Answerless question

There's little left I haven't done in my life that I would like to do. Something about visiting here and there, Hawaii, Denver, the nation's capital, back to New York after 40 years or more, maybe Turner Field in Atlanta.

I probably won't get that much of that, if any, done. Money. Time. Stuff prevents.

We all set goals, and I have accomplished most of mine. That means either I've had a rich life or I set my goals too small. Probably the latter.

I've never been comfortable, though, settling. I still reach toward perhaps unobtainable ideas, strainable notions, desireable moments.

The thing that causes me to rise slowly on stormy mornings and stay awake on windy, warm nights is the notion that there is something I could do or could have done to bring someone to Christ. To introduce Jesus to someone who surely has heard of him but seems to insist they don't NEED him.

As main-line denominations slide into oblivion like yesterday's tang, which they've been doing for decades but I didn't know because I spent some of those decades outside not only the main-line denominations but the church itself, I have read and thought and pondered and mused about what I could do (little me) to help stop this denominational devastation.

My answer keeps coming back ... nothing. If I hadn't been touched by God at the lowest of life's moments, where would I be? The church didn't reach out for me. I reached out to Christ. The church happened to be where I discovered he was staying while in town.

I read within the past month that a plan to be an inviting church, bringing people into church to dinners and things is the way to go. So I put together an impressive plan for hunks of honey to give to our community which will draw them in like flies. I'm reading a book now that says clearly people have stopped making church the focal/social point of their lives and that dinners and such are so happy days and the Fonze isn't home any more.

What to do. What to do?

We can turn to scripture and pray.

The Bible says David sat down one afternoon, a cool day full of hope and goal-setting, and pondered what his young life might bring. He wrote this: "I'm thanking you, God, from a full heart. I'm writing the book on your wonders. I'm whistling, laughing and jumping for joy; I'm singing your song, High God."

That's the plan, Sam.

There's a huge part of me that simply says, tell me what to do as a pastor, as a leader of my church, as a Christian whose one assignment by his Messiah isn't to create a mega situation in the mini local church I find myself at but IS to make disciples, that one endangered species left to accomplish and I'll do it. I understand that mostly what I want not in the brief time I have left is to bring people to the same bewildering, difficult, easy, meaningful completely human relationship with that same Messiah. That's it.

Well, that and another Super Bowl win, but I digress.

I've bought plans from big churches, who mean well and sell products well, both inside the denomination and out. I've pondered every single day about what we should do next. I really have. I've looked at what would work on me, the worst of sinners in direct competion for the title with Paul.

We'll have our committee meetings and we'll put me and others to task about not having the right numbers, numbers of confessions of faith and such. We will. Man I want to be on top in that.

And in the end, it comes down to one thing. If we all knew what worked, we really would do it. I don't know any pastor who isn't committed. There are some who are more talented than others, some at preaching, some at leadership, some at just caring. But I don't know any who were called who simply don't want to succeed. Who have made it a passion to let their churches meander and fall away.

What I've seen, amazingly, is some work harder than others and their churches flounder because of where they are located and what resources are available. Some are content with their place in the world and yet there are newcomers flowing in like living water. And we all sit down and marvel. What does this mean?

The Bible says: "God holds the high center; he sees and sets the world's mess right. He decides what is right for us earthlings..."

Ultimately, I think it means God has more to do with this than any planning we could do. I think Louie Giglio was the right guy at the right time with the right skills in the right place. I think God used him right there, right then.

Paul and Barnabas were starting a new church in much the same manner as did Rick Warren out in California except that Paul up and healed a man who was crippled. When the folks around saw the man jump up, they went nuts. Nary a committee meeting was planned, nor any meals slipped onto the schedule for potluck.

Nah. They began calling the two men gods, calling them Zeus and Hermes. We might call them Rick Warren and Adam Hamilton today. Or whomever the next TV and radio flavor might be.

A budding mega-church was born.

But what Paul said next interests me most. He said. "What do you think you're doing? We'e not gods. We are men just like you, and we're here to bring you the Message, to persuade you to abandon these silly god-superstitions and embrace God himself, the living God. We don't make God, he makes us, and all of this -- sky, sea and everything in it."

We're not gods. We don't make God with all our great talents. I've done the mailouts, and got no response. I've done the newspaper. I don't have money for TV, but if I did, I wonder if it would turn things the way they say it must.

Fact is, we don't have the answers. We barely understand the questions, all of us, from bishops to the person sitting in the same seat in the same pew at Christmas and Easter.

We simply want to know, what's next? What do we do? How do we overcome even the lack of ability to introduce the one person who loves us most to a world that truly has forgotten him?

If I had the answer, I would share it.

And I wouldn't even charge $49.95.