Crusty Christians

I call them "crusty christians." They drive me crazy.

Just today I was talking with two of them after they visited our brand new church. They wondered if we were Calvinistic or Armenian. They wondered what we taught about alcohol. They wanted to know if we were "seeker-sensitive." They wondered why we didn't sing more songs "everybody knows."

I did my best to be nice. I know all the stock answers. I have so much tact it makes me puke.

They're among the "beautiful people." Highly educated, affluent, evangelical WASPs. They complimented me for my "erudition." They raved about our website. They asked about our "target audience."

I told them that the best way to describe our church is this: for most of our group, the Bible they own is the one we gave them. They think Moses looked like Charlton Heston. They're clueless about the "right way" to do church. They're just trying to make spiritual sense of their lives, and ours is a safe place to do that in the context of historic Christianity.

Last week, I told them, one of our new church people said to me, "You know the part in 'O Brother, Where art Thou?' where the guitar player says, 'I sold my soul to the devil because I figured I wasn't using it?' I've been kind of like that in my life. But now I want it back."

We have a home group just for rookies. This woman completed my assignment: read the gospel of John, chapters 1-3, and write one comment/application from each chapter. Among other things, she said, "I noticed that verse in John 3:16. I'd heard of it before, but never knew that it was spoken by Jesus himself. Is that where the idea of being 'born again' comes from?"

I said, "Yes, you're right," and proceeded from that text and more to show her and the others the story of a God who, like Nemo's dad in the Disney movie, would stop at nothing to try to rescue his children. It was a great night, the kind that charges me up to keep at it another day.

When I told our crusty friends that story, their comment was, "What are you doing to 'disciple' those people?" And they said, "Sounds like your church might do better on the south side of town, where more people like you describe live. Here, there are so many professional people...."

I just about puked again.

Give me a church filled with people who sold their souls to the devil any day over a dozen bill-paying, Bible-toting, Crusty Christians.