Too Good

My friend Al shared a book with me called "This Beautiful Mess" by Rick McKinley who is the pastor of the immensely popular church Imago Dei, in Portland Oregon. It's a big church now but he writes about the humble beginnings in the following quote. It's set in a larger context, but for right now, I'll just include the story.

For obvious reasons, I think this is a fantastic quote and I laughed very hard when I read it.

I am a church planter, which simply means that I started my church. At Imago Dei Community, we started from nothing and have grown to a decent-sized little church. You know what makes a church planter depressed on a Monday morning? Low attendance or a low offering the day before. If the poor pastor happens to get hit by both, he may need to be put on suicide watch.

For the person attending a young church, the perspective is different. Let's say that person is you. This week you decided to go to church. But come Sunday, you decide not to. You have a birthday party to deal with. Or a relative to visit. A bunch of friends are going snowboarding. Real life stuff. Anyway, you think your church decision is yours to make, and no one else really cares.

But someone-the pastor- cares, and I am sad to admit it's not always about your spiritual well-being, though that concern is down there somewhere. Nickels and noses. Levels. That's what makes or breaks Sundays for most people starting a church.
I remember one Sunday when we were first starting out. We only had about thirty people. We met on Sunday evenings in a Baptist church that was kind enough to rend us space cheap. That particular Sunday also happened to be the seventh game of the NBA championship, and Portland was playing LA for the title. As you can guess, I was in for a kick in the groin.

We sat in a darkened room with candles lit. Seemed like an artistic, atmospheric thing to do. But when I stood up to preach to twelve young women who didn't care if Portland won or lost or that Portland even has an NBA team, it felt more like a funeral for a bunch of sorority sisters whose cat had been hit by a car.

That night we slid from thirty to twelve, and even though rationally I could tell you why our turnout was low, my heart was reeling. Here I was, trying to jump to the next attendance level, and our church had slid. A 60 percent drop in one week. Where was God? What did I do wrong? Why were we both failing?

I love the story, but I also love the title of the book, 'This Beautiful Mess'. The church is a mess. It's easy to write off local churches; there are a million and one different reasons... some reasonable, others not.

However, it's refreshing to hear someone like McKinley express the tension: the church is a mess, but it still is beautiful.