“We spend a way too much time talking about how to do church, and not enough time actually doing church.” That thought popped into my mind randomly today. I don’t know why. It’s kind of weird when random thoughts hijack you. 

The topic isn’t foreign to me. I’ve gone to church all my life. I pastored a traditional country church, and then planted a suburban church 22 years ago—the first seeker sensitive church planted in Missouri which I pastored for seven years. I was pro-seeker when that wasn’t cool, yet. 

Popular Missiologist Ed Stetzer is a friend of mine (I hope I don’t use that word friend too loosely—we’ve shared a few meals, I’ve been in his home, and we’ve shared a common cheerleader for many years in Lizette) and he writes a couple of times a week about different people doing church in different ways. There are studies, and think tanks, and conferences, and books about festivals and fireworks and events designed to reach people. 

I’m really tired of all the talk about how to do church. I just want to do it. 

What does doing church mean?

I can’t answer that for you and fear my answer might be theologically insufficient for God. So, I’ll just try to answer it for me. I’ll guarantee you that I’ll leave something out, so save your corrective replies and emails. This isn’t a definitive and comprehensive tome. It’s me “talking” through my thoughts. 

First and foremost church is about worshipping God. I’ve been to a lot of church where God wasn’t worshipped. In many of the services influenced by the seeker movement, God is not worshipped. Man is. The service is designed around man. I’ve concluded that’s wrong. But the traditional church doesn’t do any better. That’s why we started this who seeker thing in the first place. 

Church is about teaching people. That means we need to open the Bible and explain what it means. I’m weary of services where the big screen is full of pop stars and cultural icons drawing analogies from People Magazine. Aren’t there enough analogies in life to help us clarify what the scripture means? People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight aren’t real life. The people I live among and work around don’t have boob jobs (most of them, anyway) or Botox their lips. They work 8-10 hour days, help kids with homework, clean house on weekends, and worry about mortgage payments and paying for the kids education. Their shoes are Payless, not Prada. 

Church is about community. It’s about knowing each other, caring about each other, serving and celebrating each other. It’s about mourning together when one mourns, about crying your own tears of joy when you see their tears of joy, about helping someone translate the confusing passages of life for which you hold the experience key, and their doing the same for you when your day comes to be lost in the woods. 

Church is about being real. It’s about real answers even when the real answer is “I don’t know.” 

Church is about helping people who don’t know God come to know him organically. It’s about reproduction not evangelism. I’m for soul winning. I’ve led many people to pray the Sinner’s Prayer. But I wonder how many of them over the years, the miles and the towns really became disciples? Heaven only knows and I fear the answer. There are likely way too many notches in my Bible. 

Reproduction comes from relationship, while evangelism is an event. You might liken reproduction to the baby born from a loving marriage relationship and evangelism as the bastard child born from a one night stand where a smooth talker like me convinced somebody to pray the Sinner’s Prayer. 

Now before you start throwing stones please realize I know that people do come to know Christ from chance meetings and go on to develop into disciples. I’ve been the midwife at those spiritual births. But in the big picture, evangelistic events and emphases feel contrived to me while reproduction seems a natural outgrowth of our own maturity in Christ. Yet I also wonder how many of us who call ourselves saved really have anything that is worth reproducing, and I wonder why more babies aren’t born. It seems we might have a lot of spiritual eunuchs in our midst. Hmmm. 

What I want out of my church experience.

I want to be a part of a people who are naturally glad to see each other, and who joyfully express their love for each other when they meet. 

I want to be part of a people for whom God is the central focus—the audience, and we are the actors and singers on the stage performing for the pleasure of the audience of one. 

I want to be a part of a people for whom it’s unthinkable to not have your own copy of the scriptures in your hand (electronic is fine, but I need paper) when you gather, and where the teacher cracks open the words, phrases, concepts and truths so that the sweet nectar of solid truth you can build a life on run down our arms and necks as we devour, discuss, apply, and revel in it.   

I want people who are hurting to be able to say “I’m hurting” and to tell us how without any fear of gossip, only the confidence that we’ll surround and love them. I want people who are experiencing joy and abundance to be able to tell us how great they are doing and how God is blessing them without any fear that they’ll be accused of bragging. 

I want to be able to ask odd questions, even those that might sound heretical. I want to chase rabbits until they help me uncover a new (to me) truth, or dissolve into heresy. 

I want to be able to confess my sinful actions, and let the light of honesty shine on my temptations without fearing that I’ll be thought less of or gossiped about at the next regular meeting of the spiritually superior. I want the brothers and sisters I worship with to be able to do the same, and in the few areas where I have actually obtained mastery I want to be able to help them find success themselves. 

