Times were tough and our car had finally bit the dust. We found an old clunker for about $500 and decided to run it into the ground while we tried to save up money for a better car. It was a good plan until this car too found itself on the side of the road—as dead as Elvis. You could chalk it up to terrible misfortune, but this time the car’s engine had seized because of my own ignorance.
You see this little Mitsubishi ran through about a quart of oil every few days. When the engine would get low on oil the dashboard would light up and start screaming at you. It was terribly annoying. But I had learned a secret. If I would shut off the car and restart it, then somehow it would trick the system into thinking it had enough oil and annoying indicator light would be silent. The only problem is that it also kept me from remembering to put oil in the car. Hence the locked up engine and the walk of shame to my mechanic.
This is really the Pharisaical way of doing life. You ignore the stuff going on underneath the hood so long as everything on the outside appears to be grand. This is why Jesus called them white-washed tombs. It didn’t really matter how much you doctored up the outside, at the end of the day your still dealing with dead men’s bones.
When we look in the mirror we probably don’t see a Pharisee. But that’s the nature of the thing. Pharisees have a tendency to not see themselves as such. And yet all of humanity has the tendency to this terrible hypocrisy. We labor hard to turn off any indicator lights which might make the world—and ourselves—aware of a problem.
This truth about humanity…and churches are filled with humans…is why an article like this one is so dangerous: 12 Signs of Mediocrity in a Church. It’s a great piece if you are “striving for excellence” because you truly want to honor God. In other words if you realize that these are like indicator lights on your dashboard then its not so bad if these propel you to take a look under the hood.
But the problem is that every Pharisee would likely give a head nod to “striving for excellence for the glory of God”. Even with a Pharisaical heart we can talk a good game. We can say things like, “We want to grow for Jesus” but all the while what we really mean is that we want to be seen as awesome and we want to have something tangible to help us plead with God based on our performance.
So this list is dangerous because pastors and congregants are prone to being Pharisees. You tell a Pharisee that “tolerance of mistakes” is making his church look bad and see what kind of hellish quest he goes on to rid the church of mediocrity. Watch as the list of dear saints who are bruised and battered on the altar of excellence begins to pile up.
I agree with the core of what Lawless is saying. But I think it needs to be approached with a bit more caution. A good look under the hood will probably keep your indicator lights from flashing. While these are helpful diagnostics they are just that. And they ought to be presented as such and in such a way that it drives people to look under the hood and to find refuge in Jesus.
Lawless is correct, a flippant attitude towards the things of God is wrong. Constantly misspelled words might communicate the wrong thing. It might communicate that we don’t put much stock into what we do when the church gathers. Or it might communicate that we are human and prone to messing up. As such we are in constant need of grace and forgiveness. And that if I’m turned off by a church with misspelled words this might say more about my own heart than it does about the church.
At the end of the day I’d prefer that we ask questions about hospitality and be more focused on loving God and loving people than this striving for excellence mumbo jumbo. I’d be happy to see all this talk of excellence hit the curb. Here is what I mean.
Rather than saying, “Paint your walls, trim your bushes, and throw out clutter so that visitors understand you have a commitment to excellence”. Why not focus your energies on discipling people into being loving and hospitable. Hospitality is not a means to grow your church. It is fundamental to a churches identity. It is who you are. If we’ve botched hospitality it is because in some way we have botched the gospel.
Consider the story of Simon the Pharisee. This dude was a terrible host. There are certain things that a host does for his guest. Or at least he has a servant or somebody do them. But not Simon. Simon’s hospitality stinks. And Jesus tells us why, “…he who is forgiven little, loves little”. Our hospitality reflects our grasp of the gospel.
Furthermore, hospitality is a reminder of our alien status. Show me a church that does not practice basic hospitality and I will show you a church that is comfortably living the American dream. They’ve started thinking that they are home and so they’ve lost their sojourner impulse.
When we embrace this, it isn’t hard for us to associate with the bewildered single mom trying to get her three scraggly-headed kids through the door. The fact that she’s a stranger here on a Sunday morning is obvious to all. And so the alien in us begins to emerge. We remember what it was like when the Lord picked us up out of a pit so we greet her with warmth instead of apathy.
Yes, we need to train our greeters. Breath mints are helpful. But before we get into the 10 steps for greeting somebody with a smile, we should first remind them what it was like to be a foreigner brought into the family of God. Starting with your talk on breath mints only further trains Pharisees in how to clean the outside of their cup. Let’s instead get at the heart of thing and leave this “striving for excellence” stuff behind.
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