Then Jesus told this story to some who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a dishonest tax collector. The proud Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t sin, I don’t commit adultery, I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored.”
Luke 18:9-14
Hi, my name is Howard, and I’m a church-a-holic. (Hi, Howard.) I guess it’s been going on for a long time. I could blame my parents, after all, they were the ones that introduced me to the church. I remember going to church as early as I remember. There are pictures of me at church in a diaper. As long as I can remember I’ve been in church. I guess I was hooked from an early age. You know what they say, those who grow up in a family of church-a-holics are very likely to become church-a-holics themselves. Church has been a part of my life for all my life and I just can’t see life without it. You know what they say, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
What? Being addicted to church is a problem? Let me explain. I love church. I love all that church offers me. I love that the church is a place I can come and learn the truth about life and about God. I love studying scripture and discovering all the nuances and intricacies about God and His people. In fact, I kind of pride myself on knowing a lot about scripture and theology. I also love that the church is a great place to connect with like minded Christians. What a great place to be in community with people who are just like me! Church is a comfortable place where I can come and know that I won’t experience things that will tempt me or cause me to deal with the issues of the world. I love that church offers so much for me and my family. Looking for a good place to let your kids play? The church offers that. A group of guys to hang out with? Look to the church. Play groups and coffee for the ladies? Got it. Heck, if you’re looking for a group to vacation with or for the kids to play soccer with you can find it in the church.
The church is a great place, but sometimes it’s maybe just a bit too great. Some of the same reasons that I love the church are also reasons that make the church a tough place in which to grow. We can get so caught up in learning all we can about God that we end up knowing a lot but not doing a lot. The community that the church can build can be both one that builds us up and also one that closes us in. Church can be an escape for us – a place for us to run from the troubles of the world. This is a good thing – no one can spend all their time battling on the front lines of the world for the kingdom of God, but it can also be a bad thing. We can get so comfortable in the community of the church that we close in on ourselves and become our own separate community. We can surround our lives with all things church and cut ourselves off from the world. Jesus had a name for people just like us Church-a-holics – Pharisees. Yep, as much as we’d like for the opposite to be true we end up more like the Pharisees than we’d like to admit. We form into our own little group that knows all the rules and the ways to live the right life and we shun those that aren’t living according to the will of God. It’s easy to do and happens so subtly that we often don’t even see it happening.
That’s how it happened for me. I’ve always grown up in the church, but I always thought of myself as someone who had a fairly good grasp on the world around me. To be sure I was not what anyone would consider to be “worldly”, but I didn’t think that I was some kind of churchy religious type. Hey, I went to contemporary services – that meant that I was hip with the culture around me, right? I used some relevant illustrations from modern society in my sermons, so I was right there with unchurched harry and mary if they were somehow to find there way into a worship service, right? That’s what I thought until I left the comforts of the church to go and start a new church. You know what I discovered? I’m a church-a-holic.
What do I mean by church-a-holic? I mean that I had forgotten that the church exists not only to be a community of the faithful, but also to be the voice of the gospel to the world. I thought that I was doing this, but I realized that, while I was very comfortable in building the community of the believers, I wasn’t doing such a good job telling the un-believers the truth of God. I considered myself an evangelist because I was willing to stand before a crowd and tell them the truth of the gospel. But when I found myself without a crowd, I discovered that telling others about Jesus wasn’t as easy as I thought. I discovered that it takes a lot more than just knowing the truth and telling the truth to draw people to Christ. I discovered that the church, great as it can be as a place for growth and community, it can also be a hiding place to shield myself from my calling to go out and tell others the good news. I discovered that I liked that community, liked it so much that I would rather spend my life bound within the community of the church than to reach out and be a part of what God is doing in the world.
Here’s what I’ve learned from being away from the church community. First, there are people who do not go to church. I know, but revelation. But for a preacher it is a big revelation. I can probably count on one hand the number of times in my entire lifetime that I have not attended church for two weeks straight. And that includes my time in college. For my entire life I have always been in church on Sunday, and for most of my life that has meant being in church for more than one hour. As a preacher my Sundays have always started when the sun rises and lasted well into lunch. My Sundays have always been busy, so busy that I haven’t been able to see what is going on in the world around me. So when I moved to Katy to start Crossbridge I was legitimately surprised when I looked out on Sunday morning and saw people mowing their grass or walking their dog and not getting ready to attend church. I always knew there were people who didn’t go to church, but I’d never actually seen them. I was so shocked that I almost wanted to elbow Krystal and say, “Look! Heathens!” It was a major revelation to me because as a pastor I had surrounded myself with the church and with church going people and I really didn’t interact with anyone who did not go to church. All of a sudden I didn’t have that community and I found myself having to make friends with people I met at the park or on the street and discovered that I didn’t have much in common with a lot of people. I had become so connected with the church that my life was defined by the church. My habits, my friendships, my interests – they all revolved around the church. And I discovered that if I was going to reach out to this community I had to find some common interests. How do you make friends when you don’t have the built in common factor of the church? I didn’t know, but I was starting to discover that it’s not as easy as I thought. I see some of you nodding your heads. “About time a preacher realizes that it isn’t as easy as inviting someone to church.” Yes, I’m sorry. I discovered that to build relationships I had to learn to hang out with guys at the sports bar or go fishing or join some community group. What, a preacher at the sports bar? Heaven forbid! Yes, believe it or not, I met some guys to watch sports at a place where they serve alcohol. I learned that in order for me to interest people in the church I needed to be interested in them. People aren’t longing to find a place where they can fulfill some obligation to God. After all, if church is just about checking off some list to get us into heaven than we’ve got some serious problems with our understanding of grace. People are interested in being a part of a church that cares for them and wants to be in a relationship with them. It doesn’t take much to realize that people are looking for relationships that will help them be better people. We want to hang out with people that will make us better. It’s the truth no matter what “better” means to us. If we want to be a better golfer, we want to have friends that are better golfers. If we want to be better fathers we want to hang out with the fathers of the kids that we think are better behaved than ours. And if we want to be better men, the men that we all know deep down in our souls that we were created to be, than we want inherently to be with those who are living a better life of faith than we are living. It may take us some time to realize this, but somewhere along the path of life we realize that we want to be better and we want to live a life of truth. And these kinds of relationships do not occur unless we are bold enough to step outside of the church and actively seek to build relationships with those we know who need Christ in their lives.