I want to know that I can call those people at 3:00 in the morning and they’ll answer and help, and I want them to feel like they can call me (please wait until 6:00 a.m. I’m honestly not coherent at 3:00). 

I want to be among people who gather not to swap their anxiety-filled uncertainties, but to share their faith-filled confidences because of what God has done for them. I want to be able to lean on their faith when I don’t have any, and to learn from their wisdom when I don’t have any, and to be able to share mine when I do. 

I want to know that when I am sick and needy they’ll touch Heaven for me, and I’ll do the same for them.   

I want to do life successfully. 

I want to do life together. 

I don’t ever want to talk again about how to do church. I just want to do church. 

Now, in the words of that great theological giant Forrest Gump, “That’s all I’ll say about that.” For now.

It hit me like a ton of bricks: You oughta “Pray, and not faint.”

I’ve heard and read that verse hundreds of times. It never mattered until last night. I was laying in my bed stewing over a problem at work, one that I can’t fix. Try though I might, I can’t muster up the power to fix it. It frustrates me. I toss and turn. I speak negatively to myself “Now you’ve done it. You can’t fix this one. You’re gonna fail. You’ll go down in flames. Loser.”

Then out of nowwhere (really?) came the thought “Pray and not faint.”

In Luke 18 Jesus was teaching his followers about the importance of having substantial faith instead of giving up. Here I was having “give up” talk with myself.

“Pray, and don’t faint.”

When I face trouble, its usually business related, and there’s usually a dollar figure attached to it. When its those “write a check and cure the problem” type of troubles its easy. When its those “can’t write a check big enough to cure that problem” then its time for worry, fear, haunting, voices from the past, and the sinking feeling that I am swimming in an ocean of waves so turbulent I can’t keep my head above water.

More self talk here….”Barry, you are an idiot. The One who created the Universe with His spoken word knows and cares for you. He invites you to cast all your cares on Him. He implores you to seek His help and here you are trying to swim through this by yourself. You know boy, it’s kind of stupid to go it alone. Yeah, I know you are strong and tough, but why retain the stress. Why not just call on God to help you? Why look to your obviously limited ability to fix things instead of to His unlimited ability? Why faint?”

Pride, I guess. And habit. It’s a habit that “I” have got to “figure out what to do” and that “I” am the “solution.” It’s a bad habit.

So, I need to change. I need to PRAY FIRST. That’ll be good. I’m tired of cracking my head on the floor everytime I faint.

I ask myself that question ALL THE TIME. Occasionally I like the answer. Sometimes I don’t. Usually I just don’t know for sure. But in a recent time of reflection I concluded the answer is YES!  I am/We are making a difference. Here’s some examples:

• There’s a guy who works on our corporate team who as of August has made twice as much money as he made in an entire year in his old job. In the two years he’s been with us he’s hated me (not literally), been offended plenty of times (it really hacked him off when I told him he wasn’t a salesman, he was just an “order taker,” but then he came back later and said “you were right”) and on occasion been beaten on (again, not literally) mercilessly. But today he sent me an email and said “I am amazed at how far financially I have come, having achieved monetary feats I didn’t even think were possible” and “I also think about how much better I am in my work, how much stronger an overall employee I am. I owe it all to you two.” He got that almost right. He is a stronger employee, but much more he is a stronger person. He’s changed the way he thinks, and from those thoughts have flowed the progress he’s made in his life. he’s made progress in part because he’s adopted the posture of a learner. (My friend Ernie Hughes says “The enemy of learning is knowing.”) He wrote to me today “When you submit, it is a lot of fun, as I learned this year.” But probably what made me feel the best was a few weeks ago when he told me about taking his family on a day trip to a theme park and about how it was no longer a financial stress for him to be able to do that.

We’re making a difference!

• There’s a husband and wife who are both members of our team. She’s starting her 13th year with us, and her husband has been with us 10 years. They are great people, the kind the world needs more of. At age 40, having never had children of their own they decided to adopt. Soon thereafter they became parents of three siblings, a 9 year old daugther, a 13 year old son, and a 14 year old daughter! Wow! Several weeks ago while talking about the kids she spoke of their strong financial status and about the things she’d learned and about the way her thinking had changed during her time on our team. She cried as she said “You’ve made this possible.” I think she overstates the case. But certainly God has blessed many of our team members financially and intellectually, particularly in the past few years as we’ve stretched and grown in ways none of us ever imagined.

We’re making a difference!

• There are over a 100 people (maybe closer to 150) who have food in their belly and a roof over their head paid for as a product of their work on our team. I’m proud of that fact alone. But I’m also proud that during a time of great economic turmoil when many are without jobs, these people—mostly in the construction trades of all places—are making more money than most of them ever have in their lives.

