By Ronnie McBrayer

Imagine that tomorrow morning I deposit into your bank account $86,400. This money is all yours to do with as you please. Now, not only am I going to deposit this amount into your account tomorrow, I’m going to do the same thing every day next week. But I’m not finished. I’m going to make this daily deposit into your account every day for the next year. At the conclusion of twelve months you will have received more than $31.5 million.

Now, what if I told you that you have in your possession, today, something even more valuable than $31 million? You see, every day that you awake to draw air into your lungs, you receive that deposit of sorts, though it’s not measured in dollars. It’s measured in seconds.

Every day contains 86,400 seconds; every week more than 600,000; and every year more than 31 million. They are yours to spend as you please. The only catch is this: When each day is over, and after each week passes, and when the calendar turns, your “funds” expire. They have to be spent with urgency, for tomorrow your account will reset.

We seemed to have just celebrated New Year’s Day 2012. Now that year is gone. And before we can catch our breath from the race that was, we lurch forward into another January. The real danger for us all is to come around twelve months from now and be exactly where we were twelve months ago, funds unspent.

Still stuck in a job we loathe, still planning to take that big chance, still at odds with the long-estranged loved one, still tripping over the same addiction, trapped in that same poisonous relationship, and struck in the same soul-sucking routine. Time is far too short to live like this, and deep in our hearts, we know it.

Erma Bombeck provides a summary on this point: “When I am asked to give an accounting of my life to a higher court, it will be like this: ‘So, empty your pockets. What have you got left of your life? Any dreams unfulfilled? Any unused talent that we gave you that you still have left? Any unsaid compliments or bits of love that you haven’t spread around?’ And, I will answer, ‘I have nothing left to return. I spent everything you gave me. I’m as naked as the day I was born.’” Amen.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

Churches are peculiar places. I’ve had the opportunity to serve a few of them. And here is one of the many things that make churches peculiar: the most heated arguments in the church were not over our location or theology or future plans. No, the worst controversies I ever endured were over our style of worship.

Should we use hymnals or modern worship music? Should drums be allowed in the sanctuary? Is it blasphemy to move the pulpit to accommodate the children’s choir? What would happen if someone clapped or raised their hands during the solo? These are the questions that send the ulcerated pastor scurrying to his or her gastrologist.

Which style of worship is “right?” I don’t presume to know. Our form of worship will always be dictated by our traditions, culture, and context. A look at how Christians from other countries and times worship proves this point. “Which worship style is right” is, after all, the wrong question. The better questions are, “Does our worship push us out of our church sanctuaries (or wherever it is we meet) to be Christ to the world? What happens when the worship service is over?”

If our worship moves us past ourselves to the risen and redeeming Christ sent to love the world, then the worship is “right.” If our worship sends us into the community as the Father sent his own Son, then it is empowered with spirit and truth. But if our worship focuses us, on ourselves, then it is selfishness at best and sacrilege at worst. It isn’t worship at all.

The final words of the old Latin mass were, Ite missa est—loosely, “Get out!” The priests who daily invoked those words over their congregations understood worship’s purpose. When the last song is sung, the last prayer offered, and the last homily delivered, the goal of all worship is to redemptively and missionally leave the sanctuary in service to others.

So, take your pick: Sermons or liturgy; southern gospel or rock and roll; drums or pipe organs; corporate prayer or contemplation; kneeling benches or mosh pits. But if these things do not translate into loving action in the community, if these things do not force us out of the building and out to others, we aren’t being worshipful at all. Do our worship styles matter? Sure they do. But what happens afterwards matters all the more.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

There is an old story told about St. Augustine and a little boy on a beach. Augustine was writing a book on the Trinity and was walking along the seashore, deep in thought. Augustine noticed the little boy pouring seawater into a hole that had been dug in the sand. The little boy would go down to the surf, scoop up water, and quickly carry it back to the hole and dump it in. Augustine finally asked the little boy what he was doing. The boy answered, “I am pouring the sea into this hole.”

Augustine said to the boy, “You are wasting your time. You will never get all that water into that one little hole. It can’t be done.” The boy responded, “Well, you are wasting your time writing about God. You will never get all of him into that one little book.”

That little boy was right. God is bigger than our books, doctrines, belief statements, and theories about him—far bigger. I now resist even using the words “theory” or “explanation” when speaking of God, because these imply that we can figure it all out, when we can’t.

