It was the Friday after Thanksgiving – Black Friday as we
call it in our culture – and after the crowds had become less intense, my two
daughters and I went to Target. As we were rather aimlessly walking around the
store, we ran into a Mom and her toddler son with whom we go to church.
The little boy is at the stage where non-stop talking is the
norm and he was talking up a storm with my two daughters and his mom, when all
of a sudden he realized I was there. Looking directly at me, he said, “How did
you get out of church?” I replied with,
“That’s a great question.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about that question. I’m confident
that my toddler friend assumes that since he only sees me “at church” then
somehow it is amazing that on Black Friday I was “out of church.” But could
that innocent question from a toddler that made me, my two daughters, and his
Mom laugh actually be one of those “out of the mouths of babes” moments?
Especially during this season of the year where Advent quickly rushes us toward
Christmas – a season filled with opportunities to be Jesus to the world around
us – if only we could “get out of church.”
One of my favorite church plant stories in Acts is the one
found in Acts 16 about Paul and his missionary companions as they visit
Philippi. Luke tells us that Paul and his friends had been in the city for
several days, perhaps doing some research about where they might find a place
of opportunity. On the Sabbath Day, Luke says “they went outside the city
gate.” Interestingly, Luke uses a verb that means “to go outside of” and then
adds a preposition that means “out of.” What we would see as redundancy in
English may very well be emphatic about “go out of, out of the city gates.”
Their research (“we supposed there was a place of prayer” in
16:24) suggested there might be a place where there would be an opportunity to
say a word about Jesus. Sure enough, they found a place of prayer by the river
where a group of “God-worshipping women” met. Most likely, these are Gentile
women who like the God of Israel but aren’t too impressed with His people, the
Jews.
Amazingly, in a cross-cultural exercise of faith, Paul and
his friends sit down with the women, have a conversation, and the outcome is
that Lydia and her family become believers and are baptized and the church who
would later receive the wonderful epistle we call Philippians was born.
Crazy things happen when we are willing to get “outside” of
whatever places we normally allow to define us. For the church in our day, many
of us do allow the place where we worship on Sunday to be the defining reality
of our faith.
What if, during Advent as it leads up to Christmas, we
decided to get “outside of out of the church” (to use Luke’s redundancy) and
find a place where we can go and have a conversation about Jesus that leads to
people coming to know him as Redeemer?
Even more challenging, what if – like Paul and his
companions – we found a place to have that conversation that was challenging to
our cultural norms? That could be a group whose ethnicity is different. Or a
group from a different socio-economic category than we occupy. Or what about
people with different politics? Or people of different faiths?
It’s one thing to talk about the division and tension in our
culture. It really isn’t hard to see. But it is a whole different thing to have
the courage to do something about it!
Perhaps my little toddler buddy was on to something. We all
ought to “get out of the church” for a moment and find someone with whom we can
have a conversation about Jesus!
After all - we insist that "He is the reason for the season!"
