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A few times I have found myself it hot water. I try to do things that encourage and motivate the body that, as it turns out, are risky. Doing something new is always risky. I needed to communicate to the community church some revelations. By the way, I pastor a couple of churches.
I had been to Pastors Meetings for years but we did nothing but what a good business, like pastors meetings ought to do. I went because I thought I should. But the power structure is resistant to change. It does not matter if it is good, productive or Biblical; the power structure is immovable, unless you play the covert game of suck-up which takes a lot of time and acting. These do not work for me, because I'm eager to move and I don't act.
So I devised another plan. I would make a tract for the church. But the question was distribution. I knew the pastors wouldn't give them out and I knew if you went on a Sunday to pass them out, they wouldn't let me. So what to do?
I thought I know we will windshield tract. So on a Sunday morning I asked for a few volunteers. They went to various churches and windshield tracted, like a windshield repair company or a pizza place might do. Well before our service was done, I already had some hot calls from some crazed pastors. Yes, I put my name and phone number on them. I'm still debating the wisdom in that.
Through this I was bawled out, but I did almost get a meeting with a pastor. The appointment we made he missed and wouldn't reschedule. Another bad thing that happened was one of the guys took the tracts to my home church. This church had sent me out to the mission field and to plant the churches previously mentioned. It was a town away, so I had no idea my thug friends would go there. My pastor was upset. We had a meeting he never talked about the substance of the tract just the ethics of passing out tracts to Christians at their churches. I could see the religious leaders in Jesus day sitting Jesus down "What are you doing teaching these people against our authority."
My talk with my former pastor didn't go well, he hasn't spoke to me now for five years. Believe me we did not have a heated discussion. I'm just to radical for him, I guess. I'm not trying to be provocative just productive. Additionally, I am not going to just set around in Club Kumbyaya. They can huddle-n-cuddle but I'm going to work: Even, if I do not know what I am doing." Never try, never fail." Right? No way.
I did have another meeting that I nearly forgot. I met with a pastor of a large church and his assistant. They were dressed in suits. In the North West it is about half-and-half, and becoming less. I am in the other half. They had their Bibles locked and loaded, they knew they had a cultist trapped in their office. Unfortunately, I had left mine behind. lol They were going skewer me with the Word until I howled like a scorched vampire by a silver cross. But, to their disappointment, after a few minutes, they could tell I was reasonable and knowledgeable and was making my points well and it was Biblical. Their Bibles disappointingly fell limp "No burning at the stake today boys."
I confess the tract was provocative in its title and picture. It said "Church to the Slaughter: The lies we like to believe" and it had a photo of a pile of dead lambs on the front. Maybe, if I had a tacky pastel cartoon of a smiling lamb on it, it would have been better? On the back it had a series of lies common to the church and the scriptural refutations. They were about salvation and the doctrines of Do-Nothing-ism.
Well, what I've learned is the church doesn't mind if you tract a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot on Sunday but they get mad if you give them one. I've learned they are really soft and not that graceful. Don't even give a two-for-one pizza offer in their windshields on a Sunday or there may be Hell to pay. If you step out of the box you probably will be marginalized. But I do not regret it and I am still even now devising ways to menace stupidity, ignorance, immorality, churchy-ism, and the false gospel, but with growing tact. Through a few evolutions this dove/snake is a little wiser.
I love the church so much that I do not mind trying something new to evoke change and action. I'm committed to the church because it is His, yours, and mine. I believe there is nothing on this earth more beautiful than Jesus' love poured out on the lost and broken through us.
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