As I walked in, the tv in the lobby was showing the end of a visceral, gore-laden zombie pic. All the artists and staff are sitting around watching it.

It was cool. No big deal.

So I sit down with them. The movie ends, they all get up and start working on various things. I’m left alone to watch the credits role over a thrash metal soundtrack.

As I sit in the lobby, waiting for my artist to get prepped, one of the owners walks over, and puts a new movie in the DVD player…

Office Space.

I can’t make this stuff up.

Sometimes, you are limited by not only time, but also finances. Whether any of that is your fault or not due to the fact that you consume more sushi per week than the average great white shark is secondary at the moment.

Sometimes, you must do as Bruce Willis did to test his powers in the movie “Unbreakable”. You “go to where the people are”, and test to see if you have the uncanny ability to find the perfect gift within budget on a single unscheduled morning of freedom.

Sometimes, you walk slowly, arms outstretched and palms opened, feeling the air for that elusive thing you seek. The rest of your senses follow suit as you become a hyper-aware being of the various potential haul being hocked at each square inch that surrounds you.

And then, suddenly – a memory is recalled. A half of a conversation that was buried deep in your mind from 8 months prior pops into the front of your mind. You find yourself right where the moment took place, right where that perfect product is, right after the retail associate approaches you with it without you even asking.*

Sometimes, you drive away – gift in the seat next to you. It happened in the blink of an eye, but it was if time itself slowed down just so that you could fulfill your destiny.

In that moment, you’ve unleashed a superpower. In that moment, you are, “His Clutchness“.

Happy (Insert your appropriate seasonal celebration/s of choice here).

*Jedi mid trick, obvs.

He’s creating tables from reclaimed materials. Super stuff.

I’m always in for lending a hand, though most of the time I feel like I’m just trying to not get in the way or break anything.

Anyway, It’s a brilliant project, and I’m excited to see where he goes with it next.

More, and better posts are on their way. Just believe.

Or, for those of you adverse to reading (though I still highly suggest you read Skye Jenthani’s article)..

ARRGH. AAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

There, that’s a little better.

Ok, cards-on-the-table time. I don’t get churches like this. Not even a little bit.

I struggle to not be publicly critical with them (bride of Christ and all), but here’s the deal, I’m working with people who think that church and Christianity is all a big, fake show in the first place. They often consider  it to be a mechanism of conservative propaganda, and a blight itself on the evolution of humanity. I am serving people right now who think that Christians are hypocrits who are out to serve themselves, and do so with their elitist religious clubs that they call church.

So, what if I had brought a guest to a service to this particular church on this particular Sunday, and they saw the family in the story being escorted out after an opening prayer, because the child with cerebral palsy made a noise? When my guest asked what was happening, and I assume they would, I’d have to explain that the child with cerebal palsy was being a potential nusance, and was placed in a back room where he wouldn’t bother others…

…then, I would  immediately throw up in my mouth,  pour gasoline on myself and light a match, and pray that God would stirke me down right there on the spot for me ever stepping foot in that building, let alone inviting someone to that kind of church who didn’t go to church.

The representative of the church in question said in the report that they want to be a “distraction free worship”.

Neat.

You know what other venues promote distraction free experiences? Movie theaters and live theater performances. These are the places you go to sit and be shown a story, you are entertained, you watch those who are engaging, and you do not interfere. You know, the places where you PAY TO BE ENTERTAINED.

But not church.

Sure, Paul writes (1 Cor. 14) about a church in Corinth that had some of its priorities out of whack, but he never removed the sick and the hurting to the back rooms so that they wouldn’t make others there uncomfortable.

Or how about in Matthew 18, Mark 10, and Luke 18, when parents brought their children to them, and Jesus’ disciples tried to run them off because they were a …distraction… and what did, Jesus do? I believe he decided to LAYETH THE SMACKETH DOWN on the disciples for being such pointy headed morons. Jesus called for the children to come to him, for the love and innocence of a child is what the Kingdom is all about. Now, there is not mention of a child with cerebral palsy in the biblical narrative…*

In trying to clear distractions, you are eliminating the authenticity of your community, and creating a sterile, religious ritual that is not for outsiders, and certainly not for God. It has then morphed into an anesthetic for the insider christians, and the non-Christian friends I serve become more right about what the church is, and is not.

If a church, and its gathering, isn’t a place where all people can gather as equals to experience the love of God, and be in community, warts, baggage, and palsys all, then a church isn’t worth being there.

Sorry Elevation, but you’re doing it wrong.

* This sentence  has been bathed thoroughly in sarcasm for your enjoyment.

I had an opinion, and so naturally I did the patriotic thing and spoke up. Here’s what I wrote…

For me, it’s his character… here’s a quote form him last night:

“At the end of the day, all of the people that want to see me fail will wake up tomorrow and have the same life, the same problems.” – LBJ

He’s still an adolescent in a man’s body. He’s self-promoting, condescending, and arrogant.

On the other hand, here’s a quote by Adrian Wojnarowski (Yahoo Sports), on Dirk:

“Dirk doesn’t do endorsements and doesn’t do self-promotion. He doesn’t care. He never wanted to be a brand. He wanted to be an NBA champion.” – AW

Both are successful – one does it the right way. You know you else has done it the right way? Kevin Durant, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Clyde Drexler*… there are plenty of guys in the NBA universe who are immensely great talents, killer competitors, and genuine guys.

