Finding Momentum

I’ve been mar­i­nat­ing in the idea of com­mu­ni­ties that dis­play God’s bound­less grace. Broth­ers and sis­ters that care just as much about who you are now than who you need to be.

In Chris­t­ian cir­cles, I hear many sto­ries of vic­tory, of con­quer­ing sin, of suc­cess. It’s done with much bravado–it’s fin­ished! Sall­good! And when they are gen­uine procla­ma­tions, we cel­e­brate together.

And some­times, I won­der if we trum­pet the suc­cesses so loudly that we silence the rev­e­la­tion of our brokenness.

I came up with a few rea­sons why I didn’t want to show peo­ple I was broken:

1. I would have to admit I suck.
2. Admit­ting I suck would some­how prove that God sucks.
3. Other peo­ple, once they saw me fail­ing, would stop try­ing to be holy.

Let’s say we had a Pas­tor Ted Hag­gard in our midst, the man whose now-public indis­cre­tions took him down in a messy fire­ball of con­tro­versy and finger-pointing. Could Chris­t­ian lead­ers have done bet­ter than to send him away to out-of-state Chris­t­ian coun­sel­ing (and months later decep­tively declare him “cured”)? Who’s fool­ing who?

What if the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity, full of faith­hopelove, picked him up and walked with him? What if they pulled him fur­ther in instead of shov­ing him out?

The Church has a con­cern with holi­ness (and that is good). Can that hap­pen while embrac­ing bro­ken­ness–in the light (1 Jn 1:5–10)–naked, ugly, & exposed?