So I am a church-aholic. I love the church and all that it has to offer, but I also know the danger that can come when we get so comfortable in the church community that we fail to reach out and share the good news that we are called to share. But this isn’t how it has to be. My life doesn’t have to be bound completely to the church. I can, and you can, be a part of reaching out and sharing the truth by building relationships outside of the church. We can be a part of breaking the cycle of a church that wraps into itself and has not connection with the world that surrounds it. I can still love the church and also be a part of bringing the church to the world. In fact, if I am to take my calling as a disciple of Christ seriously that isn’t only an opportunity for me to have a richer life, but also my responsibility to expand the kingdom of God. The church will not grow until and unless we are willing to take the church into the world. And the greatest way that we can do this is to actively seek relationships with people who are outside of the church. It’s a messy business. It means that we have to have people around us that maybe aren’t living exactly saintly lives. It means that we have to be friends with people who maybe aren’t perfect and aren’t really even looking to be perfect. It means that we will have to be an example of wholesome living while at the same time not being a “holier than thou”. It means that we have to be willing to invite our unchurched friends to be a part of our lives. It means that we must not be ashamed about being a Christian, but we must also not wear it as a shield to keep us from the unsavory aspects of life. To reach out means that we must be willing to meet people where they are and help them to discover that God has a better life for all of us. It also means that we must see the church not as an escape, but as a rest stop. Church should not be a place for us to go to permanently escape the world, but a place for us to be refreshed, recharged, and encouraged to do the good work that we are called to in the world. Church should be a place where we grow in our faith and where we are built up for the battles that the world puts before us each day. We cannot use the church to run away from the world. Somewhere, somehow, the world will find us and will attack us. If we do not seek the church as a place for growth and encouragement then we will never have the strength to face the challenges of the world.
Friends, I’m not going to lie to you – I love the church. I love it so much that I can become easily addicted to the good things that the church has to offer and get so cloistered in the church that I fail to fulfill my calling to tell others about Christ. But that’s not the way that any of us are called to live. We are called by Christ to go forth and spread the good news. Jesus’ last words before he ascended were what we call the great commission found in Matthew 28:18-20, “I have been given complete authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” We are called to go out and to share the good news and to help others discover the joy and peace that comes through living a life of grace. The only way that this will happen is if we are bold enough to step outside of our comfortable place within the community of Christ and make intentional relationships with those who need Christ. Here’s what I want each of us to do. I call it the 3 Friend challenge. Somewhere on your bulletin, I want each of us to list three people whom we know are not active in a church that we will intentionally build a relationship with for Christ. I want us all to make a commitment to pray for them daily and to find ways to involve them in our lives. Maybe that means inviting them to lunch or giving them a call once a week. Maybe it means developing an interest in what they are interested in or inviting them to be a part of something that you are interested in. And then, and this is the key, I want you to be their friend. Don’t let them be a project – honestly invest in them and in their lives. And don’t force your faith on them. Don’t hide it, but don’t make your relationship with them be completely about getting them involved in the church. Let your relationship grow so that they will be open to hearing about Christ. Have patience and don’t force things. Just be a part of their lives and be a good example of the grace of Christ.
My name is Howard, and I’m a church-a-holic, but I don’t have to be. My life doesn’t have to be completely consumed with the church. I can be a Christian and still live in the world. I can be in the church and still be a part of spreading the truth in the world. Church doesn’t have to be an escape, it can be a place of growth, rest, and encouragement. And when I live out my calling to share the good news by building relationships founded on the grace of Christ I can live my life as Christ intends.
Friends, are you willing to admit that you too are a church-a-holic? Are you willing to see that the church is a great place to grow and rest, but we are called to do more than just grow, we are called to share the good news of the grace of Jesus Christ. The church will not grow unless we are willing to take the church to the world. We can choose to sit back and relax and be church-a-holics, or we can choose to be an active part in sharing the salvation truth of Jesus Christ, the very Son of God who died and rose again that we may have true life. Friends, I hope you will do more for that grace than sit back and take it in. I hope you will be a part of bringing Christ to the world. I hope you will actively involve yourself in bringing Christ to your family and friends. I hope you will invest in people and love them because the very Creator has invested in you and loves you unconditionally. Let’s all set aside our church-a-holic attitude and take on the heart of Christ. Let us go forth and be the church instead of being in the church and let us reach others with the love with which Christ has filled our hearts. There is a world out there that needs Christ, and we are the ones who are charged with sharing the good news. Let’s no longer be church-a-holics but Christ’s disciples as we go forth and be the church bringing the grace of Christ with the world. Let us go forth and live life in the will and grace of God and be His church, spreading His love with all those in our lives. Amen.