[This article was originally posted on Dan Kimball's blog June 5, 2005]

This morning I attended a worship gathering at a church on the west side of town. I needed to study for my sermon tonight at Vintage Faith Church, so I left before the service ended. I was driving back across town to go study at a coffeehouse near the church offices. However, when I hit the downtown area, all the roads were totally blocked and closed with police cars. There was a parade marching by. I remembered when I saw it, that today is the annual Gay Parade downtown.

So, I parked my car and decided to study in a downtown coffeehouse since I was blocked off. I ended up walking out to the street and watched the last 15 minutes of the parade. There were several thousand people there pretty packed along the sidewalk watching.

I was looking around, and my heart began to get really heavy and I started praying. I was just praying "God, what can we do as a church to be the love and light of Jesus here to everyone." There were so many people there. There were a ton of UCSC students, lots of various local businesses and organizations who were participating in the parade in support of it. It felt extremely festive, lots of people laughing, smiling, children with their parents all around...and as I stood there I began feeling the weight of the computer bag I was carrying.

If anyone knows me, when I study I stuff my bag  with several big books (usually commentaries), my laptop, daytimer, little jar of hair gel, tons of colored pencils (see the photo of the bag. I just took this photo on my cell phone and sent it to my blog. It is sitting on the floor next to the table I am now sitting at). I usually put so much stuff in this bag that I have actually broken 2 straps because of the weight of the bag. The strap on this one now is from a piece of luggage that I took the strap off of to use on this one since the last 2 broke.

My shoulder began aching, and also my back, because I was standing so long holding the computer bag as I walked around.  I shifted the bag to the other shoulder, which temporarily relieved some of the weight and pain now moving into my back. The parade ended and I was walking out among the people on the closed street. Looking into their eyes, wondering who they were, what their stories were, what their thoughts of God and Jesus were. It was last Sunday morning, so most churches were still wrapping up sermons and closing songs with a relatively few people sitting in most of the church buildings here in town. All around me were thousands of people at the Gay Parade.

I must have looked odd as I walked down the center of the closed street hunched over a little because of the weight of the bag I was carrying. I kept praying as I walked over to the park where everyone was gathering. I was praying for people, praying for our church to know what to do. I felt overwhelmed, thinking about eternity, Jesus, and the giant gap between church and culture.

As I was walking along the street, I began thinking of a friend who is a lesbian. I have been interviewing her for a book I am writing for Zondervan (They Like Jesus, but not the Church) - where I am interviewing those outside of the church and finding out why they are respectful and open to Jesus, but the church is seen as something they want nothing to do with. I was thinking about some of the horrible experiences my friend shared with me that she has experienced from Christians calling her horrific names and other things that I am including in the book. As I kept walking around, I saw a booth that had brochures about gay hate crimes, and it made me sad seeing how much violence has been cast against the gay community. People getting physically beaten up etc.

It was a tearing thing, empathizing against hate crimes and violence. I also was thinking how there is a lot of hate against some Christians too, particularly in other countries. And there is instant judgments against Christians made today, in the same way we get accused (and some do) make judgments about others.

By this time the computer bag was really hurting me, carrying this heavy thing for so long. I made my way to the coffeehouse, plunked the bag off my shoulders and it hit the ground hard. But, as it hit the ground, I felt this wonderful weight off my shoulder and relief that I wasn't carrying it anymore, my back and shoulders were even tingling.

I kept thinking and praying, and then I realized that God can carry the weight of what to do about being a Christian and leading a church in our culture today. I prayed and passed the "weight" over to Him. But, at the same time I am excited about what might happen if we as a church did really pray for people, and did not hide in our little Christian subcultures. There were thousands of people at the parade on a Sunday morning , who weren't in church meetings happening at the same time. Can't we do something about all of this? There is such a disconnect between people and most of our churches today, how will a church be Jesus to our community and those outside of our churches, gay, straight, whatever people are?

I don't know what to do. But, I want to do something. I want our church to "be" something. But, my back and shoulders aren't hurting as much because the weight of the bag is now off me. Lord, help us know what to do, and what to be.

