Grandma and Grandpa

My grandpa was one of my heroes. He was a World War II guy. So was my grandma, by the way. She enlisted and served as a radio operator, which not many women did back then. Grandpa was old school. When you got close to him, he smelled like Marlboro Reds and Brut cologne. Brut was practical. If you ran out, you could buy more at the 7-Eleven.

Grandpa was a Christian, but he was the kind of Christian you’d have to know before you’d know he was a Christian. He was a little rough around the edges. Grandma was not. Grandma’s faith was real, but every once in a while it got a little out of control, and Grandpa and I would slip down to the basement and hide out until it passed.

They lived near Chastain Park, an old neighborhood with big houses and lots of trees. When you pulled into the driveway, the first thing you noticed was the ivy growing all the way up the brick. You’re not supposed to do that. It’s bad for the house. But Grandpa liked the way it looked, so the ivy stayed.

The first time we arrived each summer, we went up the outside stairs and in the front door. To your left was the formal living room. Grandma had cream carpet in there, and a white couch covered in clear plastic, like seat covers for your car, only for a couch. That room was for guests and for Christmas. At Christmas the tree stood by the front window and we were allowed in. The rest of the year, that room wasn’t really for us.

Straight ahead was Grandpa’s den. He had a TV and a big recliner, and Grandma sat on the couch next to him. Sometimes Grandpa was allowed to smoke his pipe in the house, and the whole room smelled like vanilla tobacco. I loved sitting in Grandpa’s chair and looking out at the swing set in the backyard. It was awesome when I was little. By the time I was older it was rusting out, but I wouldn’t let him move it. It wasn’t safe anymore, but it was still there, and it was the same.

And we watched the same things. Grandpa loved Loretta Lynn. I think he thought she was pretty, and I think he liked her music too. We watched Hee Haw together, and we watched Lawrence Welk. You would never catch me listening to Lawrence Welk anywhere else on earth. But at Grandpa’s house, by golly, it was Lawrence Welk, and I sat in his lap, and that’s the way it was.

Every year we went. Every year it was the same. I counted on it.

The Year It Changed

Then one summer, when I was in high school, we turned down the street and pulled up to the house, and the ivy was gone.

I was a teenage boy. I didn’t care about ivy then and I don’t care about ivy now. But I was furious. We went inside, and the formal living room had been completely redone. The white couch with the plastic cover was gone. New curtains. And the swing set in the back? Gone.

I found my grandpa and said, “Listen, we need to have a talk. What in the world is going on with your house?”

And he said, “Ricky,” because he was allowed to call me that, “it’s my house. It was time to update. Grandma wanted it done, so we did it.”

I was mad at him. I wanted things to be the way they were. That house reminded me of simpler times. When I was four and five, life was simple. By fifteen and sixteen it was getting complicated, and Grandma’s house was the one place where nothing had changed. I could leave and come back, and it would be waiting for me exactly the way I left it.

Grandpa was right, of course. It was his house, not mine. I’d been treating it like a museum, and he was living in it.

The Road to Irrelevance

Some things deserve our nostalgia. A grandparents’ house like that is a gift, and if you have one, you’re fortunate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting Grandma’s house to stay the same.

But there’s everything wrong with it if that’s how we think about church.

Nostalgia wants to keep things the way they were. In a church, that quietly turns into a need to control and a fight against change. It’s the road to irrelevance, and the people on that road are usually the last ones to notice.

My wife and I were married in the church she grew up in. Not long ago I saw a photo of a wedding in that same sanctuary, decades later, and not one thing had changed. Not the stage. Not the decorations. Not even where the sound equipment was set up. For years, the sign out front, carved in brick and stone, listed the worship time and the Sunday school time, because at some point somebody decided that was how it was going to be, forever. I love that church and the people in it, and they’ve moved past some of that since. But for a long time the goal was to protect and preserve the past at all costs.

If we do that, we create Grandma’s house. We don’t create church.

Church is supposed to be alive. It should be dynamic and changing. If you miss a week, you should miss something. When you come back, you should feel a little disoriented, because while you were gone the people around you grew. They obeyed. They took another step. We live in an ever-changing culture with a never-changing Word, and the church’s job is to stand right where the two meet.

The First Time Jesus Said “Church”

Firsts matter. So let’s look at the very first time the word church shows up in the Bible.

Jesus and his disciples were walking near a city called Caesarea Philippi. They had just passed a mountain with a cave at the bottom, where one of the springs of the Jordan River comes up out of the rock. The pagans who lived there called that cave the gates of Hades. They believed that if you went down into it, you went down into the place of the dead.

Right there, in the shadow of that cave, Jesus turned to his disciples and asked, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13).

In other words: What’s the word on the street about me?

I’m careful about asking that question myself. I don’t always want to know. But Jesus asked, and the disciples answered. “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Matthew 16:14). That’s quite a compliment. It just wasn’t who he was.

So Jesus made it personal. “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter spoke up. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).

Jesus said Peter didn’t figure that out on his own. God revealed it to him. And then Jesus said this:

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)

There’s a play on words there. Peter means “rock” or “stone.” But the foundation Jesus is talking about isn’t Peter the man. It’s what Peter just said: that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. The One who would die on a cross and rise again, defeating sin, Satan and death once and for all. That’s the rock. On that truth, Jesus said, I will build my church. And standing right there by the so-called gates of Hades, he promised that those gates would never win.

A Gathering, Not a House

Now here’s where it gets important.

The Greek word Jesus used that we translate church is ekklesia. It means a gathering. An assembly. A group of people called together for a purpose. That’s it. It never meant a building.

Our English word church actually comes from a different Greek word, one that means “belonging to the Lord,” as in the Lord’s house. It seems like a small thing. It’s not.

