Getting Out Of Church!

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!"