I finished up wrapping the sound equipment for the Chapel service this morning and wandered with my co-techie to the tech room to chat with the other media servants. We joked about how Pastor Rick always pronounces issues "ishuhs," which as far as anyone can tell is a personal quirk not a Southern-ism. As we joked about my own personal "language barrier" with Southern-speak — I cannot
understand some words to save my life! — I got to thinking about Erwin’s
love of mispronunciation and creating new words and we all laughed at
how every person has their own "ishuhs" with the English language.
Thinking about Erwin, however, gave me a craving to hear one of the
Mosaic podcasts.

We had enough camera operators for second service and I didn’t feel like clumping upstairs to watch one of the guys run the board for our webcast recording. Nor did I see any of the people from the singles group I sometimes sit with during second service, so I decided to head home. Rick’s sermon, while nice, was, for me, like eating baby food. So, as usual, it wasn’t something I desired to sit through a second time. It was on how to "witness", as they say in the Bible belt, by just telling your story; what is the before and after of your life with and without Jesus. It was like being a college student sitting in Kindergarten and being taught how to make big, two-line letters all over again. Valuable to five year-olds but boring to the college student.

I didn’t realize how boring until I got in the car and decided to listen in Erwin’s most recent podcast on my iPod on the way home.

Man, do I miss sitting under him and hearing him speak each Sunday morning! I really, really miss it. I would often go to all three services (serve in two — well, when two were at the same venue — and just attend one) just so I could hear it again and wring all the God-stuff out of it I could.  I was acutely aware all the way home this morning of how much I missed hearing him every Sunday. I drove much slower than normal and sat in the driveway for a while just so I could continue listening without interruption. I just soaked it all in, drank it in really — like I’d just spent days in the hot desert without any water. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was.

I love the people I serve with at TPC. I really do. They are great people, fun to be with, hard working, God-honoring, loving, compassionate die-hard servants and followers of Jesus. And I like our pastor. Rick seems to be a good man, a godly man. And my heart resonates with his vision to lead TPC to be a place where people are truly consumed with the passion and mission of Jesus, rather than just attending church each week because "that’s what we here in the South do on Sunday mornings." He longs to create community — much like community that Mosaic experiences every week.

But the thing is, I generally get nothing out of the service. Just as I didn’t get anything out of Rick’s sermon today, I generally leave church not having gotten anything new or feeling as if God has touched me or talked to me through Rick at all. In other words, I leave hungry. It’s not that Rick’s teaching is bad or that he doesn’t use Scripture. I just don’t get anything out of it. I don’t walk away with any nugget of truth on which to chew during the week; something, anything that sparks my imagination and draws me to investigate on my own further during the week.

I realize that Rick has to approach his teaching this way right now. Most people I’ve met in our church, and, really, in the Nashville area in general, really don’t get the concept of church as a true community of followers of Jesus. People who are truly passionate about following Him no matter where He leads, people who have a true, growing, deepening intimate relationship with Him.

Oh, they know the words. "Personal Lord", "personal relationship" yada-yada-yada… But they’ve never actually experienced a deep connection with God, an on-going conversation with Him. Heck, I think if most of the people around here actually heard God’s speak to them they’d think they were going insane. They’d probably wig out completely and start begging for meds. Most don’t really believe that God talks to them in the same way we talk with our friends. That He longs to talk with us, to have us include Him in our conversations and, yeah, in our prayers. To them, prayer is one way — even though they, again, know the lingo that "prayer is a two-way street". Most think the only way God speaks to His Church today is through the Bible. Period.

Most also don’t see evangelism and discipleship as synonymous and a way of life. Evangelism is that thing you do at Monday night visitation. And that thing other people are gifted and called to do. People like Billy and Franklin Graham. And discipleship is that Paul-Timothy thing that they always want to participate in as long as they get to be the "Timothy" and don’t have to be the "Paul". God forbid they should step into a "leadership" role!

Most don’t realize that Jesus didn’t say, "go and pass out tracts to the poor in East Nashville or at the local video store." Or "go and convert your co-workers during a one-time lunch when they are hurting and really just needing a shoulder to cry on." And none realize that he didn’t say, "go and evangelize if you’ve been given the gift to do so, otherwise leave it to someone else — better yet, the pastor — to do that kind of thing on Monday night visitation."

No, they don’t realize what Jesus actually said was, "go and make disciples…." It’s called the Great Commandment because it’s not a suggestion. Nor is it a call to a select few to "evangelize". It’s a command to all of us to make disciples of every person in our lives.

The thing is, we do it naturally. We are either a disciple of or discipling every person in our lives. Which one depends on us and whom we are influenced by and whom we influence. — Those we are influenced by are discipling us , our "Pauls" to use church language. Those we influence are our disciples. — Few people recognize that we are always both leading and following. And fewer still take responsibility for the outcome in the end.

