirty underwear.

In Christianity each day is a beginning, but Easter Sunday was a “new” beginning. Paul tells us that the Resurrection mean more than Jesus will take us to Heaven one day. He tells us the Resurrection is the tangible hope for the Holy Spirit’s very tangible work in our nasty, underweared lives:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you(Romans 8:11; ESV).

Yes, we can be forgiven of the boo-boos we committed, but Paul is emphasizing something far more potent than taking Ex-Lax with a trucker’s 64oz size “cup” of apple juice. Paul is saying we can be physically empowered to live for Jesus and his way, by being transformed internally. We can literally have victory over Sin … not just death. That is some kind of “new” beginning.

If that were all, simply being able to stop sinning and being made more like Jesus, then we would have eternal reasons for rejoicing. However, Paul’s thought continues through the chapter to this remarkable verse that we often attempt to make stand alone:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose(Romans 8:28; ESV).

Not only am I promised victory over sin in this “new” beginning, known as the Resurrection, I am also promised that the Holy Spirit will take the muck and grime of yesterday’s underwear and use it for fertilizer for tomorrow’s fruitful life for God. The recent movie “Up” carries a similar theme.

Up

Carl and Ellie Fredricksen, an unlikely couple, are Elementary School sweethearts who fall in love over one vision: Charlz Muntz, the disgraced explorer/adventurer. They eventually marry and begin to save up for their ultimate vacation: moving their house to the pinnacle of Paradise Falls, the former haunt of Charlz Muntz. But life happens and their Paradise Falls savings is spent on one rotten apple after another. However, their life together becomes over the years an Eden of what could be. Eventually Ellie dies, leaving Carl cold, lonely, and depressed in exile from Eden to live in what could have been. Now in the midst of a hungry city jungle that is threatening to devour his last vestiges of their Eden, Carl is forced to the sunset of their dreams together in Shady Oaks retirement home.

In one last fit of desperation Carl arranges the crazy scheme of turning their house into a blimp. With those tens of thousands of balloons it literally is Paradise Fall or bust … bust-pop-bust-pop. What Carl doesn’t figure into his equation is a little dreamy-eyed wilderness explorer, Russell. Russell is what Carl was, Russell is in the way of Carl finally accomplishing what he and Ellie dreamed when they were Russell’s age. Russell brings with him baggage, and, as Carl inches towards his destination, Russell’s baggage becomes heavier with the introduction of his new friend, Kevin. Russell is baggage. And Carl can’t seem to cut his baggage loose, despite his best efforts.

Carl meets up with his former hero, Charlz Muntz, and for a moment reenters Paradise Lost only to find the last vestiges of his innocence lost. Charles is desperate to trap and return to the States with the mythical bird Kevin. Charlz was disgraced long ago, because the world refused to believe his stories of birds like Kevin. Now he will stop at nothing to capture Kevin, who happens to be Russell’s only friend in the world. Whether he likes it or not, Carl has now become attached to Russell, and he is in the very awkward position of cutting himself loose from his attachment to his childhood hero to be a hero to his new child-friend.

At a very powerful moment Carl reaches for Ellie’s exploration scrap book. As a kid Ellie had put paraphernalia in there regarding her dreams of adventure. She leaves a huge section open: “Adventures I’ll have next.” Carl’s dream, as Ellie’s friend, sweetheart, and husband has always been to make sure Ellie could fill those pages; the ultimate adventure being their trip to Paradise Falls. On her deathbed Ellie hands her scrapbook to Carl, who sets it on the proverbial shelf. After all their entire life, in his eyes, has been a perpetual shelving event. As Carl flips through the scrapbook he accidentally opens the “Adventures I’ll have next” section to find that Ellie had filled those pages with photos and such of their life together.

Carl’s life is about to flounder and die with the loss of his hero’s standing in his eyes. He truly has nothing anymore. His hero is a villan in his life. His house is nothing. Ellie is long dead. Yet, Carl is reborn through Ellie’s scrapbook. He now realizes that the ultimate adventure he was waiting for was his life with Ellie. He now realizes that he is just about to cut another real adventure off from his life in finally getting rid of Russell and Kevin.

So Carl embarks on an adventure to save Russell and Kevin. After adrenaline-rushing moments Russell and Kevin trap Charlz in the house that is now attached to Charlz’s blimp. Russel and Kevin jump to the blimp, and Carl cuts the house loose. The house, Charlz, and Carl’s old dreams plummet to their death at the bottom of Paradise Falls. Carl’s new adventure takes flight, goes “Up,” with Russell, as Russell’s dad-figure.