When William Tyndale first translated the New Testament into English in the 1500s, he translated ekklesia as “congregation.” The people. But when the King James Version was produced a few decades later, the translators were instructed to keep the old church word, church. And over time, the word that meant “the people God calls together” came to mean “the building with the steeple.”

Why does that matter? Because if you think the church is God’s house, you will protect it like Grandma’s house. You will fight over the carpet. You’ll fight over the music, whether we’re going to watch Lawrence Welk or Loretta Lynn. And you’ll make sure nobody sits on the white couch.

You Are God’s House

My grandpa, the same one who smelled a little like Marlboro Reds, used to tell me to dress up for church. Did you grow up that way? Maybe you wore a suit or a sport coat on Sunday mornings. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I asked him once why we had to, and he said, “It’s God’s house. We show respect in God’s house.”

How many of you were told not to run in church? Don’t run, it’s God’s house. Don’t wear a hat, it’s God’s house.

Here’s the thing. It’s not God’s house.

You are God’s house. Paul wrote to a church full of messy people, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives among you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). The building is where the church gathers. There’s a huge difference.

Grandma’s house wasn’t our family. It was the place our family gathered. What tied us together wasn’t the brick or the address. It was blood, and the choice we made to be family. What ties you and me together is blood too. Jesus’ blood. And the choice we’ve made to be family.

That’s why the church Jesus started doesn’t exist to protect you from the world. It exists to prepare you for it. We don’t come together to hide inside with the plastic on the couch. We come together to be sent back out, to be salt and light in a world that desperately needs both.

The Church Becoming

So here’s the question for the rest of this book. If the church is a gathering of messy people who belong to Jesus, what does that kind of church actually look like?

I think Jesus answered that question one day in a crowded house in a town called Capernaum, when four friends climbed up on a roof and started digging. We’ll get there.

But first, we need to talk about the unwritten rules. Because before anybody can get through the roof, a lot of us have to unlearn what we were taught about who gets in the door.

The Unwritten Rules

The church I grew up in, which may have been very different from yours, had a set of rules nobody ever wrote down. There was no guidebook. You just had to come in and figure it out.

You had to dress a certain way. You had to talk a certain way. You had to clean yourself up before you came. If you had tattoos, you’d better cover them, because people would assume you’d just gotten out of prison. If you had long hair, they assumed you’d lived a wild life and probably listened to Led Zeppelin or AC/DC. There was a culture, and you had to fit into it.

I wanted to fit in. Badly.

So I carried the biggest Bible I could find. And I’ll confess something to you: I wanted my Bible to look like I really read it. So I’d rough it up a little. I’d rub the cover back and forth to wear it down. I underlined all kinds of things I never actually read. Probably some Levitical dietary law. I have no idea.

And I had a suit. I bought it at Burlington Coat Factory. When I really wanted to impress on a Sunday morning, it was my chocolate-brown suit, with a tie that was a little too wide and a shirt with one of those long, pointy collars. I looked like a little junior pastor. I walked around that church with an attitude you would not believe.

I look back on that kid and think, Who were you trying to impress? What culture were you trying so hard to blend into?

Behave, Believe, Belong

Here’s how the unwritten rules worked, in a lot of churches then and in more than a few now.

First you behave. You clean up your life. You clean up your language. You get the clothes right.

Then, after people watch you for a while, maybe you believe. There may not be an official committee, but there’s always a group of people who appointed themselves to it, and they’re watching. Does your life stack up to their list? Do you look the part? Do you vote the same way? Do you drive the same kind of car?

And then someday, if you pass your probation, which by the way is never defined, you belong. You get your card. You’re one of us. And then we can all sit inside the church together, judge the world, lob truth bombs over the wall, and congratulate ourselves on how holy we are.

In reality, all we are is weird and irrelevant. And the last people to know it are us.

I have met so many people who were hurt by a church because they didn’t know the rules. Some were turned away because they wore the wrong clothes or had too many visible tattoos or didn’t take off their hat. Maybe that was a long time ago. But the wounds last, and plenty of people still walk into a church wondering if they’re about to be judged for not fitting in.

Jesus Flipped It

Jesus came and flipped the order completely.

In the church Jesus had in mind, you belong from day one. You show up, and you’re loved and respected and part of us. Out drinking last night? I’m so glad you came here before you went home. Your marriage just fell apart? Thank you for having the courage to be here. Everybody around you has just as much going on in their lives. Some people are just better at hiding it.

Then we do everything we can to help you believe. We teach, we pray, we build relationships, and we nudge you toward Jesus, because believing in him is where the life is.

And then, after you believe, you learn to behave. Your behavior changes, but not because you put on a costume. It changes because the Holy Spirit is transforming you from the inside out.

You can no more clean up your life before you come to Jesus than a paralyzed man could heal himself before he met him. We’ll meet that man in a couple of chapters. But sometimes, in church, that’s exactly what we expect people to do. We expect the impossible.

Why “Dirty”?

So why call it Dirty Church?

Let me be clear about who’s dirty. It’s not those people. It’s us. All of us.

Every one of us was born with a sinful nature. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The pastor, the person in the front row, the person who hasn’t been to church in twenty years, the person who’s been there every Sunday since they were born. All of us need to be saved.

And salvation is a free gift of God. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). His grace, our faith. Nothing else. Not your suit. Not your scuffed-up Bible. Not how long you’ve been coming.

All of us are dirty. The only difference between a follower of Jesus and anybody else is that Jesus has saved us and is changing us. That doesn’t make us better. It makes us sinners saved by grace.

And the people in the church who forget they’re dirty? They’re part of the problem.

