God Things - Act II

As described in the previous entry, early Monday morning I spoke with a lady named Teresa, whom God had led into our congregation’s path, whose needs we are able and willing to meet.

In Monday’s late morning I met with the three daughters of a woman whose funeral I will conduct on Wednesday. The getting-to-know-you sessions I hold prior to writing funerals have a predictable rhythm to them, so for most of our first hour together, I got what I expected and needed to create an experience for the gathered mourners, but little else. Following the prayer with which we closed our formal session, however, things changed...and so did I.

“I have a question about your services,” said the youngest of the three daughters, a thirty-something mother of one, who owns a poignant personal story. I thought she was going to ask how much they should pay me for the funeral – the objective of similar questions others have asked – but it turned out she really wanted to know about our church.

I could tell you everything she, and eventually her siblings, asked about, but that would quickly grow tiresome, so it will suffice to say she was a seeker...in our church building, a seeker! [A "seeker" is a spiritually hungry person who claims no particular loyalty to or heritage in a specific congregation, denomination, or faith tradition.]

If you read this from afar, you may wonder about the exclamation point. It’s there because we don’t get seekers in our church. Seekers are usually young, selective, and dismissive of older congregations such as ours. Seekers prefer an eclectic menu of options for themselves and their kids. Seekers lean toward live bands and large auditoriums, not the recorded accompaniment tracks and A-frame sanctuaries that churches such as ours offer.

When I tell you we don’t get seekers, I mean we don’t even see seekers! It’s as if we have a neon sign flashing in the front yard: “Warning: No Seeking!” It’s as if a spiritual search animates otherwise-dormant enzymes that equip seekers to sense when a trip onto a particular congregation’s premises won’t be worth the effort. It’s as if God leads people away from churches like ours because God knows that for them we’re not a good match.

But there they were, three seekers sitting five feet from me, asking about our church, telling about their past – and not always positive – church experiences, wondering whether it would be worth their effort to disregard our flashing neon no-seeking sign.


I label this conversation as the second act in a “God Things” play because for several years many in our congregation, including myself, have believed we weren’t ready or even capable to receive (i.e. serve) the people we claimed to seek. We have interpreted our failure to connect with the unconnected as a sign of God’s verdict against our approach to people and ministry. But as Monday morning became Monday afternoon I experienced potent evidence of that verdict’s apparent nullification.

We can reach people we haven’t reached before. We can speak the words they need, offer the hope they crave, embody the encouragement they seek, and be the Body of Jesus that just might connect them to the power they – and we – so desperately need.


This piece is terribly provincial, I fear. Many who read this blog aren’t part of our congregation, and hence won’t feel much claim to the exuberance I’m trying to express. But you who live beyond the shelter of our particular church do know what it’s like to cry out for God, to implore God to be obvious in your life, to offer reassuring evidence of God’s permanent and passionate presence in your struggles. You know, regardless of the seat from which you view this post's action, how urgent can be our need for divine intervention, and how broadly our spirits can smile when that intervention becomes obvious....Welcome to our province.

My spirit smiles because of what God is doing in the life of our particular congregation; I hope our story offers you and your congregation (if you claim one) encouragement. If you or your church has a story of your own “God Thing,” tell us about it in a comment, or, if you want to give it a larger treatment, send it to me for inclusion in the Express as regular posting. If you’re still waiting for your God thing performance to begin, tell us about your wait (remember those anonymous comments); we will hold you in prayer.


And in case you’re not yet satisfied with the God thing currently on display, one final scene from Act 2:

During my conversation with the lady’s three daughters, one of them noted her understanding that her son’s grandmother had once attended our church. She first gave me the name of the grandmother, which I recognized, and then her son, whose last name I needed to connect the dots to a photo I believed I had in my office, a picture of the grandmother and grandson taken 10-12 years ago.

“Before you leave today, let me see if I can find that picture,” I asked, thinking I knew where to find it.

As they prepared to exit the building, I went into my office, quickly found the desired photo, then offered it to the broadly-smiling mother of the grandson, she by then wearing wide and moistened eyes, not owning any pictures pairing those two.


The God thing in that picture’s transfer was that I knew exactly where to find it. Amidst the calamity which is my office (hard as it will be for people who know me to believe, I am not the most organized person in the world), the picture I gave away Monday lay exactly where it had lain for the last many months: on the floor, near the corner of my desk I navigate daily to find my chair. The photo had been there for months – face up, a small obstacle over which I had stepped countless times – offering a daily visual reminder of two people who used to call our church home.

Now you might think I hadn’t picked that photo up because I was messy. You might call it nothing more than good fortune that it was the only one whose whereabouts I could have reported with any certainty as the daughter talked about her son’s grandmother. Or, you might devise your own explanation for how it was I knew just where to find the perfect send-off gift for this family of seekers (as in the people we’re trying to reach, but never even see). Go ahead. But I know better.

It was a God thing!


Pray with me:
God, keep moving. Keep acting. Keep speaking. Keep loving. Keep surrounding. Keep shouting. Keep delivering. And then welcome the praise as we sing, “God thing, you make my heart sing....” In the name of Jesus, Amen.