I’m sure none are perfect, and each has as much baggage as you or me, but there is a stark difference between the way they forged their legacy, and the way Lebron James is choosing to proclaim himself king and conqueror before he has won anything.

Lebron, therefore = villain.

And that, my friend, is science.

So, this one, in my book, is a win for the good guys.

*….Come to think of it, Kevin Love seems like a really good guy.

This.

Well, I guess we were right… whatever that means. The world spins on, and we on it.

No rapture, no earthquakes, no loud procession of angels with trumpets and swords and a rolling red carpet from heaven with the Messiah descending on it.

Yeah, we sure were right about nothing happening! Everyone gets a gold star by their name on that one! Yep…

But now there sits before us a question; what happens with the many people who did believe yesterday was “The End”? How are those people who spent their own wealth and energy, only to be misled in the end by bad teaching, waking up this morning? What about those  who are genuinely hurting this morning, asking some serious questions about their own faith and family? What about the children who were in these families, and who are now caught in a crossfire of what they were taught, and what has happened? Could there be people who believed so much in this false claim that they gave everything they did have away?

The reality is, yes, there are.

So what do we do now?

Are they the butt of our jokes now? Do we have enough twitter fodder and Facebook one-liners  from their mistake to satiate our thirst for sarcasm and irony?

Is this where they get their just desserts, they learn their lesson? Then, once they’ve learned, they can rejoin good, orthodox, Christian society? Do we throw a, “reap what you sow” Bible verse at them, as we head to church this morning?

Or, is now the time to show them grace? Is now the time to find the hurting, and listen to their stories, to bring them into our homes for meals and rest, and to help with the things that they might have lost in the name of something that they got wrong?

Now is the time that we should quit shooting our wounded. Now is the time to show compassion over legalism and self-righteousness. Now is the time that love really needs to win.

The reality is, the media, the internets, and the majority of the world are dumping all over those who believed yesterday was the rapture (when it’s a joke on SNL on the day of, you know it’s not small potatoes). We have a moment in which we can choose to be different.

Confession: I’ve been wrong before – dead wrong. Maybe I didn’t claim it was the end of the earth, but I’ve made some decisions in my life that were out-and-out stupid, and dangerous, and the people closest to me told me they were such.

But I still made them.

And, in the aftermath, I’ve experienced two responses that I’ve just mentioned; people preached my brokenness to my face (and my back), and people came up closer beside me and walked with me as I journeyed back from my own valley of failure.

Which response echoed and transformed my life more? Which one would you rather happen to you when you  completely blow it?

Yesterday might not have been the rapture, but our decisions and actions today will decide if we will show heaven on earth, or if we just let the earth spin on, with we on it.

It seems as though some of you have concluded that Saturday is the end of the age, and the dawning of eternity (as you have defined it). With this belief, you have shared with us that you believe you will be taken up from our planet, and taken to a celestial heaven, never returning to this little rock that we call earth, ever again.

So, with that reality nearly upon us, I have only one request.

Give us your money.

Specifically, give churches or other worthy non-profit organizations your money. The ones that aren’t orthodox enough to make it this first cut. You know, like mine.

Here’s my thought on it; if you are planning on being raptured on Saturday, you really need to go ahead and forward our church plant your finances.

Seriously.

I mean, you won’t need it anymore, you’re going to heaven. And us down here? We will still have the hungry, the hurting, the broken, and the oppressed.  We’ll use the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you leave behind to incite breakouts of justice and compassion all over our cities and towns, and we can take care of people who are genuinely in need in our community.

Can you imagine the joy you will give to God when you can say, “Lord, right before you zapped up off of the earth, I gave all of my money to some other Christians, and they used it to take care of the VERY SAME people that we stood next to with our placards telling them that the world was ending!”. I’ll tell you right now, God will definitely have a STRONG response to that!

Of course…there is the other option.

Leave it all in your accounts, which will make it unusable. Teach us all a lesson that you were right, and we were wrong. In the end, that’s really what God cares about; being right above all else. The one in the end with the most right answers wins – Jesus said that in the book of Luke I think.

Don’t waste your money of buying groceries for the single parent households, bettering education in our inner city schools, help end human trafficking,  or lifting ideas and policies of equality for all human beings. No, that would be a waste of your resources…

WAIT! I’ve got an even better idea.

Instead of giving it to us, or letting it rot away in a bank account,  print HUGE posters and put up GIANT billboards and make COLORFUL tracts telling us all that we were wrong, and have them put up on Sunday, and the days following your rapture, so that we can see you were right!

One word of advice, though. If you choose the latter, please make sure that you pay for any of those things upfront, before Saturday. We wouldn’t want people getting the impression that Christians try to skip out on their responsibilities, or were cheap, or selfish, or had their head in the wrong game.

Thanks for your time. Enjoy storming the castle.

So, here’s a picture of me jumping over fire to settle the issue once and for all.

So, which wins out in your mind? Consistency or Quality (if you had to choose)?