Unresolved Chicken Soup for the Soul

Brant Hansen has a blog called Letters from Kamp Krusty.

I took this post from his blog: http://branthansen.typepad.com/letters_from_kamp_krusty/2007/08/theres-a-story-.html

Unresolved Chicken Soup for the Soul

There's a story about Bach -- or maybe it was Mozart -- and how, even as a little kid, he had to hear resolution. He was in bed, upstairs, and someone was playing the piano, and that someone got distracted and stopped, just before the last chord.

J.S. -- or W.A.? -- couldn't stand it. He tromped downstairs, pounded out the resolving chord, and then went back up to bed again, without a word. He just had to hear it.

We're all like that. I think about all the stories I've heard, and then all the ones I've lived, and there's the big difference: We get resolution in the former, but the other just...lay...out there, somewhere, and, much as we pretend, there are no finish lines, no final chords, no official victories, no ends-of-story. Not yet, anyway.

I took the yellow bus home from our country school in St. Berniece, Indiana. One day, I sat with my best friend's brother, Eric. He was in second grade, I was in third. We talked and joked about my lunchbox and a puppet I played with. Then we got off at the bus stop in front of his house.

I stepped to the right. But Eric ran alongside the bus, slipped, and fell under the wheel.
Two weeks later, my mom suggested I go over to my friend's house, to visit him and his little sister. She told me they probably hadn't had any visitors since Eric was killed, and may be lonely. So I got on my bike.

Mark, my friend, and his little sister met me at the door, excited to see me -- or anyone, for that matter, I gathered. We laughed and played with a top on their hardwood floor. It was one of those that spins and makes noise and lights. I could see their mom in the back room, smoking a cigarette. Staring at me.

We played for an hour, until she came in the room, and started screaming at me. She said something about how all I was doing was reminding them of what happened to Eric, and I should get out, like, now. Her kids were stunned, and started crying, and so did I, and I ran out the door and got on my bike bawling with guilt.

I never went back. And we moved away. I don't know what happened to them. When I think about that day -- this is almost thirty years ago -- I still get a knot in my stomach. There's no ending to the story. So it's a story I've almost never told.

Most examples aren't this painful, but almost all the "great stories" of my life are this way. When I speak to people, try to motivate them, try to teach them, I pull a bit of a sleight-of-hand, presenting stories that are edited just-so. They're not "untrue", they're just dishonest, in a pedestrian way, I suppose, presenting real-life stories like Aesop's Fables, with certain resolution, as though the story were over.

(Maybe -- I don't know, I'm musing here -- this is a reason why Jesus's stories aren't specific "victory" testimonies, they're metaphors of the Kingdom. Maybe he didn't want a specific "Look-at-what-happened" story to ultimately get mis-used, or give the wrong impression.)
I tell about a smashing, eye-opening missions trip for some high schoolers, but I don't include the boring stories, or the stories where some kids just really weren't impacted, how that one inspiring kid wound up getting some girl pregnant two months later. I tell -- and hear -- "and then he became a believer!"-type stories, but don't include, " -- and yeah, okay, he's still battling addictions."

I read "look what our church is doing" accounts in newsletters, but don't hear the invariably messy follow-ups. We get the "victory" stories over sin and depravity, but no one publishes books called, Wups, I'm Totally Messed Again. Yet, that's where the stories of my actual life are. We don't like our stories open-ended. So we clean up our stories, and act like they're finished.

They're not.

I used to be a youth minister, and the conventions would feature one impressive guy after another, with remarkable stories about what happened in their youth groups. It was really amazing! Why was my youth group kind of a mess? Why wasn't I inspiring anyone like that? It was impressive!...until I realized I could pick and choose stories, make believe they were final, and, presto -- I'm awesome.

And that inspiring day when Big Joe the Football Lineman cried and prayed? Well, that was the end of the story! But in reality, it wasn't.

We like resolution. But we don't live in resolution-time. Forgive me for ever giving the impression otherwise, that I believe myself fully resolved, fully arrived, somehow finished. The story isn't over.

Not everything makes sense, not everything gets explained, not every story is inspiring and ready for Tony Campolo to tell it. Talk about "inconvenient truth": We're living in the in-between.

I think about Eric, his mom, or a thousand other people I've known, and I feel like I'm lying upstairs, and someone just left the piano bench, right before the C chord. I'd walk down and play it, if I could.