C. S. Lewis explained it like this: Suppose a man looks out at the Atlantic Ocean. Then he goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic Ocean. He has turned from something real to something less real. He has turned from actual waves and salty air to “a bit of colored paper.” The map is important, because it is based on what many people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. And, if you want to go anywhere, the map is necessary, but it’s not the real thing. Lewis concludes that our beliefs are just like that map—important, yes, but a weak representation of the genuine.

What we believe about God is not God. These are bits of colored paper. Yet, our tendency is to fall in love with the map, when God wants us to love him. We are skilled at knowing the ins-and-outs of our religious charts, but God wants us to know him. After all, we cannot have a relationship with a map. We cannot commune with a theological concept. We cannot experience creed or dogma. But we can relate to, commune with, and experience God, a God that is an ever unfolding mystery of wonder and grace, larger than the universe.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

According to the Pew Research Center, a full one-fifth of Americans are now unattached to religion, and the Protestant majority is no longer that; Protestant Christians now make up less than half the population. Yet, we don’t need an exhaustive study to confirm a dwindling church. A growing population is indeed unengaged with organized religion. They aren’t necessarily atheistic or antagonistic toward faith. They are simply uninvolved.

Why? Some of it is demographic, related to the age of our transitioning generations. Some of it is the natural evolvement of Western society, and the result of an increasingly diverse nation. But frankly, and this cannot be ignored, the church has earned this decline all by its institutional self. Combine this study with the respected statistics of the Barna Research Group (which is an evangelical think tank), and the situation becomes clearer still. According to Barna, those unaffiliated with religion use several primary words to describe Christianity, words like: “Judgmental, hypocritical, and insensitive.” This has to change.

“Change,” you ask? “Are you saying we should change our beliefs just to salvage our fleeting market share?” No. Market share has nothing to do with it, but how we treat others has everything to do with it. How can we who follow the loving, open-hearted, redemptive Christ be anything but loving, open-hearted, and redemptive people?

The longer I do this kind of work, and the longer I see these kinds of recent statistics, the more strongly I feel that the last thing most communities need is just another religious institution: An institution that pounds the pulpit and its parishioners with unyielding dogma; that points fingers, condemns, and excludes others from the love of God.

No, communities don’t need more hardened, inflexible places like these; but every community needs simple, uncomplicated, receptive places. Every community needs launch pads of empowerment and liberation. Every community needs a communion of friendship, freedom, and faith that will build bridges of grace to the world, not boundaries of separation and marginalization. Simply, every community needs a place of radical hospitality and attraction that welcomes all to know a loving God.

Yes, I know, some churches are far better at being judgmental religious institutions than being living bodies of service and compassion, but my hope endures. My hope endures because where hardened institutionalism ends, love can begin, and the love of God is the most attractive force in the universe.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

Some time ago my wife was having a very bad day. Her mood and outlook on life is constantly cheerful. But on this day, it was chilly and dark. Things at work were difficult. There were family issues—in hers and mine. There was more month than money. A co-worker was being inflexible and obnoxious. The house was a wreck. Our children were defying her, and I was ignoring her. She was reduced to tears. I went in to where she was crying, I put my arms around her, and I said, “But honey, I love you.”

In my mind I was dismounting from my white steed, my shining armor polished to a dazzling sheen, there to save the day with my strong arms, calming presence, and soothing words. But I was not received as the saving Messiah. She recoiled, pushed me away and said, “I know. But that doesn’t fix anything.” And she was right.

My love for her didn’t shut up bawling children. It didn’t magically put more money in our checking account. It didn’t turn the dunce she worked with into Mother Teresa. It didn’t even take the fish sticks off the table. But what we ultimately agreed upon, after I got over the shock of being so rebuffed, is that while love changes nothing about our circumstances, love changes us. It gives us the strength to face what is out there, even if what is out there is sideways. Love sustains us, encourages us; it gives us what we really need: The ability to keep going, even with tears on our cheeks.

That’s what God’s love does. It keeps going and keeps us going. It endures forever, and for that, we are forever grateful. We are not alone. We are not abandoned. We are not forgotten. God is with us. We are loved. If given this choice, which would you take: To have all your problems solved, all your struggles worked out, and all your troubles flushed away; or, would you choose to be deeply, unconditionally, and madly loved?

I think I know your answer. And that answer is the reason for our gratitude, even in a world turned upside down. Love produces thanksgiving – not because we will have everything we want – but because we have the one thing we were made for, the one thing we need. His love endures forever; let us give thanks.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

Scientists call it “Ergomania.” It is a word composed of two Latin roots. “Ergo,” meaning work, and “mania,” meaning passion. Ergomania, thusly, is a “passion for work.” In contemporary society we use a different term: The “workaholic.” The condition is not limited to corporate offices or the manufacturing plant. It thrives in houses of worship.

