Mystery Trip

Yesterday the Youth Group here at Boulevard took what we call a Mystery Trip. Mystery Trips are essentially outings where the participants have no idea where we are going and what we are doing. Yesterday's trip took us to the Dublin Corn Statues, a Wendy's for Dinner and then the Chief Leatherlips monument and park. We had a great time!

On the way to the Leatherlips statue we had a conversation about some other churches and their groups. One of the kids in the car mentioned that she went with a friend to one of the "big big churches" for what that church calls the Girls Cell Group. She said that while she didn't love the church she thought it was interesting that the group read the Bible and found ways to tie that to real life. The way she talked about tying the message of Jesus to everyday, 24/7 life seemed like this was the first time (or at least the first time she noticed) she ever experienced the Bible being informative to the way she lives out her days.

Her comment got me thinking. Isn't connecting our faith & our life what most churches are up to? Why did it take her so long to piece this together? The person that I am talking about here is smart, perceptive, and while her 6th grade taste in music is suspect, she is exceedingly bright. Therefore I am going to guess that it wasn't her fault that she never made this connection; never found faith & life informing each other "interesting" before this specific Cell group encounter. I think that this is the fault of the gathered church.

As a faith community we need to do a better job of talking about the everyday, mundane and challenging life as a place where we can see the Gospels come to bear. We tend to do a good job with Christmas and a slightly worse job with Easter but other than those two Sundays we lose the "this is a big deal & it is important for here and now" vibe that is at the foundation of Christ's message. The truth is that Jesus redeemed the everyday by living an "everyday" life. The events and parables that we read of in the Bible didn't just happen on important days but everyday. When we lose the "everyday" nature of Jesus we make Sunday Holy and the other 6 days fair game. But the good news is that we can do something about this.

As a church, as a community, as people, parents, brother and sisters, we need to do a lot more talking about living a faithful life. We need to talk about the "why" along with the "what and how." We can begin to turn the tide by talking to our children about why we made the decision we made, what informed it, and how we know it was the right decision. We can talk about why it is painful to see the hungry on the streets & why you choose to support a homeless shelter. We can share our struggles with choosing to do the right thing when the opposite is often the most convenient. We can talk about why we pray, why we give, why we volunteer, and the like. By living out our faith in dialog with our children, spouse, friends, family, and faith community we can begin to pool a common witness that shows that faith and life so intrinsically connected that separating one harms both.