The unsaid might go like this:
You don't look like us so maybe you should find another church.That might be communicated with shifty stares. Or:
We know your past. You surely need church, but we hope you don't bring your messy stuff to us on a regular basis.Our language for this one would be to keep our distance and pretend you are not there. We surely won't learn your name or listen to your story.
Some churches are called by God to rewrite this tempting language. They are moved to offer a new, unspoken language:
We're all a mess. We know it. We try to celebrate our movement forward in Jesus by loving on and serving each other. You are so welcome here.Our greeting, our effort to learn your name, our listening to the bits of your story as you begin to offer them--these are examples of a new language to which God calls us.
It is a trying language, hard to learn, hard to sustain. Goodness, it is so much easier to keep church a little club of people who don't keep getting challenged by God and the leadership.
Clubless means there is always room for the person, the family, the past, the situation, the circumstances that stretch us, that the outside world (of neighboring churches) will frown upon.
Always room--seems Jesus ran into that clubless problem. Something about an inn and a stable...not fitting in even from his earthly beginning.
Tomorrow: That Thing Called Reputation
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