THE
TRANSPARENT
CHURCH

Growing up, my family didn’t have a lot, but one thing we did have:

The Dollar Movie Theater.

Ah, yes, the glorious home of sticky floors, busted arm rests, and movie reels that would quit playing in the middle, forcing us to wait a half hour or more to finish what we started.

Three hours for a re-run of Bambi? Check!

As far as I was concerned, that theater was the only one that existed- for us, it was the first run theater.

I used to love to pay in spare change- dimes, nickels, and pennies loaded up on the counter for that teenager behind the window to count.

And snacks? Who wanted to pay $5 for 6-month old display M&Ms, when you could sneak in your mom’s cookies (and popcorn, if you had a jacket)?

It was a cheapskate’s dream come true-and I followed my passion for cheap movies past college and into my 20-something single days (One time two buddies of mine, on a whim, pulled into the dollar theater and caught three movies in one day, back-to-back-back: The Insider, the Bone Collector, and the Sixth Sense. By the end of the third one, I wasn’t just seeing dead people, I was seeing double of every kind of people!).

Over time, I came to fully and righteously believe that regular, everyday, down-to-earth, normal, and financially conscious Christian people would never dare pay full price for a movie ticket! Only shallow, let’s-throw-money-out-of-the-window kind of people would dare go to a first run theater, and anyone with a semblance of a conscience would avoid the candy counter like the plague.

So you can imagine my shock, horror, and even moral outrage, when, on my first date with she-whom-I-would-marry, she decided she wanted to go to the movies at a theatre in Westwood, California (where they hold all those movie premieres), where it cost $8.50 a ticket for a matinee in the year 2000! And then I honestly nearly passed out when, after getting our tickets, my head cleared long enough for me to see her, now moving in slow motion, making a beeline for the snack station in the back, and feeling very free to order up a large coke, popcorn, and giant candy. 

That’ll be 21.75 for the snacks, sir.

What! What was this girl doing? Was this some kind of test? Was she determined to find the bottom of my bank account on the first date?

And now, put that scene on repeat for 13 years, and you have our marriage.

Full of compromise, forgiveness, attempts at understanding, talking it out, and laughing about it later.

But one thing we haven’t done and won’t ever do- give up on each other. We stay together til death or inflated candy prices do us part.

And that’s pretty much how Carrie and I feel about the church.

Lots of working it out, lots of believing the best, lots of talking it through and hearing the other party out about the insanity of the behavior we have just witnessed or have just displayed.

When my cheapskate-ness and her don’t-crush-my-dream mantra collided, it wasn’t pretty at first, but over time, the close-quarter tension has produced something that staying to ourselves never could:

Beauty.

Are you in the middle of a challenging relationship in your church? Let me encourage you to stick it out. Work it out. Hug it out. Pray it out.

Love, we are told, is supposed to bear all things.

Even bank-busting trips to the candy counter at a real movie theatre.

“He has also set eternity in their heart”

–Ecclesiastes 3:11

In November 1932 in Australia, a down on his luck, WW I veteran named Arthur Stace was homeless and hopelessly addicted to alcohol. He had been living a life of petty crime and gambling that drove him to the brink of suicide. Having tried everything else, he stumbled into a church one night. That night he heard a message preached on living a life of purpose, a life filled with the power of living for eternity.

The word “eternity” captured Stace’s mind and heart and that night, he met the God of the universe, surrendered his life to Jesus Christ, and walked out a different man. He spent the rest of his life doing what he could to help people find the God who had found him in his desert.

What did he do?

Well, every day for more than 35 years, Stace rose before the sun did, and after reading his Bible and drinking a cup of tea, he’d go out into the streets of Sydney with a piece of chalk and write the word “Eternity”. Over and over and over, thousands of times he wrote the word in the same beautiful script. As the town awoke, they would see the word everywhere: on a sidewalk outside a coffee shop, on the back of a street sign, on a building.

Eternity appeared all over the city. Instead of being irritated, the city took to it and reported feeling strangely encouraged. For the next 25 years, no one knew where it came from. But they finally found him, and when they did, they asked him to continue, and one of his original writings is inside a bell in a government building to this day.

