(Note: This blog entry is based on
the text for “Holiness & Hardware”, originally shared on April 26, 2021. It
was the 110th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Here are three questions for today: One, what do people want as they emerge from
the global pandemic into the New Normal? Two, which wants are the Church
uniquely positioned to satisfy? And three, what could local churches learn from
a local hardware store about how to satisfy those needs?
One of my favorite local businesses in the
area where we live is the San Dimas Ace Hardware store in San Dimas. It’s a
local treasure to which former residents often return after they’ve moved away.
I once met a man who moved here to be near this hardware store. Its slogan,
from before it added the “Ace” brand to its name when it was just San Dimas
Hardware is, “A real hardware store”.
It’s got the old wooden floors, the narrow
aisles, the bags of horehound candy and wooden barrels. You can buy the
Farmer’s Almanac there. It’s at the cash register near the picture book on the
history of San Dimas. It’s also got just about anything in hardware that you
need or can imagine. I always stop there first before I go to Lowes or Home
Depot and nine times out of ten, I don’t have to go anywhere else. You can
still find what looks like an obscure low-selling item until you find that it’s
exactly what you need.
I like San Dimas Hardware because I can find
just about anything I need quickly there. I like to support a small local
business with plentiful, competent, and helpful staff who are content to leave
you alone if you don’t want any help.
Sometimes I just walk around and when one of
the sales associates asks, “Can I help you find something?”, I answer, “Thanks.
I’m just looking for something I don’t know that I need yet.”
What would a local church look like if it
acted like a local hardware store?
First, what does a hardware store do? It
doesn’t sell hardware, it sells solutions. People need to fix a pipe, or
replace a light fixture, or build a cabinet. There are lots of ways those things
can be done, but when you walk into a hardware store you expect to get what you
need or to find someone who can show you a better way because that’s what it
says it is. A hardware store. What if you saw a sign on a building that said
“Hardware” and you walked in and it was selling frozen yogurt? I’m guessing you
would not be satisfied.
The same is true when people see a church
building.
When people are experiencing a spiritual
crisis, when they want someone to show them a reason to hope or a way out of
hell. When people are experiencing a God-shaped hole inside and don’t know what
it is, when they are looking for a better way to live, why is it that fewer and
fewer people think of going to a church?
Part of the reason is beyond our control,
for the most part. Popular media portrays Christians as stiff, ignorant,
hypocritical, neurotic, buffoons. Many universities dismissed religion long
ago. Increasing numbers of people have had little contact with churches, and so
it would never occur to them to go there.
But, many of our wounds have been
self-inflicted: Our alliances with the political and social right and left in
order to curry favor or gain power. Our devolvement into social clubs using
religious language, or places where powerless people can become bullies, or
families protect their personal legacies. Our desperate need to be accepted by
our culture, to regain our place, real or imagined, at the center of the public
square has led to compromise. Our desire for the respect of the world has led
to a bland professionalism devoid of any need for the presence of God.
If someone came to your church seeking
peace, or forgiveness, or seeking a transcendent experience of God, and instead
received a political lecture, or a social scolding, how long do you think that
they would stay?
Lots of organizations do political advocacy,
social service, and work for justice. We do all those things too. But why? The
“why” is the answer that the emerging world seeks. What we have, no one else is
providing. It flows from a living relationship with God, grounded in the
ultimate reality, the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Streams of living
water. It is the key to the living relationship with the one true living God
for which human beings were created. It gives new life: transformed, abundant
and eternal life in Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world. Let’s lead
with that!
Second, what does a local hardware store do
that the big chains, like Lowes and Home Depot, don’t do?
Number one, personal service. When I go to
San Dimas Ace Hardware there are always people nearby to help me if I want
help. I know that they will be able to answer my questions and will have had
the experience to back them up, or they will find another sales associate who
can. I know that they will have what I need or can order it if they don’t and
have it there in a few days, or have it shipped to my house. I can call them
with questions and they’ll check an item for me.