Conformed or Transformed

Paul put it this way:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

Here’s what I didn’t understand as a kid in a brown suit. You can conform to the pattern of the world, and you can also conform to the pattern of the church. You can learn the vocabulary, carry the big Bible and look exactly like everybody else in the room, and still not be changed at all.

Change comes through a relationship with Jesus, not a relationship to a church. Conforming to the image of a church is not the same as being transformed into the image of Jesus.

That’s not a knock on the church. I love the church. I’ve given my life to it. But the church’s job is to point people to Jesus, not to turn them into copies of us.

Let the Rough Edge Drag

My grandpa, the one with the Brut cologne and the vanilla pipe, was a Christian, but he was a little rough around the edges. And sometimes you just let the rough edge drag.

That’s what the church is supposed to be. A place where people with rough edges can show up as they are, and nobody makes them sand themselves down at the door. You belong from day one. Everyone is welcome, no matter what. Jesus will do the sanding, in his time and in his way, and he’s a lot gentler about it than we are.

Not long ago I was meeting with a couple of guys from our staff at a coffee shop. When we got up to leave, I gathered my trash and my motorcycle key, walked over to the trash can while I was talking, and threw the whole thing in. Trash, key and all.

Now, you need to know that I am a germaphobe. This was not an inconvenience. This was a health crisis. I’m thinking I may need to go to the emergency room and get checked out preventively.

So I just stood there, staring into the trash can, not wanting to admit my weakness. And my friend didn’t miss a beat. He smacked me on the back and said, “Hey, want me to get that for you?”

I did it myself. If he’d done it, he would have told everybody about it later. I pulled the trash can out, reached in, grabbed the key, cleaned it off and put it in my pocket. As far as I know, I didn’t die.

But I was reminded that I had a friend who saw the rough edge and the weakness, and instead of judging or exploiting it, he stepped in and said, “How can I help?”

That’s the church.

Who Will Be Here Next?

Here’s what keeps me up at night. Do you know who decides whether the church will still be here for the next generation, for your kids and their kids?

You do. And I do.

Many young adults today are walking away from the faith they grew up with. People call it deconstructing. I’ve talked with a lot of my own kids’ friends about it, and I’ve noticed something. Many of them are deconstructing a faith that was more about looking fine than being faithful. They grew up watching people act like everything was okay when it obviously wasn’t. Sometimes sin seems to win. Sometimes people get cancer, lose a job, get divorced or die. And nobody was honest about it.

The problem wasn’t the faith. The problem was the costume. There was no transparency, no humility, no admitting we’re human and still need Jesus every single day.

The faith we’re supposed to live doesn’t need to be deconstructed. It’s a dependent faith. It’s honest about our scars and our failures. It asks God for help, because we know we can’t do it on our own. And it opens the door wide for anyone who wants to come.

Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. Show me a church full of people who let the rough edge drag, and I’ll show you a church that will still be standing for your grandkids.

So how does a church like that actually work? Let’s go to a crowded little house in Capernaum and find out.

Jesus Comes Home

You’ve probably heard Jesus called “Jesus of Nazareth.” That was kind of like his last name. He grew up in Nazareth. But things didn’t go well for him there. His own hometown ran him out (Luke 4:28–30). So Jesus adopted a new home base: Capernaum.

Capernaum sat on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, right on the great trade road that ran from Damascus to the coast. Its name means “village of Nahum,” and Nahum means comfort. The Old Testament never mentions it once. But in the Gospels it shows up again and again, because it’s where Jesus kept coming back to. Peter, Andrew, James and John were fishermen from Capernaum. Many of Jesus’ miracles happened there.

It’s like saying, “I used to be from one town, but now I live over here.” You’ve got a good friend with a family home on the edge of town. When you’ve been out all day and you’re worn out, that’s where you go to unplug.

Most scholars believe the house in this story belonged to Simon Peter’s family. The Bible doesn’t say so for certain, but it fits. It was the place Jesus went to regroup with his disciples. Maybe he had a favorite chair. Not a La-Z-Boy. Jesus was never lazy. Maybe an Active-Boy. Maybe there was a spot at the table that everybody knew was his.

Did you have a house like that growing up? A friend’s house where you just felt at home? Maybe your house is that house for your kids’ friends. It’s not where you were born, but it’s where you belong.

That’s what Capernaum was to Jesus. It was a lot like my grandma’s house. Special, but not because of the brick. It was special because of the people who gathered there.

What Kind of House?

I want to help you picture this, because the details matter.

In Jesus’ day, people didn’t move around much. You didn’t buy a starter home, move up when the kids came and downsize when you retired. If your family had any means at all, your great-grandfather built a house, your grandfather added a room, your cousins added another, and it got passed down from generation to generation.

Poor families lived in one-room houses, a square stone box with a little room on the back for the animals. When my wife and I were first married, we lived in an apartment of about 500 square feet. One room. I have great memories of that place. But we didn’t have goats sleeping in the kitchen in winter, and we didn’t have kids sleeping on the floor next to them.

A family that had been in a home for generations had something better. A courtyard out front with benches for visitors. Sometimes a second story. And a good roof. Do you ever look at roofs as you drive through a neighborhood? I do. I like a metal roof. It just looks armored to me. In Jesus’ day, the roof told you everything. A poor family’s roof was branches and mud. A family with a generational home had a roof of clay tiles, a lot like the tiled roofs you still see across the Middle East today. A stairway or ladder ran up the outside of the house, because the roof was the family’s patio. People went up there to pray, to talk in the cool of the evening and, when the weather was nice, to sleep.

So picture a well-built family home with a tile roof and stairs up the outside. That’s where Jesus was. And word got out that he was home.