And then there’s the "ishuh" of real community. Community that comes out of bonding, out of a shared unity in the servanthood of Christ and in the baring of our souls to each other. The kind of community that can only be forged in a small group. Not a Sunday school class or a Wednesday night Bible study. But a small, group of 10 or less meeting each and every week, who are committed to being real even when it’s embarrassing or painful. That kind of transparency is very risky. And it’s a risk most church-going Bible belt Southerners aren’t willing to take.

I think this is because church is the mask they wear to convince themselves and the world around them that, really, they’re just fine. They’re okay. Its you that’s messed up. To open up in a small group, to be transparent to eight other people, would mean taking off the church-mask and admitting that their world isn’t the perfect world the Church has told them, from the time they were crawling around the church nursery, that it would be, that it "should" be, if they are really "living in God’s will."

‘Cause really, think about it a minute. Isn’t that the message the church has sold us on since we were in diapers? That if we will just "trust and obey" God, He will take away all our suffering, all our hardship, all our pain, all our misfortune, all our struggles, all our bad feelings, all our bad thoughts, all our temptations, and we will never have these things again. As long as we fully submit ourselves to God, He will take care of us and give us joy and peace and happiness and health and wealth and all "the desires of our heart." And when all our pain and hardship and misfortune and suffering and struggles and bad feelings and bad thoughts and temptations don’t disappear, we become convinced its because we aren’t submitted or surrendered enough, we aren’t trusting enough, we aren’t obeying enough. It’s our fault that we don’t have joy and happiness and health and wealth and all the desires of our heart.

For if it isn’t our fault, then it must be God’s — and we cannot bear to think that God hasn’t shown up. Because if God doesn’t show up, then we’ve wasted our whole lives worshiping and serving and striving to please a worthless God; a God who doesn’t even care about us enough to show up when we submit and surrender and trust and obey. No, it must be our fault. So we strive harder, we surrender more, we try to convince ourselves to trust more and we obey every law we can find. And when we can’t find any more laws to obey, we make new ones up. Only to have our own failure bite us in the butt yet again. Its no wonder people here don’t want to have true community. Who would want to take of their mask and risk exposure as an utter failure in this "perfect" Christian life to your fellow church-goers?? Especially when it seems as simple as "just trust and obey."

So Rick needs to be teaching what he is teaching. And he needs to be approaching it the way he is. Because the majority of our church wouldn’t get it otherwise — and probably doesn’t get it even yet. He and the Holy Spirit have years, lifetimes, of ingrained bad teaching, lies and deceptions from the enemy of our souls, and fear of exposure as failures to undo. And it could take the rest of Rick’s lifetime to undo it.

I get that. I understand it. But at the risk of sounding incredibly selfish and self-centered….

What about me?

Where do I fit in with all of this? I’ve been at this church over a year and still have yet to form any significant relationships. Oh, I’ve got a couple of relationships with potential to go deep, I think. But the opportunities to do so have been very slim, and mostly one-sided in the attempts (as in mine). Again, I’m faced with that wall of fear that others have of being known. I know what that fear is like. I went through it myself. I used to be like the people I see here. I used to be them. But that was, gosh, over 14 years ago now. And while I know their struggle and I struggle with my own fears of being known, and I empathize with their dilemma, I have one of my own. One that is growing stronger every day and stood up this morning and chewed me out.

I want to be known more than I fear it. I want community more than I fear intimacy. I want to be challenged more than I want to be "fed". I want to follow Jesus no matter the cost more than I fear where He might take me. And I want a community of people to journey with in life here in Nashville that share my passion for Jesus and my longings for community and challenge more than I want to shuffle alongside people who still think Church is a fortress from the "world", rather than the shelter and refuge FOR the world’s most broken, twisted and shattered that it is and was always meant to be. I want a community who desires to pursue Jesus with full-out passion. I want it so bad it hurts. I haven’t had it since I left LA.

And I want strong teaching. I want powerful teaching. I want gut-wrenching, soul-searching, deep-thinking, research-compelling teaching that pushes me to search the Bible on my own for the deeper aspects of the topic, that addresses the controversies of today and challenges me to find the answers in Scripture, to seek out God’s opinion from Him and to dialog with Him on issues the Bible doesn’t "seem" to address. I want to be challenged on Sunday with meaty issues, not fed from the baby-food table of Christianity. That’s what I got each Sunday from Erwin: A challenge from God and a week’s worth of Scripture to dive into and sift through with Jesus to help me meet that challenge.

Is it selfish that I’m starving for this? Is it selfish that I want to find a more like-minded, more mature community with more mature teaching? If I left, would I be leaving a community who really needs me for a community who perhaps doesn’t need me as much?

See, this is why I didn’t want to move away from LA. I admit it. I am selfish. I miss Mosaic. I miss my home and my community. And I miss the solid, meaty no-holds-barred teaching. I miss the frank talk and the friends who continually challenged me to not only live up to what I had already learned, but to be continually learning more. I miss all that and I want to find it again. Because I don’t have it at my current church.

What do I do?