We’re making a difference!

• I finally got to spend some time with a guy who has worked for us off and on for a couple of years. In our conversations about life and God I discovered he didn’t understand what it meant to have a relationship with God through Jesus’ substitutionary penalty payment of death on the cross. Through our conversations he came into a relationship with Jesus, began attending church, and began studying his Bible.

We’re making a difference!

• A lady came in to interview for a job; one that I’m not sure we have available. When I asked her why she said “Because Shawn has told me this is a great place to work.”

We must be making a difference!

• One of our subcontractors took my partner to lunch today just to say thank you. He is planning a cruise with his family. Couldn’t ever have done it up until now because he didn’t have the money. He’s making more money today than he ever has in his life. They got into a big discussion about kids and my partner was able to teach him about instilling confidence in his children. Hmmmm. Confidence—one of the key components of our Core Values which are practically a “Statement of Faith” at our company.

Sounds like a difference to me!

• A middle-aged executive just resigned from a 14 year carreer at one of the world’s largest accounting firms to join our management team. I don’t know what was in his cool-aid but he must think we’re making a difference.

I’ve always wanted to make a difference.

To tell the truth, I probably have always defined making a difference in spiritual terms………masses of people developing faith in Jesus……or in miraculous terms……people being healed……..or in physical terms like providing for orphans or medical care for tribal people in the jungle. We’re not doing much in those areas. But we’re still making a huge difference.

In recent months I’ve began to see how we can take money I’ve previously been advising clients to mail off to Wall Street and instead keep those dollars working here at home through a concept called “Local Dollars Making a Local Difference.®” My clients like it, it makes a difference in our community, and just this week a banker from Arkansas told me how Walmart—the mass retailer—is pioneering a similar “back to local” project. What we’re doing with this “local” thing is going to pay huge dividends in our community and for our clients. It’ll really make a difference!

When it comes to making a difference, if I told the truth it would probably be that I always wanted to be Billy Graham. It appears though that God just wanted Barry Watts. Barry making a difference, teaching his team, sharing a vision, touching people, growing their lives bigger than they thought possible.

I/we are making a difference. It’s a great life! And I’m honored to live it!

A Dios sea la gloria!

Now quit wasting oxygen! Go make a difference!

Tom Ziglar sent this story. I think it’s one of his Dad’s. It cute, and poignant.

A friend of mine just happened to be reading his Bible on an airplane one day.  The man sitting next to him, wanting to start a conversation but also a little leery, said to him, “Are you a Christian?  Just so you know, I don’t believe there are any absolute truths.”  My friend replied, “Are you absolutely sure?”

My mentor (now from across the eternity chasm) Fred Smith said this marvelously well.

“Our forefathers understood the need to separate church and state —- the bureaucracies of both.  But, they were very public in voicing their dependence on God.  They didn’t legislate against God.

In their writings, memorials, statues, and public utterances, their deepest thought literally emerged from their faith.  Were they hypocritical in their support of this separation?  No, I think not. 

We have confused the issue of religion in politics with the separation of church and state.  These are very different concepts which the media, and unknowledgeable, biased people treat as synonymous.

The basic foundation of separation of church and state is keeping the two bureaucracies of each from uniting and thereby combing treason and heresy under the same authority.  If a person offended the “powers that be,” he could be declared a traitor or a heretic.  It was a death grip on differing opinions.

The union of church and state refused freedom for denominationalism.  I am convinced this would be extremely unhealthy.  I personally know and respect many of the current religious leaders.  But, I do not know one I would risk heading the whole church.  One of the blessings of denominationalism is the dispersion of church leadership.

Unfortunately, when human leaders face the choice between the visible power of politics and money or the invisible power of God, the visible too often is the option.  He believes he can control the visible, but fails to bow to the invisible which controls him.

I appreciate the effort to spiritually revitalize America.  However, I am afraid of leaders who promise revival under their leadership — and theirs alone.  Quoting verses of scripture can hardly deliver God.  If God were through with us, no elections would return him.  Heaven forbid that we have come to that point.

I am searching to be on God’s side, not promising He is on mine.  I am searching for His leadership, not promising that mine will save.

Am I saying religion should not enter into political decisions?  Certainly not!  To say a man’s religious convictions should be kept out of his decisions is to suggest he become schizoid.  We need more acceptance of our dependence on the eternal, not less.

What we need is the original, Consitutional wisdom to keep the bureaucracy of religion and politics separate so we can practice out individual faith without the fear of state-imposed religion.

We must correct the erroneous believe that religion in politics and public life is “persona non grata” under the separation of church and state.  Separation is for protection, not exclusion.”