I’m a big fan of pretty much all things Disney. I guess it comes from growing up in Mickey Mouse’s backyard. When we had family visit from out of town, we knew that it meant a 90 minute drive was getting ready to happen – Disney World here we come! You’d think that someone who went to Disney as much as I did would have gotten tired of the place or bored with the experience. Not this guy – no way, no how! The last time we went to Disney it was
my boys first time and as I pushed my youngest in the stroller and watched my oldest beam with excitement, I teared up – I couldn’t wait for them to experience this place that Joy and I loved so much.
One of the things I love about Disney World is that it truly is a place of visual engagement. Everything about Disney screams “hey, look over here!” For those of you who know me, you are aware that I can be easily distracted. I’m a people watcher and when I’m out, I’m looking around, watching, enjoying, seeing things that I would normally pass by or completely ignore. If you’ve seen the Disney movie UP, I’ve been compared to Dug – the dog that talks and in mid-sentence darts his head to right and screams “squirrel!”
Now, I do need to say that this superhero ability to get distracted isn’t always a bad thing. It’s not like I’m incapable of focusing (yes, believe it or not, I can and do focus quite a bit). When I allow myself to live in this place of “open eyes”, I see twice as much then I would had I stayed in my little compartment of self-ness. As I was processing this gift of intense observance and focus, I remembered a tweet that I recently read from one of my pastor friends. He wrote “Have you prayed for the person you’re going to invite to church this week?” That’s a loaded question, isn’t it? With a super observant mind, which is a nice way of saying someone who’s super distracted like myself, you could easily get lost in a question like this. There are at least a dozen different things that this question assumes the asker will be wrestling and engaging.
I think one of the biggest assumptions is that Church, or the center piece of our weekly communal God experience, is making such a difference in our lives that we will want to extend an invitation to folks who don’t experience what we get to “enjoy” each week. It’s an assumption that says “this story that I get to be a part of, means so much to me it’s changed so much of my life, that I have to, I’m compelled to welcome and invite other folks to join me.” That’s a bold assumption, isn’t it?
The second assumption I see is connected, not only is the experience of weekly worship making difference in me, but its something that others outside of that experience are truly missing. I was raised in a time that said we had to share our faith because people would “live eternally in hell” if we didn’t. Honestly, that can be a difficult sell. As I’ve stepped away from that mentality, I’ve grown to see that I want to be in this community not just because of eternity beyond this life, but because this community and this faith in Jesus, changes life NOW. This Kingdom that I get to be a part of is for today, it’s for now and it’s for what is to come. Because of that, I want others to join me. I’m concerned for their future, but I’m also concerned for a better world now (which I believe is Jesus’ call to all His followers).
This kind of thinking invites me to move past the possibility of being embarrassed or shamed because someone told me No thanks. It reminds me that people aren’t just a part of a final destination, but folks who can be a part of a better Kingdom, a better hope for today. I want to invite people into that – I want to have more folks join me in a community worship experience that changes me, that refreshes me, that allows me to leave my garbage behind and that swallows me up in the transcendence of our truly awesome God!
I hope your worship experience this weekend will be a place like that. If it’s not, I pray that you’ll be part of the change – that your intention will add to something different, that you will be the one to invite the Holy Spirit to come and move and shake it up. The Goal isn’t some huge local institution but a community that wants to be the hands and feet of Jesus as agents of transformation in our cities. The goal isn’t “butts in the seats”, it’s lives that get to experience Jesus and the the life changing story that we get to be a part of.
If you do have a place like this, a community that wants to worship and be a place of glorious restoration, I pray that you’ll get distracted the next few days. I pray that you’ll see folks in your every day experience of life that need to be invited, need to be welcomed and offered a place of Hope (the same place you claim for yourself). I pray that we’ll get caught up in a mission of sharing and inviting and looking outward. I pray that we’ll be captivated with a mission to look and see where God is moving around us. I pray that we’ll be wiling to pray for distracted moments that can lead a kingdom come kind of change.
Location:vint
