In many parts of the country today is Election Day. We are having municipal elections here in Atlanta, and people will come to our church to vote. Today, dozens of people who have never worshiped here will come into our building.<\/p>\n
While our sanctuary is pristine, the part of the building in which they will vote was built in the 1950s and has been hardly touched since. I worry that they won\u2019t know that we are not the 1950s church that they will see and smell when they enter that part of the building. I was tempted to put up a sign, but what would it say? \u201cDon\u2019t believe your eyes or nose\u201d?!?<\/p>\n
On a flight home from Minneapolis on Saturday night the man sitting next to me introduced himself and promptly asked what kind of work I do. For me, there were several problems with that. I like to be anonymous on planes and read quietly. As an introvert who just spent the day with a large number of strangers, the last thing I wanted is to have a two-hour relationship with another one.<\/p>\n
However, my mother wouldn\u2019t like it if I was impolite, so I knew I had to smile and tell him my name. Still, I thought, \u201cHow do I answer his question?\u201d If I say, \u201cOh, I\u2019m a preacher,\u201d then he is going to talk religion and that is probably not going to end well. If I say \u201cI\u2019m a consultant,\u201d which also is true, I\u2019m probably just postponing the same conversation because I\u2019m a church<\/em> consultant. Sometimes I say, \u201cI\u2019m an author,\u201d but, even though I\u2019ve written 10 books, that doesn\u2019t feel completely honest. He likely would ask what I\u2019ve written, which takes me right back to a conversation about religion.<\/p>\n Finally, I just said, \u201cI\u2019m a pastor.\u201d To my surprise, that shut him up completely. He looked like he smelled something rotten and pulled a magazine from the seatback. I was glad to have the peace and quiet, but still I had this overwhelming urge to say to him, \u201cBut wait, I\u2019m not THAT kind of preacher!\u201d<\/p>\n Although I don\u2019t know what he thought about me and my vocation, I can imagine, because the truth is I\u2019ve encountered them, too. I want to wear a sign that says, \u201cI\u2019m not THAT kind of Christian.\u201d I\u2019m not sure it would help; in fact, I suspect the only thing that will rehabilitate the reputation of Christians in our culture is for those of us who really are not \u201cTHAT kind of Christian\u201d to start showing more clearly what kind we are.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In many parts of the country today is Election Day. We are having municipal elections here in Atlanta, and people will come to our church to vote. Today, dozens of people who have never worshiped here will come into our building. While our sanctuary is pristine, the part of the building in which they will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1064,"featured_media":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n