what if we were firemen?

Last week in the post "flying pigs" I talked about Paul challenging the religious types to look outside their box with the words "what if" and I have to say it's really got me thinking. When I think of "the church down on the corner" the first thing I imagine is an old stoic stone building that looks more like a museum. I was in Hamburg, Germany in the late 80's and was walking along with a friend and we passed this old church. On the cornerstone it said 992, I asked my German friend, "is that the address?" He said, "No, that's the year it was built." Whoah! That Church sat there for almost 1000 years! I just couldn't believe it.

In the 90's Wendy and I had become a little anti- "organized religion" and refused to go to church because all we saw were these great big buildings with awesome new parking lots that seemed to be very self absorbed, cold and inward focused. While down the street, a little closer to the "bad side of town" people were hungry, homeless and suffering. Now, I'm not saying this was the actual case, it was just how we saw things at the time. Little did I know it, but, we would soon be given the vision that would change our lives.

In 1999 we went to El Paso, Tx to visit my sister Tami and her family. They were going to a Vineyard church and had recently left that church to start working at this "coffee house" with one of the pastors from that same Vineyard church. It was all a little confusing to me at the time, all I knew is it sounded kinda churchy. Tami had a hard time explaining to me what it was they were doing, I just couldn't grasp it. So, after a few disclaimers from Tami, we went to visit around 7pm that night. They drove us to an average grocery store strip mall and I became a little curious as we drove to the back of the building and parked. We got out and started walking down the back alley towards a group of street kids standing around smoking, I was then a little concerned as Wendy grabbed my hand and held one of the kids a little tighter. Thumping from some muffled music was coming through the walls of the grocery store as we came up to a back door in the alley.

A few glaring gang members stammered out of the path of the door as my brother-in-law, Tommy, started reaching for the handle. It was at that point, I started feeling a little strange. I couldn't speak clearly, I couldn't hear clearly, I just felt the thumping pulse of music and saw in sepia tones as if it were an old movie. What I saw will stay with me for the rest of my life. We walked in and there was a stage and there was a band playing and there were small groups of people milling around and mingling. There were couches, a pool table, a foosball table, a coffee bar all in a night club type atmosphere and there were people, strange people, normal people, worshiping people, sitting people and crying people. There were gang members being prayed for by a couple homeless guys. There were hugs and high fives and a guy talking on the stage, I don't know what he was saying, but, the words were like the searing of a hot branding iron put into a bucket of water.

Then the vision came, I saw a pit of fire and there were people in it and they were desperately trying to get out, but, were stuck and these other people were reaching down into the flames and pulling one person out at a time. I sat back and thought "now this is church".

They were planting a church. A church that was in the heart of gang land. A church that was a lot more like a fire dept. then a church.

If the church were made up of firemen, it might look a lot like this. We'd be rushing off to the fire saving those stuck in the flames.