Don't drop your BUTT

So, I'm driving into work today and the guy in front of me drops his cigarette butt out the window of his car. I see this all the time in Champaign (which really stands out because I rarely saw it in L.A.) and as I'm driving into work, I'm thinking about a blog entry about how often people litter here.

Then I get to work and there is this email from Rebecca with a link to a really cool article that totally convicted me.

Here is the article:

From W.David Phillips:

“At my last doctoral class with Len Sweet last week, he posed a question to us that went something like this: Provide for me the metaphors that will describe how we measure success in the church in the future. We are prone to measure success by how many and how much. And we determine who is a great leader by how many and how much.

So today, I want to share with you some of the metaphors we listed (and some I came up with afterwards), of things we can count as a measure of success. But I need to issue a warning. You will have to think about these and you may push back unless you realize the metaphor. So don’t react…Ponder…

1. The number of cigarette butts in the church parking lot.
2. The number of adoptions people in the church have made from local foster care.
3. The number of pictures on the church wall of unwed mothers holding their newborn babies in their arms for the first time.
4. The number of classes for special needs children and adults
5. The number of former convicted felons serving in the church
6. The number of phone calls from community leaders asking the church’s advice
7. The number of meetings that take place somewhere besides the church building
8. The number of organizations using the church building
9. The number of days the pastor doesn’t spend time in the church office but in the community
10. The number of emergency finance meetings that take place to reroute money to community ministry
11. The amount of dollars saved by the local schools because the church has painted the walls
12. The number of people serving in the community during the church’s normal worship hours
13. The number of non-religious-school professors worshiping with you
14. The number of people wearing good, free clothes that used to belong to members of the church
15. The number of times the church band has played family-friendly music in the local coffee shop
16. The number of people who have gotten better because of free health clinic you operate
17. The number of people in new jobs thanks to the free job training center you opened
18. The number of micro-loans given by members in your church
19. The number of churches your church planted in a 10 mile radius of your own church

Got any more?”

Wow. How about that? Any thoughts?
What are our measures of success right now? What should they be?

Messed up beautiful people

Do you have folks in your life that are so messed up, so odd, so annoying that you just can't hardly stand to be around them? People that you see coming and you want to just go the other way? People that make you act (or at least feel) in a way that you know Jesus wouldn't act? But you just can't hardly help it.

My friend Joy had an amazing insight about people like that. She made one of those statements that made me feel like Jesus was poking me in the ribs, saying, "Hey, did you hear that???"

Joy used the word "BEAUTIFUL" to describe what happens when one of those tough to love people finds a place to be a part of a community.

Beautiful.

Which is not the word that would describe my attitude towards that tough to love person. So, who is the one that's really messed up?

Joy is right. It is beautiful. And as I thought about that, I realized that you almost never see this kind of beauty when you are around people that are like you. It's not something that happens (very often) behind the safe walls of our homes or our churches. It's not something that happens unless we're willing to get a little messy ourselves. Or until we're willing to just admit that we ARE pretty messed up ourselves. Or until we start looking for beauty in people that are NOT like us.

So it occurs to me that our tendency to flock together with people that are like us makes it alot less likely that we can actually be like we really are with other people. In other words our uniqueness gets lost behind our desire to fit in.

Let me say it another way: I've got my own messed up junk. In my own way, I can be really hard to love myself. I can definitely be a big friggin idiot. If I let people see that stuff, will they find anything beautiful there, or will they just want to walk in the other direction? If I am honest about who I am, will there be room for me or will I find myself on the outside looking in? Can you make room for my uniqueness? My differing perspectives? My nuances and oddities? Can you let me be me? I mean, REALLY be me?

That's a deep and very real fear that I think haunts every person on some level. So we hide in our "likeness."

Maybe, just maybe, the only way to start to see beauty in ourselves is to start looking for it in others - ESPECIALLY those in whom it is hard to see much beauty.

But when we see it, when we feel it, when we are a part of it....yeah, it is beautiful.

You don't have to go to the dentist to get Happy Gas

We are in Southern California in the midst of a little vacation time combined with some study leave for me. Yesterday, we drove into the parking lot of the church I used to work at. They were setting up the patio for VBS. When some of the folks saw us pull in, they came running out to the car to say hi. Maya saw those old friends running out to the car, and she says:

"I'm so happy, I just tooted."

By the way, 2 nights ago, it was 105 degrees here.....at midnight.

How did you worship???

Missed ya'll on Sunday. But I hope you took us up on the challenge to find a way to worship in public outside the church walls. It was great to see many of you at the Downtown Campus, where I had the chance to preach. But I'm really excited to hear whatelse some of you did.

So, click on the little "comments" word below and tell us what you were up to this weekend!