Welcome to Burger Church

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I haven't blogged in a while and I'm not quite sure why Blogger is putting automatic link's in my post, but just ignore them, they are advertisements. Carry on...


"Hi! Welcome to Burger Church where we do church your way. How can I help you today?"
"Ummm, I don't see what I want on your menu board."
"Tell me what you're looking for and I'll see if I can help you."
"I want my church experience to be a lot of fun to listen to with a side of Jesus."
"Oh, you want the number 20. Would you like to biggie size your Jesus?"
"No. That's why I didn't order the number 1. A small side of Jesus is just fine."
"We will do our best. Have a seat and we'll bring your order to you."


"Hi! Welcome to Burger Church where we do church your way. How can I help you today?" 
"Yeah... I'd like... a number... 22 and hold the life-change."
"OK, so you want a comfortable seat and a teacher that's easy to block out. Would you like to add some stagnation to that?"
"Sure, why not. Does that mean I have to put more money in the plate when it's passed?"
"Nope. You can do what you've always done and allow your emotions to control your wallet. Have a seat and we'll bring your order to you."


"Hi! Welcome to Burger Church where we do church your way. How can I help you today?" 
"Give me a number 46."
"Hmmm, that's a tricky one. Only have an organ played, no colored lights, and only the hymns on the left hand side from pages 1-20 containing the word tradition?"
"Yes, that's the one. And can you add a side of don't sit in my seat?"
"We will give it the ol' college try. Thank you for your order."


"Hi! Welcome to Burger Church where we do church your way. How can I help you today?"
"I would like Burger Church to be full of people who only wear their Sunday best according to my standards."
"Well, we can't control who we let walk through our doors, but if you like, you could volunteer to judge them as they pass by and then talk about it with your friends over a donut."
"But if I volunteer to do that then I won't hear the sermon. What good is coming to Burger Church if I don't hear the sermon. Someone else will just have to volunteer."



"Hi! Welcome to Burger Church where we do church your way. How can I help you today?"
"You have stuff for kids, right?!"
"Would you like the DayCare children's church or the Teach'EmALessonWithFlannelGraph children's church."
"Ugh. Just take my kids, feed them, clean them up and hand me the right diaper bag when I come back for them." 
"DayCare it is then. You go through those doors to drop off the babies and those doors over there to drop off your elementary student."
"Why can't they all just go in the same room, I'm running late."
"Is that green snot coming out of your two year old?"
"Uh, no. He has allergies. Heh. You said through those doors, right?"


The church is not a building you come to, to have your every need or want met. The people are the church. And if the church looks like the dialogue above, they can count me out. Since when did being a follower of Jesus become all about me. Nothing Jesus ever did was about him. It was about us, all the people of the world. So if the Bible says that we should be who we are, but allowing Jesus to live through us, then nothing about this life should be focused on us alone. 


We should be going out to our communities and showing the love of Jesus and the hope He gives just by doing what we are passionate about and including others in it. I'm not saying that we should not meet together as Jesus followers. What I am saying is that church is not a place to give your order, expect perfection (in your opinion), and then loudly proclaim how disgruntled you are when it's not exactly the way you want it.


Quit your complaining and be the doggone church.

On The Watch...

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I'm feeling the need to share a few things that God has been impressing on my heart.

I enjoy movies. Not to the point where I have to see them as soon as they come out, but I like things that take me out of my life and submerge me in another place. A place where I can feel what the characters are feeling, see what they are seeing, experience their emotions. And then there are those movies that have legendary quotes that will stick out and be repeated over and over in years to come.

"I'm your Huckleberry" - Tombstone

"Feeling lucky, Punk" - Dirty Harry

"I feel the need, the need for speed" - Top Gun

"You've got mail" - You've Got Mail

"Tomorrow is another day" - Gone With The Wind

One of my favorite movies is Little Women, if you are a guy stick with me. For me, this movie has many quotes that apply to my life today. But two quotes seem to keep rolling about in my head lately.The main character, Jo, is a young woman who is unsettled in the stage of life she is in. During a discussion with one of her sisters she's trying to figure out where she fits into the scheme of things within her family, her circle of friends, her community, and she says,

“I want to do something different. I don't know what it is yet, but I’m on the watch for it.” 

