Rumored Thoughts (Pt. 1)

Mission is never clean; never is mission simple; never is mission easy.

Recently I’ve been confronted by the fact I don’t look like most pastors (neither do the ones I work with). I’m glad for it.

Sure there’s the preconceived notions of what pastors should look like, the way we ought to dress, the jargon we ought to use, and the places and people we ought to hang out at and with.

My thoughts on this began a while ago, but they were solidified with a rumor I heard about me (I guess being plugged into the Wichita grapevine has an advantage). It wasn’t a nasty rumor, not at all, and it was absurd enough to let it slide off my back, but it has also made me ask some questions. And the answers I’m coming up with aren’t too flattering, to myself or to other pastors.

You see mission is dirty. We’re called to go and to be within the crowd, to get to know ‘tax-collectors and sinners’ and love them in such a way so as to show Jesus to them. I don’t think there’s a way to do this and remain clean.

There’s no way to get to know a drunk unless you go to the bar. There’s no way to love the homeless guy unless you sit with them and listen. There’s no way to befriend the artists unless you go to their exhibit…

There’s going to be a few posts in this, because this is something I need to learn. Hopefully you can learn with me.

(Read all of these posts: Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6)

Dirty Streets

He walked the dirty street, moving along with no purpose or intent whatsoever, just walking -- more meandering than anything else.

Down the street the politicians where meeting, vying for the position of the, “most powerful man in the free world.”

But this fella had never left the streets. His mom had given him up as soon as he was born. His dad was just a protein donor. Grandma had died some years back. He was completely alone, a ward of the state.

Drugs, violence, sex, whatever the issue he’d been there and done it. Lost his mind in the process. But the suits won’t know his name; in fact the folks in jeans won’t know it either.

When social activism has degraded into liking a status and re-posting a video, who’d ever know the name of the man who wears six layers of clothing on a 60-degree day.

Someday we’ll look into the eyes of the one’s were serving. Someday we’ll know what it’s like to see nothing looking back at you in those other eyes. A hollowness, which seems to want to consume your own person, is all that’s left, a hollowness that scares you as you think of it. The kind of scared that makes you loose your sleep and be afraid of the dark.

But even the fella walking the streets isn’t our only service.

What of a social activism that causes you to legitimately care for the other person? You know, the kind that makes you want to help a guy pick a domino up, or the other kind that causes you to hold the door for a struggling man, or even loving your sister?

Cause we’re great about being concerned for the folks over there, wherever there is, but we’re not doing lovely for carrying for the people here.

Not that some of us won’t go there and do things, but I hope that in our going we learn to care for the people on our own doorsteps, the people in our own Wichita.

At least that’s the thought, the one to move us to action… But we’re more likely to sprint across the street before the light changes than sacrifice our time for someone else.

I don’t want to say be stupidly radical (and by that I mean forget your call and do someone else’s), but I also don’t want to give the leniency to be apathetically complacent.

There are people we can help and we should; and there are those who we can’t help and we won’t. Help those who are within your power to help.