A Packed House

They came in such large numbers that there was no room left. Not inside. Not in the courtyard. Not even outside the door.

Some came because they wanted to hear him. Some came for the miracles. Some came hoping to catch him saying something they could use against him. Some came full of hope but sure they weren’t churchy enough for someone like him. If you back up and look at this one scene, you see Jesus’ whole ministry in a single room: a crowd, a teacher, people who needed healing, people who were curious, and people in the corner who were plotting.

And Jesus “preached the word to them.” What word? That anyone who wants to come to God can come. No matter what you’ve been through, no matter what happened to you, no matter what you did last year or last night, God loves you, and you are his kind of person.

That was a revolutionary message, and not everyone in the room liked it.

Talked About, Not Talked To

“Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.” (Mark 2:3)

Many scholars think this man was completely paralyzed, unable to use his arms or his legs. He was completely dependent on other people.

And his culture was brutal to him. In Jesus’ day, if you were blind or paralyzed or sick in a way people didn’t understand, they assumed you had done something to deserve it. Or your parents had. Some kind of cosmic payback. People were afraid that if they got too close, your bad luck would rub off on them, or that other people would judge them for being seen with you.

So people like this man were talked about, but never talked to. Usually they ended up begging by the side of the road. I can picture a father walking past with his kids, pointing at him: “You’d better behave, or that’s what happens to you.” He wasn’t a person to them. He was a prop. An object lesson.

Have you ever felt that way? Maybe not in church. I hope not in church. Maybe in a group of friends or your family. Something happens, and all of a sudden the conversation gets quiet when you walk in, and you realize you’ve gone from being on the prayer chain to being the subject of the prayer chain. Everyone’s suddenly in “bless her heart” mode. You’re on the outside.

This man had lived his whole life there.

And Jesus hated it. So did four of the man’s friends.

Four Faces in the Ceiling

“Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.” (Mark 2:4)

Imagine this happening in your church on a Sunday morning. The pastor is preaching. You start hearing scuffling up on the roof. A little drywall falls in the middle of the room. Security is getting alert. We’re all looking around at each other. The scuffling gets louder. Then you see daylight. Then a bigger hole. Then four faces looking down at you.

Then they start lowering a man on a mat right into the middle of the service.

And remember, this is probably Peter’s family home. I can only imagine Peter’s face as somebody pulls up the tiles on Grandpa’s roof.

Nothing like this had ever happened. And it was impossible to ignore.

In my mind, I picture that man about halfway down, hanging over the crowd, swaying a little on his mat. These are people who think that if they touch him, they’ll catch something. And here he is, hanging over their heads in the middle of their worship. If I’m him, part of me is wishing I were anywhere else.

And then, in my imagination, he locks eyes with Jesus. This part isn’t in the text. It’s just how I picture it. I see Jesus smiling at him. Maybe even laughing a little, because it’s quite the situation. And it’s like Jesus is saying, “Don’t look at them. Just look at me.”

That man could no more heal himself before he met Jesus than you or I can clean ourselves up before we meet him. He represents all of us. He represents your friends who don’t know Jesus yet.

A Word About Miracles

A miracle is something God does outside the natural order of things, outside the rhythms and laws God built into the universe to keep it running. It’s supernatural, which means you can’t predict it, control it or produce it on demand.

God still does miracles. But he does them according to his plan, for his purposes and for his glory. Many of us have prayed for miracles. Some of those prayers were for God’s glory. If we’re honest, some of them were for ours. And sometimes God, for reasons we don’t understand yet, has said not yet.

Here’s how the Trinity works in a miracle like this, as simply as I can put it: the Father wills it, the Holy Spirit provides the power, and Jesus carries it out. Three persons, one God, working together.

And in this story, it all begins with what Jesus noticed first:

“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” (Mark 2:5)

Their faith. Not just the man on the mat. The four friends who carried him, climbed up there and dug through the roof.

Who were these guys? And what would it take for you and me to be friends like that? That’s next.

Lines in the Sand

It gets worse. We draw lines in the sand and plant ourselves on one side and decide Jesus must be with us, because we believe these things, so of course he does. And another group plants itself way over on the other side, just as sure that Jesus is with them. We weaponize our faith. We tie it to a nation or a party.

That’s exactly what the religious leaders did in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees and the Sadducees didn’t separate their politics from their faith. They knew what God wanted, because God had to agree with them. And their biggest fights with Jesus came when he said his kingdom wasn’t the kind you could see here, but a spiritual kingdom that was here now and still coming.

Jesus didn’t pick a side of the line. He planted his cross right on it. And he said, here is the level ground. The question isn’t whether I agree with you. The question is whether you’ll agree with me.

That doesn’t mean we stop caring when things are wrong. Sometimes we’re absolutely right that something is wrong. But meeting people at the level ground at the foot of the cross is the only real answer to the turmoil our world is in.

The gospel divides. It says Jesus is the only way to God, and that’s not a popular thing to say. But the gospel also unites, because anyone can come. Even the people who aggravate me. Even the people who leave their grass clippings on the sidewalk. Even the people who couldn’t be more different from me if they tried.

Two things help me when I start crossing people off my list. First, people think what they think for a reason. What they believe makes sense to them, even when it doesn’t make sense to me. Second, and you may not like this, I’m not that important. Neither are you. I don’t have to be happy. I don’t have to be comfortable. Things don’t have to go my way. John the Baptist said it best: “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30).

Back to the Roof

The church doesn’t exist just to fill up your bucket so you can survive another week. It doesn’t exist to protect you from the world. It exists to prepare you for the world, so you can be salt and light in your neighborhood, especially with the people you disagree with.