Church Should Be A Safe Place

My family and I went this morning to the church we occasionally attend. It's part of a well-known denomination and they meet in an office space with about 25 people. This Sunday they had Communion. I haven't taken Communion in about a year. It was nice. No fanfare, no pre-offering sermon, no personal stories about the Richard Petty racing experience, hunting trips to the Yukon, McDonald's Fillet-O-Fish sandwiches or references to an airplane that the speaker did not actually own. There was just a sermon from Psalm 24 about God's holiness, our sin and God's mercy toward us.

I came out of the service today reminded how church is supposed to be a safe place, not a place to be preyed upon. At my old Word of Faith church they used to say "It's a matter of life and death where you go church." It's true. Because of the narcissistic and exploitative leadership, the sins that went on and the disturbing culture that was developed in the church, it was death to many people in many ways.

No, Really, It's a Great Church: WOF Social Blunders and Church Culture

Anytime friends or family came to visit our WOF church it was always a disaster. It bordered on comical the way it ALWAYS worked out to be a negative experience for the visitor. For example, my sister-in-law came to church with us and lo and behold, there was a mean former co-worker of hers. This person didn’t just go to church with us but she had a coveted ‘servant’ position in the church caste system. This would be awkward enough as it is, but the mean former co-worker could only work up a brisk “Hi” as they passed by. Nice church P.R. move.

Then my wife’s parents came to visit. My father-in-law got a friendly reception from the man who tried to shaft him in business deals. The shifty businessman was far up in our church’s caste system, which explains why he never spoke a word to my wife or me the whole time we attended church together. I guess he saw potential dollar signs over my father-in-law’s head. But the fact that this man was looked up to at our church didn’t exactly leave a good impression on my father-in-law. He was already suspicious of the whole Word of faith movement as it was.

My parents had politely made it known that they did not agree with Word of Faith doctrine, as my dad was a pastor himself. Once my mother came to church with us (to see us, by the way, not to enjoy the “good teaching” that was supposedly taking place). She arrived shortly before the start of the service and was able to find a parking space right next to our church complex. However a parking attendant was going to have her move because the spot had been reserved for paid staff members. After he noticed she had a Tennesse license plate on her car, he told her it would be okay since she had driven a long way. My mother told me she thought it was a bit odd that they asked her to move since churches typically try to accommodate visitors as much as they can in order to make them feel welcome.

A friend of my wife’s visited one Sunday. She made the mistake of entering the domain of the always-crabby church bookstore lady. Our friend was promptly chewed out for entering through the exit of the tiny bookstore. A couple of other friends that visited with us were spared the worst of the typical gaffes that the others experienced. They were able to get through the entire visit without being spoken to. Then there were the times that friends or relatives got zinged by highly abrasive comments from the pulpit about particular doctrines or opinions.

If you add a few experiences like this to what I have already mentioned in the post called “It flows from the head” it gives you an idea of what kind of church culture the Word of Faith creates. I recall one of our upper caste member’s one and only conversations with my wife was “How long have you been going to church here?” The answer was “Two years.” Yeah, we went 3 times a week during those 2 years in a congregation of about 700 or so. And worked in "Helps Ministry."

I have made the point that the WOF creates an unhealthy church culture and brings out a lot of bad in people. But as I have has some contact with some former church people, I am wondering about some of the people the faith and prosperity message attracts in the first place. Some of the ones I’ve bumped into are just as unfriendly as they were in our old church. I think there is truth in what some have pointed out, that a “life enhancement” message will populate churches with people who are not actually saved. Also, a “life enhancement” gospel message can create “Christians” who are not actually saved because we are not putting emphasis on people’s need for a savior because of sin.

It’s all so weird…to quote Someone I Once Looked Up To “It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

Jesus Said You Will Know Them By...

(The following post was written as a response to mega-church culture.)

Jesus said you will know them by...

...their awesome music ministry

...how large their church is

...how humble their pastor says he is

...their conviction that church is God

...their performace art

...their cool hair and clothes

...their ability-in any context-to always direct attention to their lives to establish themselves as an example for others to follow

...their knowledge of self-improvement

...their ability to be follow the pack and implicitly trust everything they are investing themselves in

...their deep, thorough understanding of church culture

...their keen awareness of the world always applied in church to be relevant


This is just a short list of how Jesus said we'd know the greatest believers among us. Take note, and if your life doesn't mirror this list, you'd better evaluate your priorities. Church, it's time to take inventory of our lives. No more old fashioned church with the Sunday school classes and the archaic hymn books. No more senior citizens hanging about our churches, coming to services, trying to hold us back from going where God wants to take us! Because everyone knows he wants to take us places we've never been. There are careers paths we've never ventured into, houses we've never been successful enough to own, and coolness that we have never plumbed the depths of.

-M.W.