It’s been my experience that we religious people work very hard, often killing ourselves for God, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Why? I believe it is because we do not believe that God really loves us. Most of us are working like slaves to earn an ambivalent God’s love, unaware, it seems, that his love is already ours in abundance. That God would take us just as we are, that he loves us just as we are, is too much for us to accept.

And why should we believe it? When we were young, it was all about perfect attendance pins, achievements, and all those little check marks on our weekly reporting at Sunday School. We learned quickly that we could measure a person’s spirituality, thus their worth as an individual, by how many gold stars they had beside their name.

When we got older, the exercise continued, now measured by different gold stars. Volunteer, serve, give, teach Bible study class, lead the choir, chaperone the youth group, chair the Stewardship Committee; and the congregation will sing your praises. But the second you relent, the moment you acknowledge your exhaustion, then that familiar conditional approval will rear its ugly head.

Yet, with words that make most type-A congregational leaders cringe, Jesus said, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. Walk with me…Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”

That is what we religious laborers need, because the people that Jesus most wants to set free are those of us who are eyeballs deep in religious work, we who are religious ergomaniacs. His invitation is for us to get off of the spiritual hamster wheel and to crawl out from beneath the choking yoke of religious workoholicism, and dance freely to the easy tempo of grace.

Grace will teach us to serve God, not to make him like us, but because he already adores us. It will teach us to give up our overachieving and slaving ways, and find peaceful rest for our souls.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

Bishop Desmond Tutu celebrated his 81st birthday this past week. The accomplishments of his eight decades are well-known and many. Tony Campolo was on stage with Bishop Tutu many years ago, and he asked him how it happened that he became an Anglican priest, instead of a Baptist or a Methodist. So Tutu told Campolo this story:

“My family moved to Johannesburg when I was twelve years old. In Johannesburg, in the days of apartheid, when a black person met a white person on the sidewalk, the black person was expected to step off the pavement into the gutter to allow the white person to pass.

“One day, my mother and I were walking down the street when a tall white man, dressed in a black suit, came toward us. Before my mother and I could step off the sidewalk, as was expected of us, this man stepped off the sidewalk, and he tipped his hat in a gesture of respect to my mother!

“I was more than surprised at what had happened and I asked my mother, ‘Why did that white man do that?’ My mother explained, ‘He’s an Anglican priest. He is a man of God; that is why he did it.’”

That man’s name was Trevor Huddleston, a priest who worked in the worst slums of the city with the forgotten, marginalized, and suffering. When Tutu was later hospitalized with tuberculosis, it was Huddleston who came to visit the young boy; and it was Huddleston who would offer his own books and time to help Desmond catch up with his studies when he returned to school.

Years later, when Tutu became an adult, he transitioned his studies from education to theology. He turned to Trevor Huddleston’s Anglican Church, for he had experienced firsthand the love and service of this extraordinary man.

Trevor Huddleston’s name is almost forgotten in South Africa’s freedom story, but not forgotten by Desmond Tutu. When Tutu is asked why he doesn’t hate whites he answers, “I never learned to hate…because I was fortunate in the whites I met when I was young.”

Trevor Huddleston’s name is the first on the Bishop’s list, and a name never far away, for “Trevor” is the name of Desmond’s oldest child. So when you think the little things you do and say don’t matter, remember that sometimes there would be no Desmond Tutus without the Trevor Huddlestons.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me

Grace Fills the Empty Spaces

By Ronnie McBrayer

Simone Weil wrote, “Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it.” With those words she emphasized a spirituality that, for the most part, has been only a minority report in the church—the spirituality of weakness and emptiness. We all must become poor, in one way or another, to receive what God has to give.

Somewhere along the line we simply lost our Way, that being the Way of Jesus. He always taught and modeled an inverted power, personal capability turned on its head. He never used coercion, strong-arm tactics, or dirty ladder climbing to the top. Rather, he descended to the bottom choosing the way of sacrifice, service, and humility.

Yet, we who are Christian often march forth to clutch for power and accomplishments as quickly as all others. Our good old Protestant work ethic (Catholics work just as hard, by the way) with a strong dose of entrepreneurship drives us to amass everything from fortunes and followers to perfect attendance pins and pats-on-the-back. We can become so full of ourselves that there is no room left for anything else, not even the grace God longs to give.