The word eternity had so moved the hearts of the people of Sydney that when it came time to host the 2000 Summer Olympics, and the torch was lit to launch the games, the fireworks were lit, but behind the torch on a bridge, a massive sign flashed to life with the word that millions of people around the world now read: Eternity.

So, let me ask you:

How could you mark the world around you with eternity?

What could you, like Arthur Stace, do tomorrow that would contribute that much more to changing the world?

One of the ways my wife and I try to do this is through loving God’s church. We long for people to live for more than today, for more than just a paycheck or the next sporting event on TV.

Sometimes people aren’t easy- but sometimes we aren’t easy. Sometimes people do strange things, but sometimes we do strange things, too, I suppose. But again, this isn’t about today- it’s about eternity, because I know:

One thing will endure- Jesus’ bride.

One thing He loves- He loves His bride, which is us.

One thing is built for eternity- his church, because he has made us for himself, and He is eternal.

You know, come to think of it, if I were to get a tattoo, it would be this word, the word eternity. 

Not that I’m going to do it. I’m not that into that kind of pain. But, should you want to do so, just say you found some inspiration here.

See, we’ve been made for it, built for it. So go ahead, let it out. Let out a little eternity on the world around you. Let your work ring with it. Let your life, like that bridge in Australia that summer night 14 years ago, shine with it.

Heck, you could even… write it on something.

Just saying.

I have four children, three boys, all elementary aged.

Probably the best part about being a Father (most days, anyway) is the moment I hit the door at the end of the day.

Most days, three monkey children climb me like a banana tree and beg me to do what is referred to as “Daddy’s House of Pain”:  all three of them on the ground in a boy-pile being alternately dug into by my elbows and tickled slobber-faced until this “sweet and sour” treatment leaves them exhausted. Then, when they absolutely can’t take it anymore, I make them tell me I’m the best dad in the whole world, and that’s how they’re allowed to leave “the House”. And then they get up, laugh at me and tell me I’m too slow and dare me to catch them and do it all over again.

Here’s the thing- they aren’t just having fun; there is a much more primal thing, a deeper need being met.

How? Why? What are they really doing?

What they are doing is what the child of God desperately needs to do in a similar way:  rejoicing in their status as their Father’s child.

Whether I hold my sons, kiss them, or wrestle with them- or do none of it- they are my sons. That’s the good news, that’s the fact of who they are. But the fact of who they are also comes with a kind of a status: their sonship, which they desperately need to experience.

And how do they experience their status? By coming to me, their Father, and rejoicing in it. They don’t call it that, of course- what I call “rejoicing in their status”, they call “Daddy’s House of Pain”: Elbows, hugs, kneecaps, and laughter.

And that status they rejoice in changes everything about how they feel about themselves and therefore produces one thing in their hearts: joy.

Which is precisely what the Bible calls the logical experiential outcome of your status. Let me show you how that works for you, right now, if you are a Christian.

Romans 14:17-18 says this:  the Kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, for He who serves Christ in this way is acceptable to God and approved by men.

What’s the verse talking about? How you and I get approval. Is it from God, or others? Most of us, including myself, go after approval in reverse: we say, if other people approve me, if I do enough good things, and other people notice and applaud, then I’m acceptable to God.

Over the last 9 months or so, while the growth of the church where I serve has been growing and bearing fruit, I had been through a series of difficult-for-me-to-handle scenarios, and I felt a bit a bit resentful. Was it right? No. Was it real? Yes.

And God, mercifully, led me to this verse right here, and asked me a question.

He asked me, “Are you doing it for them, or for me?

And I broke.

And I realized I had been like the baseball player whose swing and fundamentals had been flawless, but who had taken his eye off the ball. Listen, you can go through the motions perfectly, but if you don’t keep your eye on the target, you can perform as perfectly as you like, but it will only serve to wear you down. You can even hurt yourself by swinging and not watching the target, not keeping your eye on the ball.

So, what does the Christian keep his eye on? His status as God’s child.

Paul says right here, the kingdom of God isn’t eating and drinking- it’s not primarily about what you do- but he says it’s first about this: righteousness, which is the Greek word dikaiosyne, and means this: the status of being approved.