The four men who carried their friend to Jesus show us what that looks like. They defied the culture around them. They didn’t care what the religious people thought. They cared more about their friend than about anything else, and they would do whatever it took for him to meet Jesus.

I see four qualities in them. Every one of them is Christlike, and every one of them is something you and I can become.

1. The Compassionate Friend

Here’s a prayer I pray, and maybe you pray it too: God, break my heart for the world around me.

Break my heart so I don’t carry my ego, my preferences and my opinions so high that I write off everyone else. Break my heart so I can see the people around me the way you do.

When Jesus saw the crowds, the Bible says, “he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). The word for compassion there means he was moved in his gut. He felt it physically. And instead of pushing him away from people who were nothing like him, it pulled him toward them.

These were people who wanted very different things than Jesus wanted for them. He looked at them and saw that they were beaten down and left for dead. And he said, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37).

A broken, compassionate heart is a Christlike heart. But it’s not a natural heart. It’s not the one you and I wake up with. So pray for it.

2. The Accepting Friend

Accepting is a word that scares a lot of Christians. Accepting what? And right away we start thinking about the list of things that are unacceptable.

We say, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” And we do love people, as long as their sin, in our opinion, doesn’t make them unlovable.

Here’s what I mean by accepting. I accept somebody just the way they are as a person. I realize they’re probably the way they are for a reason. Maybe it happened to them. Maybe it happened through them. Either way, I can see them as someone who has value to God. And I don’t hate their sin any more than I hate my own. I hate my sin. I hate it in me, and I hate it in other people, because it divides and destroys. But I want to see the person, love them and earn the right to nudge them toward Jesus.

3. The Loving Friend

The Bible’s word here is agape. Agape love wants the best for someone else, and it’s committed to that no matter what. It isn’t based on emotion. It’s a choice. I will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to make sure you can be right with Jesus.

That means being willing to be inconvenienced. It amazes me how quickly Christians can get fired up about what’s wrong with the world, and how apathetic we can be in our own lives. We point out the problem and explain how everybody else should change, but we never take responsibility to be part of the change ourselves.

If you don’t know anyone personally who needs Jesus, you’re too insulated. You need to get out more. And if you do know someone, here’s the question: If you won’t take responsibility to nudge them toward Jesus, who will?

Loving people like that is inconvenient. I love you enough to rearrange my preferences for you. I love you enough to be irritated by you. I love you enough to show up at church so you have someone to sit with, and maybe take you to lunch afterward.

4. The Faithful Friend

The faithful friend doesn’t give up.

You probably have someone in your life you’ve decided is never going to change. Too much water under the bridge. Too far gone.

Let me be careful here. Some people have wounded you deeply. Some have done things to you that were illegal or abusive, and you can’t be around them, and you shouldn’t be. Use your common sense. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about most people.

The faithful friend sticks around. They’re steady and loyal, to the people in their lives and ultimately to God. I’m going to keep praying. I’m going to keep nudging. I’m going to keep encouraging and loving you for as long as it takes, because you meeting Jesus matters more than anything.

The Windy Road

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5–6)

A lot of us have lived a windy road. Some of us are on one right now. And if we take our eyes off Jesus for even a week, we know exactly where that road leads.

Not long ago I led a memorial service for a woman who had been part of our church for only a short time. She came to faith in Jesus in her seventies, after a long, winding life. She sat with me one day in our café and told me her whole story. It was a windy road. Then God opened her eyes and softened her heart, and she gave her life to Christ. She was baptized, and we all celebrated with her. For the last couple of years of her life, she walked a straight path.

At her memorial, people shared stories for about thirty minutes. There were two kinds of stories: the ones from before Jesus and the ones from after. It was one of the most encouraging things I’ve been part of in a long time, because God did a miracle in a life.

And here’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. She had friends who wouldn’t give up on her. People who kept nudging and encouraging, even when she pushed them away. Compassionate, accepting, loving, faithful friends.

The choices you make today determine the person you’ll be tomorrow. They also determine the stories people will tell about you.

Who Is Your Friend on the Mat?

The church that lets the rough edge drag is a church full of friends like these. It understands that life is messy and that a lot of us have walked a windy road. It also understands that when we fix our eyes on Jesus, he makes that road straight.

So here’s my question for you. Who’s your friend on the mat? Who’s the person in your life who can’t get to Jesus on their own? And what roof are you willing to dig through to get them there?

A Fence Around the Law

In Jesus’ day, there were preachers who wanted to control people, and I think some preachers still do. One of the easiest ways to control people is with rules. Not the rules God gave in Scripture, but rules a church or a leader makes up.

The religious leaders knew God’s law well. But they didn’t trust ordinary people to read it and follow it on their own. So they built a fence around it, a wall of extra rules to keep people from ever getting close to breaking the real ones. Then they built rules about the rules. There were so many that nobody could keep track, and nobody could ever measure up. Nobody but them, because whoever makes the rules gets to win.

Then Jesus walked in and started teaching that anyone could come to God. That destroyed their fence. If people could go straight to God through Jesus, they didn’t need the gatekeepers anymore. The religious leaders were watching Jesus work them out of a job.

Outing Themselves

Now think again about the four friends.

To pick up a paralyzed man, touch him, carry him and be seen with him, they had to step away from the religious leaders who said that would make them unclean. They knew what the enforcers of the rules could do to them. They could be shut out of the synagogue and their whole community. They were rolling the dice and risking everything. They were outing themselves as people who took Jesus at his word.

And then they vandalized somebody’s roof to do it.

I wonder how much faith I have. How much urgency do I really feel? Am I willing to be inconvenienced for the mission of Jesus? Or have I settled into a quiet little philosophy: I’m okay, so it’s okay?

It’s every man for himself, right? It’s not really my responsibility. Somebody will tell them. We’re just friends. We don’t have that kind of relationship.

