Life with Jesus is a Free Ride

This past weekend, almost 100 people joined up at MERCYhouse for the purpose of driving drunk people around for 2 nights from 10pm to 3am. It was our annual "Free Rides" event. We've done this for the past 8 years for the purpose of keeping intoxicated people off the road during one of the biggest party weekends of the year. It is always a great weekend with hundreds of rides given to hundreds of people - most of whom are Umass students.

Every year I'm always struck by a contrast. The contrast of the free ride that is given to hundreds with the actual cost that goes into the ride. Before the event even happens there is planning, postering, passing out thousands of little business cards with the free rides number on them. Then the night of the event, people give up their weekend and a lot of sleep in order to drive the vans and cover the dispatch center. The day after when everyone is more hung over from free rides than are the passengers, there is still the cleaning of vans and returning them to the rental company. Last year that included some vomit removal. Just when you think that the expense of free rides is over, the credit card bill arrives with about $2000 of charges for van rentals, gas, and publicity.

Now wait a minute, I thought these rides were free? They are, to those that take the ride, but for those who provide the ride it is at a high cost. It's one of the things I like about this service event. It's something that people really appreciate and it comes at a relatively high cost to MERCYhouse. It is representative of the gospel that we love and try to live.

When we become a Christian, we are essentially taking a free ride from Jesus. His rescue of us from our drunken sinfully selfish stupor is free to us but comes at an infinite cost to Him. This is the essence of the good news that has come into the world. There are three responses that people make to this offer of a free ride and only one is appropriate.

Some respond by not recognizing the value of the free gift and their need for it. They simply take it for granted, even trample all over it. One of the challenges of the free rides weekend is that we always have more people calling for rides than we can handle. That means we have to stop taking calls. Whenever we answer the phones and try to explain to people that we are too swamped to pick anyone else up, many of the callers (granted, they are drunk) cuss out our dispatchers and try to heap blame on them saying that we are now responsible for them driving drunk and killing themselves on the road.

There are many who respond to Jesus this way. Jesus has died for the sins of the world and anyone who wants to take this free gift of forgiveness can have it, the result of which is new life now lasting throughout all eternity. Many scoff at this great offer and instead shake their angry fists at God, shouting at him because he doesn't run the universe (aka their lives) like they want Him to.

Some respond to the free gift by trying to pay for it. Every year we have people that insist on paying for the ride. We say over and over, "This is free rides. There is no cost." Still, a few people every year insist on paying by throwing money into the van as they run off because they feel guilty for taking something for nothing. This may be the result of proper breeding but when it comes to the free ride that Jesus is offering, trying to earn his gift is a big mistake.

We can't fully take the free gift that Jesus is offering unless we admit that we a bankrupt and unable to offer Him anything that makes us worthy of the gift. So many of us respond to the good news of Jesus' free ride by trying to clean ourselves up and somehow earn the "free ride". This makes absolutely no sense because not only can we not pay for the ride, we need Jesus to clean up our vomit and forgive us for a couple of million relapses. Our seemingly noble act of trying to pay a little something actually disqualifies us from receiving the free gift as much or more than response #1.

Some respond to the free gift with gratitude. Most of the riders on the vans simply can't say thank you enough. They are aware that people are giving their weekends. Some even mention the cost for vans and gas. This is the response to Jesus' free gift of grace and forgiveness that He is looking for. An ever growing awareness of his infinite cost that propels us not to get a little part-time job to pay him back but to live in gratitude for the free gift. A free rides service by Jesus that we then mimic as we represent Christ to the world around us. This is life with Jesus - a "free" ride.

The Dunkin' Donuts Church

There have been some rumors being spread around MERCYhouse these days. Rumors that we're hoping and praying for a whole lot of churches to be planted and a whole lot of people to be in them. Last week someone told me "I heard MERCYhouse is going to plant 200 churches in 4 years". I knew at this point that we had a problem.

A good problem in fact. Imagine a church that gossips about church planting. Well imagine no more, MERCYhouse is such a church. It all started this summer with some brainstorming and prayer in the month of June. I was praying and so were others about the longer term dreams at MERCYhouse. Here are the beginnings of that vision.

Our prayer is that 10% of our immediate area would be reached for Christ by 2020. That's a total of about 10,000 people. If you haven't noticed, we live in an area with fewer Christians than some regions in China. 10% would be a major move of God in our area. So... we've got this God sized prayer request, now what.

Well, like most prayer requests, we have to consider if there are ways that we could cooperate with God in his work toward making this happen. Our answer? A church planting movement. If God is to reach into the hearts and lives of 10,000 people in our area, that means they are going to have to be gathered into a church in order to find Christ and find community. I don't think MERCYhouse has the parking for such a crowd. I also don't think people in the northeast are really into the whole mega church thing anyway.

Case in point - Dunkin' Donuts. I used to drink a few cups of their coffee every month two years ago. Now I drink multiple cups every week. What happened? Other than a growing addiction to caffeine, they erected one of their temples to the caffeine god practically in my backyard. I can walk there in 3 minutes. It's right next to my grocery store and my bank and the post office. Places I'd be going anyway.

So far we've got five DD stores in Amherst and Hadley alone and there are probably plans for more. You may wonder why they don't just put up a Dunkin' Donuts Supercenter on route 9 and be done with it. It's because they know that putting smaller stores in the crossroads of people's well worn paths is a better strategy for selling really good cups of coffee and stale donuts. So what's the point?

It illustrates one of the reasons we think a church planting movement is how we could best cooperate with God as He reaches into our valley. We could start a TV ministry, advertise on billboards, build a Jesus supercenter on route 9 and I think we might could grow to a whopping 500 people. It would be exciting but what would it really accomplish in the grand scheme of things.

Instead, our prayer is that we'd see 50 churches planted by the year 2020. If those churches grew to an average of MERCYhouse's size right now, we'd see 10,000 people reached for Christ and gathered into community. It will start slow but grow exponentially. Some churches will grow bigger others will stay smaller. Some won't make it and some will seem like the rock stars of the movement. The goal is not the "success" of individuals or churches but instead our cooperation with God's work here in the valley.

You'll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks and months. Begin (or continue) praying with us that God would awaken our valley and that we would be attentive to His invitation to get involved.

Banter from the Basement

Here it goes. I'm joining the more than 40,000 people starting a blog today. I'm calling it "Banter from the Basement" because I office out of my basement and am often doing my work there among the piled up laundry, boxes of assorted junk, and everything else we don't want the rest of the world to see. I'm also calling it this because in the church I lead, we want everyone to come to the basement as quickly as possible.

When we talk about the journey that we hope people take, we start with the front door which is usually a friend. That friend then brings the person to the foyer - that's Sunday morning. Then as quickly as we can, we invite them into the living room - that's house churches. Before you know it, we're encouraging them toward the kitchen - which is service somewhere in our church or in the community. The final destination? The basement. This is leadership. It's the place where we most live out the teaching of Jesus, "whoever wants to save his life will loose it".

It's down in the basement where the chores get done. Where all the stuff that no one sees happens. It's the destiny of every person who desires to be a Christian leader. There is certainly a public face to leadership, but much of what makes a person a leader is what happens in the darkest corners of one's character as well as the behind the scenes work of worship and service.

The purpose of this blog is to encourage people down the ladder. To speak to the issues that people in leadership face. To add appendices to the Sunday morning sermon that may help people to step down a few more notches. To ultimately contribute to the movement of personal growth and church planting that we hope continues to expand here in the happy valley.