The kingdom of God, the Gospel, is about God’s approval, and if I have that, if I go to Him and let Him pick me up and remind me about who I am- His child, His son, I am the child of the greatest Dad in the world, what does that do to me? Paul says this- God’s approval leads to peace, which gives me joy. Do you lack joy in your life today? May I suggest, then, that you aren’t rejoicing in your status?

If you were serving God in this way- not just laboring, serving, but like a pleasure addict, going after your approval, your acceptance by God- than Paul says, then other people can’t help but, in the end, also approve you. If you go after one, you’ll get both. If you go after the other, you’ll get neither.

Which one are you after? Which one are you keeping your eye on?

Which one are you rejoicing in?

Me: “Honey, I think I’d like to get some glasses. They look cool.”

My wife: “Hmm, I don’t know what could look cool on you. The problem is your face.”

 

Not my ears, not my nose, or my eyes, but just…my face.

Ah, yes, the glory of marriage.

Now, I had a choice at that point:

a. Get insecure (What is it about my face? Don’t you like it?)

b. Get mad (Where do you get off talking to me like that? I’m (with authority) your husband!

c. Get even (My face? Ha! You should see yours! You call your glasses cool?!?)

d. Laugh it off

 

Fortunately, in a rare moment of clear man thinking, I opted for option “d”.

I just laughed.

Did you hear what you just said, I asked? My face? The problem with me is my face? Too funny!

When my wife realized what she had said, unintentionally, the laughter started, the apologies flowed, and then we rehashed the humor in it to the point of tears.

Why don’t we always opt for option “d”, though? Why don’t we immediately go there? Why are we so prone to receiving offenses from people when what they say could just as easily be taken the other way and shrugged off?

Dr. John Gottman, of the Gottman Institute, has done some fascinating research into the anatomy of great relationships.

Great relationships, he noted, have a “magic ratio” of positive to negative interactions.

For example, when it comes to relationships in the workplace, there is a “magic ratio” of 3 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.

When it comes to marriage, however, instead of the ratio going down, it actually goes up- there is a magic ratio of 5 to 1.

What that means is this:

1. Negative emotions are more powerful than positive emotions. 

Think about it- it takes, with the person in the cubicle next to you or in the house next door, 3 times more positive interactions just to stay even in the relationship. To get ahead and build great relationships, in other words, try bringing cookies or paying for lunch at least once a week. And, one false word or bad conversation can set you back weeks.

2. The closer the relationship, the more positive deposits must be made.

As people, we end up needing one another just to make it in life. Those who always take, and rarely give- or even worse, those who don’t know they are always taking and never giving- in their closest relationships are burning through people faster than they realize. In other words, don’t take the people closest to you for granted. The people closest to you are the ones who need the best from you the most- just to survive you!

3. When a seemingly innocuous comment is received the wrong way, that’s a clue you are headed to the dreaded “1-1” ratio.

At 1-1, your friendships and even marriage, according to Gottman, are “cascading towards divorce”. If you are feeling shaky about a relationship, or are easily insulted or offended by a particular person, it isn’t likely that the person is doing you harm after harm (although that’s possible, too), it’s that you and that person haven’t experienced enough positive moments together. You may just be treading water in the relationship- and that’s a difficult place to stay, because no one can tread water indefinitely.

I have learned that the people I am the most sensitive around are not “worse” people or “the bad guy”, but people with whom I just don’t have enough positive experiences. I either haven’t invested enough myself or have genuinely experienced too many tough moments with them for whatever reason, with not enough good ones to push ahead.  I have come to recognize that when I can’t just “shrug it off”, that’s a signal I and that person need some investment into our relationship- before the account gets bled dry.

How about you? Who is one person you’re having a hard time with right now? Why not shoot them a text, pick up the phone and call, or, even better, yet, buy them an inexpensive gift on amazon.com (the shipping is awesome)?

If you’ll do that, there’s no guarantee it will work- but there is a guarantee that doing nothing won’t. If you and that person have enough “in the bank”, you can make it through anything.

That’s the reason, in other words, I could laugh off from my wife what could really be insulting if someone else had said it to me – it was all the relational and emotional deposits my wife has made in my life.

Well, that and I know my face is kind of a problem.