But when we decide that the people in our lives who don’t know Jesus aren’t worth the risk of nudging them toward him, here’s what we’re really telling them, whether we say it or not: I don’t care enough to tell you the truth.

“Son”

“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” (Mark 2:5)

Let’s slow down on that word, son.

If I called you “son,” you’d probably think, All right, Dad. Whatever. It sounds a little distant to us. It wasn’t.

All of us have the family we’re born into. Some of us love our families. Some of us say, “Yep, that’s the family I got.” Your mileage may vary. But all of us also have a family we choose. People who aren’t related to us by blood, but we’ve decided they’re family. When you tell someone like that, “You’re family,” it means something. I’ve chosen you. You’ve chosen me. We’re doing life together. You’re my ride-or-die.

That’s what Jesus was saying to a man he may have never met before. A man everybody talked about and nobody talked to. In front of everyone, Jesus looked at him and said, “I choose you. You’re family.”

More Than a Healing

Then Jesus did something nobody expected. He didn’t start with the man’s legs. He started with his sins.

That made the religious leaders furious:

“Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” (Mark 2:6–7)

They were right about one thing. Only God can forgive sins. They just couldn’t see who was standing in front of them.

Jesus knew what they were thinking. And he asked them a question:

“Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” (Mark 2:9–11)

Anybody can say “your sins are forgiven.” You can’t see that happen. But “get up and walk”? Everybody can see whether that happens or not. So Jesus did the thing they could see, to prove he had done the thing they couldn’t.

“He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this!’” (Mark 2:12)

The man who had been carried in walked out carrying the mat that had carried him.

What Is Sin?

Sin isn’t a popular word. But here’s a simple definition: sin is any thought, action or attitude that separates us from God.

The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Everyone. Every person ever born, except Jesus. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). And “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

For someone who doesn’t know Jesus yet, the answer is to admit your sin, believe who Jesus is and choose to follow him. That’s how you get in. And when you want in, Jesus says, “You’re in. You’re family.”

But here’s what convicts me. Those of us who already follow Jesus still sin. And one of our biggest sins is our attitude.

Do I have an attitude that separates me from God? Or from the people God loves and Jesus came to save? Is there anyone so different from me that I’m tempted, in my heart, to dismiss them, ignore them or shut them out?

That attitude separates us from God, and it separates us from the mission he gave us in the first place.

Their Faith

Jesus saw their faith. Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we don’t see (Hebrews 11:1). Confidence that Jesus really can forgive sin. That a life really can change. That nobody you know, no matter how bad or how far gone, is beyond the reach of Jesus.

So here’s the question. Are we willing to have our hearts broken and risk it all like those four friends? Are we willing to be like Jesus, who chose to love people who weren’t like him at all and people who didn’t even like him at all?

He never lost sight of the mission. And neither did they.

Where Jesus Chose to Sit

Here’s how I picture Jesus’ ministry.

Imagine walking into a room with one aisle down the middle. On one side are all the people who agree with you, the people you’re comfortable with, your people. On the other side is everybody else. The people you can’t relate to. The people who make you think, How in the world could anybody think that way?

The room is already divided. Everybody’s already seated. You’re standing in the back.

If you sit with your people, everyone will know you’re one of them. If you sit on the other side, your own people might never forgive you.

Jesus walked into a room like that and sat down with the people the religious crowd couldn’t stand. Not to agree with everything they did, but to start a conversation that didn’t divide. A conversation that brought people together at the foot of the cross. And where he chose to sit made some people hate him so much that they wanted him dead. In the end, he stretched out his arms and died. For everybody, on both sides of the aisle.

We live in a world where we want to win, and when we win, somebody else has to lose. As long as I’m right, I’m okay. And somewhere in the scuffle, the mission gets lost.

So how do we earn the right to share our faith? How do we become a voice people will actually listen to? Love that is only talked about won’t do it. Love has to be demonstrated. Jesus showed his love by where he chose to sit.

A Story for the Self-Righteous

Jesus told a story once, and before he even started, Luke tells us exactly who it was for:

“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable.” (Luke 18:9)

When I first read that, my reaction was, Yeah! All those self-righteous people who look down on everybody else, they’d better listen up. Jesus is about to let them have it.

And then I took a step back. Oh. Oh, wait.

Am I confident in my own righteousness? Do I think I’m better than somebody because I’m right and they’re wrong? Because I’ve had experiences they haven’t?

Here’s the scary thing about self-righteous people. They are very rarely self-aware. They can look in a mirror and never see it. But everybody around them sees it.

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” (Luke 18:10)

A parable is a made-up story laid alongside a true principle to make a point. And Jesus picked two characters from opposite ends of the world his listeners knew.

Jewish worshipers went to the temple to pray at set times each day, morning and afternoon, when the incense was burned and the sacrifices offered. They prayed out in the open courtyards, and as the smoke of the incense rose, it was a picture of their prayers rising to God.

The Pharisee was a respected religious leader. One of the rule makers. Everybody looked up to him.

The tax collector was the lowest of the low. He worked for the occupying Roman government and squeezed his own people for money. He was a traitor. Think of the person who got your grandmother evicted from her home. Everybody had been raised not to like this guy.

The Pharisee’s Résumé

“The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.’” (Luke 18:11)

Can you imagine a prayer like that? God, thank you that I’m not like these other people.

Before we laugh at him, how many of us have thought something like that in the last few weeks?

If he’d stopped and said, God, thank you for saving me and not leaving me the way I was, that would have been a great prayer. But that’s not where he was going. He started naming people. Robbers. Evildoers, which covers just about everybody. Adulterers. And then, even like this tax collector, using a real person standing right there as his example. A person, not a prop.