And at another point in the movie she is having a discussion with her mother regarding what she should do because she again feels unsettled.

"I love our home but I'm so fitful and I can't stand being here. I'm sorry, I want to change, but I can't and I feel like I'll never fit in anywhere." To which her mother responds “You have so many extraordinary gifts, how can you expect to lead an ordinary life.”  

She’s not at peace with herself, she feels like she is on the cusp of something big but she doesn't know what yet.

I feel so deeply within myself that this is where we are as a church. We are on the cusp of something big and we love our home and we feel unsettled at the same time and we want to move forward but at times we feel stalled. But while we are in God’s holding pattern, we should be “on the watch”  for anything and everything God shows us. I think we should show up on Sunday mornings and start each service saying “We don’t know what’s going to happen today, but we are going to open this place up to any miracles God wants to perform no matter how unsettled or fitful that makes us. We are going to move forward today with the expectation that the ordinary is not going to happen. We are giving God full permission to show us the extraordinary!”

Through a course I have taken on Spiritualities (a.k.a. Spiritual Gifts) the past couple months, I have learned that there’s more to me than what I do in the everyday. And if God took the time to give me these Spiritualities and mirrors of himself in me… how can I expect to lead an ordinary life. We were made for more than just the mundane. We were made to be extraordinary people. I can’t stand the idea of looking at myself and thinking… is this as good as it gets? Is this all I was brought in this world to do?

I am in that fitful spot, where I am unsettled and teetering on the cusp of something big, but I don't know what it all looks like yet. I have been given so many extraordinary gifts, to waste them on a life lived in an ordinary way would be such a disappointment. And so I am on the watch for God and looking to see how he might use me in ways that aren't ordinary. I will look for those extraordinary things during the day to day, be they little or big, and celebrate each one. 


I hope that this has encouraged you, or caused you to think or maybe see the church through a different lens.

The Wisdom of Marilla

Anne of Green Gables has been a movie I have cherished since High School. It's a story of a young orphan girl that is adopted by an elderly brother and sister. Through a series of verbal exchanges though, the information was skewed and instead of them getting a boy to help on the farm like they had requested, they got Anne. Upon finding out that Marilla planned on sending her back because she wasn't a boy, Anne replies "I'm in the depths of despair." to which Marilla's responds, "To despair is to turn your back on God." The meaning didn't stick with me so much as the memory of the exchange between them.

Yesterday, I found myself in a state of despair. I found myself in a situation very similar to Anne where I had been anticipating an event for months with every fiber of my body. I could not wait for it to happen. I had made all the necessary preparations to be there at the exact time, with the proper materials, I was eager. I waited... for almost an hour. And as I resigned myself to the fact that no one was coming I trudged slowly out to the parking lot. My heart was heavy and disappointed. And the tears began to roll. I wasn't actually crying, but my body was weeping. Big, fat, hot tears slid down my cheeks as I closed myself in my vehicle. The silence was deafening. And I thought, "I'm in the depths of despair." However, I am highly realistic and reminded myself that this was nothing that warranted that description. Maybe I wasn't in the depths of despair, but I was despairing. And being a realistic person, I realized the first thing I needed to do was get myself out of the dark parking lot in a not so good part of town and go somewhere where I could process what just happened.

As I drove I ended up turning my focus away from my despair on to what Marilla had said, "To despair is to turn your back on God." What did she mean by that?! If I let myself get into such a state that I'm despairing, I have centered myself more on my issue than where God is in my situation. I am in essence telling God that he can't pull me out of that place. He's not able.  This is more than contrary to what the Bible teaches and what I believe. And so I decided to do the grown up thing and not despair... I sulked.

After doing some searching on my computer I found an email I had neglected to read that informed me that the class I was so eager to attend had been postponed until February 2011. I am no longer sulking, but eagerly looking forward to February.

Lesson learned: read my email. They are important.

Easy Jesus

Have you ever used a can of Easy Cheese?

More on that later.

A while back I was listening to a teaching where one of my pastors was talking about some missionaries from my church. They hadn't always been missionaries. They were just like us. They met, got married, held jobs, bought a home, had a child, raised a child and so on. And yet they came to a point in their lives where they took Jesus at his word.

Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." Mark 10:21

Really? They actually, literally, with wild abandon took Jesus at his word. They sold everything they had and went to Haiti to be missionaries, to reach out to the people of that nation that were hurting and shared Jesus' love with them. Their sacrifice was huge by our standards, heck, by any standard. But that certain phrase my pastor said was what stuck with me. That phrase... took Jesus at his word. How many times have I read the Bible? Countless. There are over 600 commands. Did you know that? There aren't just 10, there are 613 commands. And yet my life is not radically different than it was 5 years ago. But I have read these commands. I have read the word's of Jesus. Why haven't I taken Jesus at his word?

As an American I lead a comfortable life. I am accustomed to it. It is part of my culture. And when I am not comfortable, I complain. And if I don't outwardly complain, I certainly do a good job of complaining on the inside. So when I take the time to read the Bible, and I read a command like "sell everything you have and follow me" I don't take Jesus at his word, I adapt it to fit my comfortable life. Certainly God doesn't want all of us to sell our things and give it to the poor. Then we would be poor and the poor would be rich and what good could come from that. It's just a role reversal. He must want me to interpret this so it fits my life. Ummmmm, let's see... Jesus wants me tooooo... sell out to the idea of giving everything I have (time, energy, a little bit of my money (because I don't have much to spare), etc.) to the poor aaand... follow God the best I can in my given circumstance. Yep, that sounds OK. Now how can I make that fit into my schedule of being a wife, mom & employee?

Back to the Easy Cheese. Easy Cheese is a processed, chemically altered food product that is extruded from a metal can onto any surface with the idea that it will be consumed. What's really neat about the end of the can is that it has this tip that can make pretty star shapes if you position it just right over a cracker when you squeeze. And if you don't want the star pattern, you can make swirls, zig-zags, polka dots, smiley faces, etc. You can squeeze out cheese to fit any cracker, veggie, trail bologna, sandwich bread, you name it, the possibilities with Easy Cheese are endless. But if you really take cheese back to it's original roots, it wasn't meant to be expelled from a can. It was made from a natural source, animal milk and naturally occurring bacteria. But factory-made cheese overtook traditional cheesemaking in the World War II era, and factories have been the source of most cheese in America and Europe ever since. Today, Americans buy more processed cheese than "real", factory-made or not.

And so with most things, I sacrifice what is good and right, in an attempt to make my life easier. And so I have this Easy Jesus. Where I take his Words in their purest form, read them, and then squeeze them out to fit my life. This season of life is shaped like this particular brand of cracker, so I'll just squeeze my Easy Jesus and what I learned about him this week so he fits into where I am and what I'm doing. Or I'll hear a really good teaching and I'll squeeze my Easy Jesus into a star shape so I remember that one for hopefully longer than the others. But another fact about Easy Cheese... when you get to the place where the can is almost empty it gets more difficult to squeeze the cheese out. It can even leave a nice dent in your finger from pushing on the point so firmly to get that last bit of cheese.

That's kind of where I am now. I have been dispensing my Easy Jesus for so long that I have this dent in my life and I feel like I'm coming to the end of this phase and it's getting harder to read the Bible and not take God at his word. And I don't know what that looks like for me, but I can definitely say that it probably won't be comfortable, it won't be safe (by my standards) and it won't be easy. It's getting harder to squeeze my Easy Jesus each week and I think it's time to get rid of the canned crap that I've been selling myself for years and go back to what He originally wanted to do with me. He wants me to "Love one another".

As I am learning more about what love is, I see that it can take on more forms than I thought possible. And with all of the needs out in my community, surely I can find a unique way to love. Something that reflects what I have learned and not used. And then I won't have to worry about squeezing my Jesus to fit my circumstance. I'll just let him take me back to my natural state and form me into this amazing person that can be molded by Him and aged to the point where my "Love one another" is a wonderful aroma to him. Because even the stinky cheeses can smell good to some people. So while I'm trying to figure this life out, without my canned Jesus, I might stink up the joint with my attempts.

Do you think God uses a clothes pin on his nose when we mess up?