Remastered

I am different. My church is different. Today I'm a lot more at peace with that that I was even a month ago.

I've long been leading the church movement away from evangelism. I've felt enough hurt and rejection that I'd rather just stay in my shell and hide behind my walls. I'm happy that I've found a church that accepts (or at least tolerates) me.

For about a year now our church has been in almost constant financial crisis. We've paid the bills but we often have no money to spare and are often a bit behind. I'm the treasurer. I deal with it often.

As treasurer this has often caused me to think about solutions. If we don't have enough income, we need to reduce our expenditures. Unfortunately there is not really any excess spending. We can turn off lights better and try not to overuse the air conditioning, but these are really minor improvements. We still need to pay the mortgage and property tax and pastor's salary.

One radical solution would be to sell some property and fully commit to the idea of little or no future growth. I realized this and actually considered it as a solution for a while. I mean, if God is calling us to stay where we are, why not fully follow his calling? Many at church are like me -- they don't reach out.

The more I've thought of this the more I realize it's the wrong solution. God does not call us to hide in a box (or a church) and tend to ourselves. God has used this radical "final solution" to open me up to the only real solution for our budget crisis. We won't solve our problem by ignoring it and hoping it goes away or hoping a church member wins the lottery. Yes we need to pray and trust God. But we also need to change what we are doing. Specifically we need to reach out to our community.

Duh! Still, it's hard to describe how much I'm naturally against that idea. And, as I said, I think a lot of my church has fallen into the same mentality. What's cool is I'm now open to it.

I want to be clear: we do not reach out just so we can have more money. That's not what I'm saying at all. The financial crisis just highlights our real problem. We need to reach out because it's right and correct.

I've always viewed evangelism as sales. I need to become a pushy salesman hawking my wares door to door. I always fail because I'm not pushy like that. Furthermore I'm weird and once people figure out I'm weird they stay away.

What I'm finally comfortable with is that I'm not called to convince people. I am not called to be a salesman. There will be lots of people who don't like me or our church (at least not enough to attend). If, however, we are following God, if our church is his work, then there must be people God wants at our church. All we need to do is make ourselves known. Not sell ourselves. Not participate in a big sales campaign. Just inform people.

I like informing people. I passed out fliers for our Harvest Day (Halloween) party. I enjoyed it. I was at peace with it. I haven't done anything like it in a long time, and whenever I did I was not very happy doing it. This was much better. I still got nervous and got tired of walking around. I was glad to be done. But I was also glad to be doing it and want to do more of the same.

We don't need to all become salesman. We do need to let people know. If we let them know and they reject us, so be it. If everyone rejects us and we die in spite of our best efforts, then God is done with our church anyway and must have a different plan for us.

It feels like God has "remastered" me -- completely changed a part of me. I believe and hope he has. However, I know me. I'm sure many times I will want to crawl back into my shell. I won't always feel good about this. This blog will help remind me of the right thing to do.