Then he read God his résumé:

“I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” (Luke 18:12)

God’s law only required one day of fasting a year, on the Day of Atonement. But many Pharisees fasted twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, which also happened to be market days, when everybody was in town to see them looking hungry and holy. And they tithed down to the tiniest herb seeds in their gardens, so everyone could see how spiritual they were (Matthew 23:23).

Giving matters, by the way. Generous, sacrificial giving is part of following Jesus. But this man wasn’t worshiping. He was performing.

He forgot he was dirty. And the people in the church who forget they’re dirty are part of the problem.

The Man in the Back

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’” (Luke 18:13)

That word but is huge.

The tax collector stood at the back, where nobody would notice him. He didn’t think he should be there. He didn’t feel like he belonged. He wouldn’t even lift his eyes.

And he beat his chest. To us that might look strange, but in that culture it was an expression of the deepest grief, something men almost never did. It shows up only one other time in the New Testament: when the crowd at the cross realized, too late, what they had done to Jesus (Luke 23:48). That’s how broken this man was.

He came in expecting to be kicked on the way in, because he knew he deserved it. I understand that man. Maybe you do too.

God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

He described himself exactly right. Then Jesus delivered the twist:

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

The churchiest man in the room went home the same way he came. The man who knew he was dirty went home clean.

What Forgiveness Is Not

So what does this story teach us about forgiveness?

Being good does not equal forgiveness. Being good just leads to comparing yourself with someone else, and needing to win. It puts the job of your salvation back on you. Scripture never says that being good earns forgiveness.

Being smart does not equal forgiveness. The Pharisees knew every Bible story and every right answer. They could dazzle you. Jesus called them whitewashed tombs: beautiful on the outside, dead on the inside (Matthew 23:27).

Being in the right place does not equal forgiveness. The Pharisee was standing in the temple. So was the tax collector. Location didn’t save either of them.

Salvation through Jesus equals forgiveness. That’s it.

What’s the greatest thing Christianity has to offer the world? Not a moral code. Not a political platform. Not even inner peace, though peace comes with it. The greatest thing we have to offer is forgiveness of sin and a brand-new life. Old becomes new. Dead becomes alive. Lost becomes found.

Too Good to Be True

Years ago I started a church in Marin County, California, just north of San Francisco, where very few people went to church. The people were smart, well educated and successful, and most of them had never set foot in a church.

I remember telling the story of Jesus to one man who sat on the board of a company whose products are probably all over your house right now. Nobody had ever connected the dots for him: sin, a Savior, forgiveness, a new life. And when it clicked, his first response was, “I have to tell my wife. I have to tell my kids.”

That happened again and again. People would bring their friends to me and say, “Tell them what you told me. It’s almost too good to be true.”

That church grew because people brought their friends to Jesus. They remembered what they had been without him, and they couldn’t keep it to themselves.

Outing Yourself

That’s hard for a lot of us. When you start nudging the people in your life toward Jesus, you out yourself as a Christian. And then they’re going to notice all the ways your life doesn’t measure up to Jesus.

When they point it out, here’s what you get to say: You’re right. I’m not perfect. I haven’t arrived. But I’m following Jesus, and he’s changing me.

That takes humility and honesty. It’s a lot easier to lob truth bombs over the fence and hope nobody throws one back. But the man in the back of the temple shows us the way. He knew he was dirty. And that’s exactly the person Jesus sends home clean.

Three Challenges

If you’ve been around church or religion at any point in your life, you’ll face three big challenges along the way. Every group of people deals with some version of these. But in the church they’re more dangerous, because so much more is at stake.

The Real Test

Followers of Jesus do live differently. But here’s how you can tell whether that’s real.

It’s not what you post on social media. It’s not how you argue with people you barely know. It’s not the conversation you have with a cashier who sees the world differently.

It starts with the person you wake up next to in the morning, if you wake up next to somebody. It’s the people at your breakfast table, the person you hand a Pop-Tart to on their way out the door. It’s the first people you see when you get to work, or the people you see at the gym every day. It’s the people closest to you. They’re the ones who see your life up close and know whether something about you is different.

That’s hard. It’s so much easier to figure out what a Christian costume looks like, buy one and put it on. Some people get very good at it. On Sunday morning it’s laid out ahead of time. It goes on for the hour or so we’re together. Then it comes right back off for the rest of the week.

Paul told us not to do that: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

Don’t just put on a costume. Most of us already change costumes all week long. A work costume, a gym costume, a going-out costume, and then a church costume on Sunday. Paul says let God change you on the inside instead. Let the Spirit renew the way you think. And then, he says, “you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

In Full View

Let’s go back to the house in Capernaum one last time.

The man was lowered down through the roof. Jesus looked at him and called him son. He forgave his sins. And then he said:

“I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” (Mark 2:11–12)

He walked out in full view of them all. The same people who had talked about him and never talked to him watched him walk out on his own two feet.

Think about everyone in that room. The religious leaders were horrified. He can’t do that. Who does he think he is? They were losing their crowd and their control. The skeptics were just looking for the next show: One more miracle. Let’s follow him to the next town. The people who had been hoping Jesus was who he said he was got drawn in a little closer, their hearts a little softer. The disciples’ faith got stronger.

And the man who had been paralyzed? He went from being a prop to being a person. Somebody nobody would touch became somebody nobody could ignore.

He belonged. Jesus made that clear in front of everyone. He believed. And his life, and the lives of the people watching, changed. Belong. Believe. Behave.

That’s the order. And it doesn’t happen by putting on a costume. It happens when you meet Jesus.

