Irrelevant religion

Some days I am amazed that anyone's relationship with Jesus Christ can survive church.

Loving other people is hard. Putting other people first is hard. Setting aside your own needs is hard. We go to church and our leaders remind us that our first ministry is family, which happens to be our own personal conviction as well.

We choose hard over busy. We scale back and prune and weed and say no until all that remains is a child's handful of Very Important Things. Youth group and dance, music and library and AV and praise team and leadership. Homeschooling, especially now that Squirt is a high-schooler. Individual time with Squirt and Squish and Squonk. Couple time with Geddy and me. Doctors, dentists, allergists, groceries and Target. Still a formidable schedule, only with the right priorities.

But wait.

We need to get you plugged in, our spiritual higher-ups protest. You're not plugged into a small group. Your kids are not plugged into ministry. It's our turn to protest; small group would be the fifth night of seven that our family would be apart each week, and if family is our first ministry, that cannot be. Our children minister in small ways every day as they learn to be the same Christ-followers away from church as they are at church.

Our family befriended a child in state care and has visited her regularly for nearly a year, meeting some of her emotional and physical needs and praying for the complete restoration of her family. Is that not ministry?

For years, we have participated in the Toys for Tots program and for the past couple, our children have helped fill orders and package toys for delivery. It has changed the way they see Christmas. We have played Bingo with elderly and disabled residents at the housing authority. We have donated toys, clothes, books, blankets and food; baked for the hospice holiday sale; tutored, mentored and encouraged. Ministry? Yes!

In the past two months, we have spent hours clipping coupons and carefully shopping sales so we will have enough to quietly share with people who need, but don't ask. We have set aside a certain amount of money each month and used it for immediate needs like helping fund friends' mission trip to Africa and a grocery card for grandparents who recently won custody of their son's young children. Our Haitian princess, whom we've supported through Compassion International for more than three years now, would argue that we are involved in ministry, I think. The five Central American children who are being adopted by families here will never know that our asthmatic 9-year-old kicked 1,000 soccer goals during a dangerous flare-up to raise a measly $150 toward their cause, but if they did? Definitely ministry.

Maybe that's our problem. Maybe we should post our list of services on a sandwich board and walk it around at church, to prove we're worthy members. Or abandon some of our "unimportant" service projects -- insist our little friends find their own ride to youth group instead of driving them, watch our neighbor's beloved old dog die on the highway instead of walking him home, giggle at the old lady who can't read the small-print labels at the market instead of offering to help -- and focus our efforts on warehousing other Christians so we can, on solemn Sundays, be very glad we're not those needy people.

Or, we could encourage those who don't look very closely to do so. Instead of assuming ministry is not happening if we don't see it, we could assume that it is because that's what God asks of us, all day, every day. That the people who say they are Christ-followers are acting like it, even off-campus, even on their own, even in an unsanctioned area.

Serving other people, putting their needs first, is hard. So is feeling out of place in church, somehow out of favor with the leaders we depend on to teach us spiritual truths. But even if it means becoming more of a Christ-follower and less of a church member....we choose hard.