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I really like the thoughts that Dan Kimball is stirring in the reader. Not because they are comfortable or "encouraging"as most would understand, yet because they are the important thoughts and questions for a Churched people to think about and ask. In a time when the churhc is often being busy buildng the buildings and running the programs it seems that people, regardless of their issues or lifestyles are only valued for what they can bring to us rather than as the highest and most l;oved portion of creation this side of eternity. Thanks for the encouragement!
--Virgil ( vfeinsod at yahoo dot com ) on 6/11/2005; 11:35:01 PM

Perhaps understanding that we are all created by God and therefore what God has created is Good not sinful.
May be the start of understanding why Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual and Transgender people do not feel welcome in our communities.

Unless and until we can see all people as children of God no matter what their orientation is we will not be a welcoming place for Gay people.
--Latha Ravi ( revlatharavi at yahoo dot com ) on 6/8/2005; 6:23:25 PM

Dan,

I like your questions. I wish I had easy answers for us all. However, you shared the best start to a real solution: prayer. Loving those who are different, those who are "sinners" seems to have never come easy for American, evangelical, conservative Christians. Is it that we have forgotten how God saw us before Jesus Christ redeemed us? Or is it that they remind us too much of what we hate(d) about ourselves? Prayer is the answer. To change our hearts and minds. To discover God's leading to love the least among us. Thanks for your transparency!

In His Spirit - David

www.lifeistheologia.blogspot.com
--David Feiser ( dfeis at aol dot com ) on 6/8/2005; 5:00:30 PM

Consider replacing your heavy commentaries with digital editions that can be downloaded on your laptop. This will be nice for your shoulders and nice for the straps on your case.
--Darrell ( dkb at mc dot net ) on 6/8/2005; 1:52:51 PM

Thanks for the post Dan. The story reads like the calling of a prophet.

I like the question Tom Bandy's been asking recently. It goes something like this:

"Where in your community is Jesus going to be in 15 years time? And what cost are you prepared to pay to join him there?"

That question helps me in a number of ways.

1. It helps me to look beyond my own capacity, or the capacity of my church, to connect with the community.

2. It helps me and my church face the cost of going beyond our present boundaries. There may be conflict. There may be emotional, physical or fiscal cost. There may be learning. There may be conversations that challenge our assumptions.

3. Looking fifteen years ahead helps me to start taking steps now and keep taking them, one by one.
--Duncan Macleod ( postkiwi at gmail dot com ) on 6/7/2005; 6:33:44 AM

It's a wonderful thing to know that God can lift our burdens and weights from off our shoulders. But i also think that He allows them at times to lay heavy on us for us to react in prayer when we see things going on in our world and culture. You're right, we need to do something. It's not acceptable for the church to sit around on our duffs in our little safety boxes we call church and preach/talk about the goodness of God and how He's faithful to bless us when we see a world who just like us, is in a cloud. And that's not to say that isn't good and faithul, that's obvious and we see His goodness everyday...atleast we should. But we have become so legalistic and religious in our approach to Christianity that we're blinded by our self righteousness and ideas of what Christianity is. We're no better or any different than the homosexual community who's also legalistic and self righteous in their beliefs that they're right and in a right lifestyle. Sin is sin. God doesn't have a scale of sin to determine how bad one is. There's only one heaven and one hell. There are no sub heavens or cooler hells. Now i'm not approving the lifestyle nor sin of any kind, but i think what keeps us back from spreading to the community is that we're too up-tight in our religiosity. I believe that we hold on to our religion so tightly that it facades the real us, but because of fear of being less than normal or real, we live by and uphold legalism. Sometimes more so than the Bible. Now that's scary! And often times, we end up judging and measuring "outsiders" according to our own standards. Maybe it's obvious that I came from a legalistic church but i have sinced moved on to a church that's undergoing an Emergent change and i must say it's so exciting to be able to live, not in sin, but definitely free in Christ. And being so, i'm able to be me and show people God's grace and love, and not just His demands or requirements for Christian living. People on the outside of church tend to only see the rigid lifestyle of Christians and not the loving, forgiving and helping side of them. It's a turn off. I think one thing we as Christians need to do ourselves is realize that God loves us in spite of our lack and failures. I think once we learn to truly understand this, we begin to love ourselves and in turn, begin to love others and see the hardened, but scared heart that we once housed in our own lives. I think before we can help in healing a community and/or culture, we need to find healing and acceptance for ourselves first. A surgeon can't expect to do open surgery if he/she's on a ventilator him/herself. Maybe we know this already, but i just thought i'd share it anyways. And sorry if i went of on a tangent.

God bless and help us all.
--dan bugarin ( danbuggy at att dot net ) on 6/6/2005; 4:57:40 PM