Thoughts on Work and Life Outside the Christian Ghetto.

The past two weeks have definitely been different. I have been doing a remodeling job in Mid-town Atlanta. The place is a large production house that at one time edited some of your favorite movies (like Species) ok I actually never saw it, but it's always lurking on the video shelf when you are looking for movies like Spanglish, Space Balls, and Sparticus. The place has been closed down for a few years. Everything was just shut up as if the last day of work "2002 something" they expected to be back on Monday. Who knew how much a place could get run down by just sitting empty for a few years. Oak ceiling buckled from humidity in the non air-conditioned building. Mold growing in bathrooms, and every light bulb in the building (100's of light bulbs) all needing replaced. It's been weird not earning my livelihood full-time around a church setting. Weird, but not bad. The guys I am working with are salt of the earth great guys who know how to sling both dry wall mud and four letter words. The stories they tell are often a little crude, but they are there stories and it's been great getting to know them.


For the ten years before we came to GA I had the privilege of working full-time at a church. I must admit I enjoyed it immensely and look forward to it again, however, at times it was a bit too sanitized. It often felt like I was living in a Christian Ghetto where everyone spoke the same language and told the same stories. Everything so clean neat and orderly. I had to be very purposeful to venture outside the "shining" walls of our sweet and fair city. Whenever people fail to make the effort to walk beyond the walls of their Christian Ghetto it doesn't take too long before they forget about people who are lost just beyond self imposed borders. But Ross, we are to "come out from among them and be separate" yes, but we are to be salt and light effecting change and bringing direction to our world. We can't do that inside our Christian Ghettos. We have our language, our arts, our entertainment (wait innertainment), our stories.....so busy with our stories that we fail to listen to the stories of those outside our "fair cities." There has to be a place where our world can intersect and we can earn the right to be heard. That place is the border land of stories where person-hood is expressed and relationships are formed. Relationships that serve to effortlessly tug on another person to follow you as you are following Christ.

We have to take a few steps away from our Christian Ghetto and intersect life with those who are unfamiliar with the language, policies, protocol, and frankly "bull" that is often a part of fitting in to our environment. Listen to their lives as told through their stories. Hear their joys, and sorrows, victories and defeats....and tell your stories, not your two cent answers. They will venture out of their world to the border also and there they should find a person who isn't afraid to engage them and simply tell their stories. Sometimes these stories will be trivial; old girlfriends, fights, jobs, and adventures, but eventually and usually sooner than you would expect a spiritual element moves into your conversation. Nothing forced, it's just a part of your life and there in this border land someone on "the other side" wants a glimpse of your spirituality. Don't lead them up a hill of self righteousness because all they will see is a view of the Ghetto. Show them Jesus. The Jesus that loved you enough....tell the story. The Jesus that can still heal a broken heart.....tell the story. The Jesus that understands.....tell the story.

I would say 70% of my day with the guys I am working with is just telling stories. After a couple of weeks of this, yesterday they began wanting to know about spiritual things. Why? Because they want to know more about me, and my walk with Jesus is a huge part of me so they had to ask. Just like I had to ask about demolition car driving and somehow that conversation led into a diatribe on elaborate bongs (pipes for smoking pot: definition for those firmly entrenched in the CG) I now know more about the art of hittin' a bowl than a pastor will ever need to know, but yesterday they asked me about spiritual things! I guess that's all I got to say about that. Venture out, listen up, intersect, share life, reveal Christ, expand the kingdom.