How are most churches equipped to welcome
people with needs, who are spiritually broken, needing genuine Christian
community, or confused and questioning? How are we set up to receive spiritual
infants? What process do we have that sees first-generation Christians being
developed? Do we have a process, or are we so inwardly focused that we can’t
see the needs right in front of us, the needs we are uniquely positioned to
fulfill? The ones that no one else in the community can meet but us?
Every church thinks it’s friendly, and every
church thinks it’s a close knit, loving family. And it is, to the people who
attend there regularly, because the members those churches meet their friends
there, sometimes their best friends in the world, and they talk with them.
Outsiders, however, have a very different experience.
What if they encountered people who were
genuinely concerned about their soul? The state of their spirit? The repair of
their lives? Do we go to any lengths to identify the solutions?
Local churches don’t compete with the
megachurches, or with any other churches for that matter. They are all a part
of the Body of Christ, too. People come to faith there. And it takes all kinds
of churches to reach all kinds of people. But when people consider a new or a
first church, all churches, and also non-churches, are among several competing
choices in their minds.
What can local churches offer that
megachurches can’t? Personal contact, a sense that their individual presence
will really make a difference in the total ministry of the congregation, and a
personal connection with the pastor.
Programs don’t reach people. People do.
Greeters don’t reach people, a sincere welcome from someone with no vested
interest does.
When our son was deciding on where to go to
college, we toured Chapman University in Orange. My wife and co-producer of these
videos, Rev. Sally Welch, wanted to visit a colleague who was the campus
chaplain at Chapman, one of her denomination’s, The Christian Church (Disciples
of Christ)/UCC, schools while we were there. We left her office and were
walking through a student lounge when three young people approached us. They
said to our son, “Are you thinking of going here? We saw you in the chaplain’s
office. We just wanted you to know that we’re students and we love it here.
And, if you join the Disciples on Campus group, you’ll have friends who are
working in every department and can help you find your way around.”
Nobody paid them to say that. They didn’t do
it because it was their job. They just did it because they loved their school
and wanted others to experience it.
Likewise, study after study has shown that
80-85% of people who come to Christ and are active members of the Body of
Christ at local churches do so because of the influence of a credible witness.
That credible witness is usually a friend or a relative, someone with nothing
to gain, someone who just wants you to find something good in Jesus Christ. Not
in your church, but in Jesus Christ. The church comes later.
It’s been said that evangelism is just one
beggar telling another where to find food.
Third, a local hardware store is a place
where you see people you know and who know you, often by name, and a community
both formed and expressed.
Hardware stores are among those businesses
that did well during the pandemic. They were considered essential services for
people who had business or home disasters to repair. People were stuck at home
and had time to do home improvements.
Churches were not considered essential by
the government in this way, but people did have a lot of time on their hands to
reconsider what is important in their lives, to seek the deeper answers, and a
coherent worldview. To look inward, perhaps for the first time or for the first
time in a long time and see what was broken. They were isolated and saw other
people only virtually. No handshakes. No hugs. No encouraging or sympathetic
pats on the back.
Many of them may now be considering what the
church has to offer. And there are still people outside the Church who have a
living memory of an active congregation or even an active faith. They will be
looking for a sense of community and shared purpose, like a hardware store
offers, but toward a greater vision. They will be looking for an eternal
promise, not big ego needs, turf wars and spiritual indifference. Even those
without a Christian memory may have a need for and an interest in a genuine
community, a transcendent faith, and transformed lives.
We may feel somewhat depleted as we come out
of the pandemic and into the New Normal, but God isn’t. It’s time to open our
hearts and let God restock the shelves.
This is our time to bear witness to what is
real, to what heals and to what endures.
In Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, the
Romans, in the 10th chapter, starting at the 14th verse,
he writes:
*Romans
10:14-17
We can learn some things from a local
hardware store like San Dimas Ace Hardware. We can be who we are and point to
the power of God to transform. We can be people who are personal,
knowledgeable, and credible in pointing the way to Jesus Christ to fix what is
broken. And we can be a place of community that is called, gathered,
enlightened and made holy by the Holy Spirit within us, the personal presence
of God for good in the world, the streams of living water, and be open for
business.