Personal achievement should be rightly celebrated, but it cannot be forgotten that egotism, pride, and ambition are the real enemies of the gospel. Why? Because when our hands, heads, and hearts are full, we are simply unable to accept what God offers. “Grace fills empty spaces!” Or in the words of Leo Tolstoy, “Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full.”

None of us will receive God’s good grace or experience genuine transformation so long as we remain full of ourselves. The gospel is completely unappealing; it is downright repulsive to those of us who feel that we can manage our lives with our own abilities, resources, accomplishments, or on own terms. As long as this self-reliance reigns supreme, the reign of God cannot take hold in our lives.

Emptiness is not curse; it is the cure. Insufficiency is not the end; it is the beginning. Admitting that our hands hold nothing is not a liability; it is receptivity. And when we acknowledge that we have nothing left, it is then we have found the most important thing of all: The capacity and space to accept grace when it is offered to us.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

I recently had my annual physical; and I had been dreading it. But my dread was for reasons beyond the obvious. The backless gowns, vinyl examination tables, and being put into positions – literally – that rob you of all dignity: No, I hate going to the doctor because of a different kind of exposure not related to physical nakedness.

When put under the stethoscope-bearing, X-ray-shooting, blood-sucking, prescription-writing interrogation of a skilled physician, your life has a way of telling on you. You can no better hide your secrets than you can hide your rear end while wearing one of those tie-behind frocks. Having you been smoking? It will show up in the blood tests. Been boozing? Your liver will rat you out. Are you under too much stress or exercising too little? Your blood pressure reading will tell the tale. Have you been stretched out on the sofa eating cheesy puffs every day? Then your LDL cholesterol will backstab you quicker than you can scarf down a Ho-Ho cake.

I prefer to keep my secrets, secret; but this is what my doctor cannot abide. He wants everything bare and in the open. Honestly, I should appreciate my physician’s nosy persistence, because his goal is not to punish, embarrass, or shame me. His goal is that I be well, free from disease, and make any necessary changes to maintain a fitness for life. He is working to accomplish one of the most difficult things imaginable with human beings: forcing me to face the truth about myself and how I live my life.

That is the same point made by the writer of Hebrews when he speaks of the Scriptures as “Sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it reveals the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” The Bible isn’t a giant stick used to bash in the brains of those who do not believe or behave as we wish they would. It’s not an instrument of shame whereby violators of our interpretations are exposed and left hanging in the breeze (though some practitioners use the Bible exactly that way).

No, it is a powerful tool of personal examination. It opens up our hearts, spirits, and minds revealing how we have lived our lives. And when necessary, the Scriptures give us the required intervention – the ability to change our lives– and improve our health and well-being.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.

By Ronnie McBrayer

When I was a college student I attended a “revival” in the town of Hollywood, Georgia. That’s right, Hollywood, Georgia. Hollywood is a county crossroads not a mecca for the rich and famous. It has a diner, a church, and not much else. This revival was a week-long gathering when people of the community crammed their families into the pews to sing rousing gospel songs, to hear the pleadings of the best visiting evangelist the church could afford.

As I made my way to the door I passed by a long line of Harley Davidson motorcycles. These were not the Baby Boomer playthings so many graying men and women ride today as a hobby or youthful escape. No, these were hardcore, gang-style cycles. And just inside the church, occupying the back pew, lo and behold, there sat the gang. Leather, studs, rippling arms, ponytails, tattoos: It was the complete Hell’s Angels package, sitting in a Baptist church in Hollywood, Georgia. Being a young, eager revivalist myself, I said to my friend, “Good. Maybe these heathen will get saved tonight.” And I meant it.

After the service got started, the pastor called on one of the deacons of the church to come forward and offer a prayer and word of introduction. One of those wicked bikers rose from his seat and started down the aisle. This chaps-wearing biker with a beard to his waist was the aforementioned deacon. I found out later that this biker-deacon was a self-financed missionary to the road houses, biker bars, strip clubs, and truck stops of America.

He entered places that good Christian people would never be caught, not even to share the gospel. He went to places where people drank too much, showed too much skin, engaged in too much sensuality, and waged too much violence. But there he led Bible studies, prayed for those who thought they didn’t have a prayer left, and even baptized a few souls in the truck stop showers when necessary.

I left that Hollywood church thinking that it would have been better to give the revival budget to this biker’s ministry rather than spending it on some flamboyant evangelist with a bouffant hair-do and expensive cuff links. And I left with a lesson scorched deep in my conscience: Never point a finger or a prayer at those you consider sinners. They may be more holy than you can imagine.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.me.