The Danger in Here

Sometimes it’s my job to flap my wings and let you know there’s danger. And there is danger out there. There’s a lot going on in our world that’s stressful and confusing. A lot of voices are shouting at you about what to think and how to feel, and whether to be afraid.

But I’m less worried about the danger out there than the danger in here. I know how fast my heart, my attitude and my outlook can drift. Before I know it, I’m cynical and negative, and instead of pointing people to hope, I’m part of the problem.

That’s the danger I can actually do something about. So how does a follower of Jesus stay on the path?

The Sheep Pen

Jesus told a story about sheep. Not a parable, more of an illustration, the kind of everyday picture his listeners would recognize instantly. Like me telling you about walking out of a store.

Shepherds were part of Israel’s story. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and David were shepherds. The prophet Ezekiel described God himself as the shepherd of his people (Ezekiel 34). But by Jesus’ day, shepherds had become rough characters with a sketchy reputation. That didn’t bother Jesus at all. Everybody is his kind of person, even people who aren’t churchy.

Most villages had a shared sheep pen, a stone corral with one opening, and a gatekeeper the village hired to watch it. Different shepherds would bring their flocks in at night. Sheep need a lot of help. They get shaggy, snag their wool on thorns and wander off cliffs if they aren’t following the sheep in front of them. I can relate.

When the shepherd led his flock into the pen, he stood at the opening with his staff. He’d stop each sheep and check it over from nose to tail, and then lift his staff and let it through. Inside the pen, the sheep were safe.

And the shepherd knew his sheep. He’d named them. You name your pets, right? Almost nobody has a dog named Dog. We have a standard poodle named Daisy Duke and a thirteen-pound mutt named Baxter. The sheep knew the shepherd’s voice, and they wouldn’t follow anyone else.

“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:1–4)

Jesus was talking about the religious leaders. They’d climbed over the wall, and with all their legalism, culturalism and traditionalism, they’d been stealing the joy of knowing God from the people.

Then Jesus said it plainly:

“I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:9–11)

Sheep follow the shepherd because they know his voice. They have a relationship with him.

Why We Follow

So why does a person’s behavior change after they meet Jesus? Why would we start doing things we never did before and stop doing things we always did? Why would we start thinking and living differently, as a spouse, a parent, a son or daughter, a coworker?

Not because we put on a costume. Because we follow the Shepherd. And here’s why.

How We Follow

So how do you know whether you’re on the right path? Here are five ways to stay close to the Shepherd.

1. Choose your friends carefully. Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. My wife is my workout partner, and she’s great. But if I’m lying on the bench and the bar is coming down on my chest, she is not lifting that weight off of me. Not for any reason. I need somebody in my life who can do the heavy lifting when the weight of life is about to crush me. I’ve watched so many people blow up their lives, and the first thing they always do is push away the friends who will tell them the truth. That’s why small groups matter so much.

2. Develop your own convictions. Don’t just borrow somebody else’s. Start with them if you need to, but ask why. Why do I believe this? Why did my grandma believe it? Why did my pastor teach it? Some things in our faith are non-negotiable, and I’ve told you what those are. But so much more is worth investigating for yourself.

3. Use an ellipsis. You know what an ellipsis is: dot, dot, dot. On the essentials, put a period. On a lot of other things, I put an ellipsis. This is what I believe, and this is why… but I might be wrong. It’s not worth dividing over. And be careful not to judge everyone else by the calls you’ve made for yourself. That’s how we end up building the fence around the law all over again. (If you’re a parent, you do get to set the rules for your kids. Just make sure you can show them where Jesus says it.)

4. Your faith is personal, but it’s not private. The people who should know you follow Jesus are the people closest to you. They don’t need to think you’re perfect. They need to see that you’re trying. When they say, “You’re not who you say you are,” you can say, “You’re right. But I’m not who I was yesterday, and I hope I’m not today who I’ll be tomorrow.”

5. Live for an audience of one. You don’t have to worry about what religious people think. Have people in your life who can give you honest feedback, absolutely. But in the end, you answer to Jesus.

Who Are You Bringing?

Belong. Believe. Behave. That’s the church in a nutshell. That’s the dirty church.

So here’s my question. Who are you bringing?

I want to meet your friends who don’t know Jesus. Not because I want something from them. My number one goal isn’t a big church. It’s to help you nudge the people you love toward Jesus, so they can experience what you’ve experienced.

Just because I’m okay doesn’t mean it’s okay. Maybe God has you on a mission. Maybe there’s a friend on a mat, and a roof with your name on it.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5–6)

What the Church Is For

The church is for sinners. People saved by grace through faith. Jesus said, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). That’s who we are, and that’s who we’re here for.

We gather to grow together and become more like Jesus. And then we partner with him to share our faith with the world. That starts with the people closest to us: the person we wake up next to, the people we have breakfast with, the ones we see first when we get to work. From there it works its way out, the same way Jesus told his first followers it would, starting at home and reaching “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

So here’s what I hope you’ll take with you.

We’re all dirty. Every one of us. Born sinful, needing a Savior, saved only by God’s grace through faith. Not those people. Us. The minute we forget that, we start building fences and checking costumes at the door, and we become part of the problem.

You can belong from day one. Come as you are. If you’ve got a rough edge, let it drag. Everyone is welcome, no matter what.

Believing comes next. Not in a church, not in a set of rules, but in Jesus, the Son of the living God, who forgives sins and calls the people nobody talks to “son.”

And then, over time, the Shepherd changes how you live. Not with a costume, but from the inside out. Change comes through a relationship with Jesus, not a relationship to a church.

Belong. Believe. Behave.

The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Grab a corner of the mat. Somebody you love is waiting to be carried.

Grandpa was right. It’s not my house. It’s His. And he is always making room for one more.