The new church- with muffins

Sometime soon here, hopefully this next week, I'm going to be breaking out a big, long, lengthy, wordy post about my thoughts on the church in America versus the early church. But today is not that day. No, today I am going to just say that I've seen the future of the church- and it involves a very early morning, free refills on coffee, and muffins. Oh, and a group of dudes sitting around talking conspiracy theories and the most efficient form of energy.

This morning, I finally broke down and went with some guys to have coffee at a local coffee shop. This is a weekly Friday ritual that I have been invited to several times, but have always been able to come up with a fool proof way out of....

"Hey Jason. Want to go have coffee with us this Friday?"

"No man. I am going to sleep in"

But this week, I decided that I was going to go. I decided this much earlier in the week, so that when I got sick yesterday, it made for a "convenient" out for this morning. But like Isildur in the heart of Mount Doom when he was told to destroy the Ring, I said "No", and set my alarm and began preparations for an abnormally early morning (which for me is going to bed before 11).

Now, I know that there are people that have to be awake during the ungodly hours of the day. Police officers, hospitals, and football coaches all work during the times when most of us are riding the sleep cycle. And those people legitimately need to be awake- Police keep our streets safe, hospitals help the people that weren't kept safe by the police, and football coaches have to get their teams ready so our Sunday afternoons don't suck. But apparently there is another group of people that brave the uncharted parts of the day- Coffee drinkers.

Coffee drinkers- and the spots where they congregate- wake up during these dark hours when even hope rests. It's sort of a funny phenomenon, if you think about it. You're waking up early so that you can go somewhere and put a substance in your body to keep yourself awake. Why not just sleep guys? We can do breakfast at a much more normal and socially acceptable time- say, 10:00? I mean, if you have to pump chemicals into your body to stay awake- and the only reason you're awake is to pump those chemicals into your body- you may want to rethink your sleeping habits.

Guys, I kid, I kid. But seriously- for me to get up before 7:00 is kind of a big deal. I'm not one of those people that can sleep until the early hours of the afternoon- but my kids are pretty much up every day like clockwork at 7:30, so sleep is a precious commodity for me. It is not a small thing for me to purposefully set my alarm clock for an earlier time than I would already be getting up. I'm not saying this to make anyone feel guilty- I'm informing you, so that you know how important I am when I grace your presence at these early "morning" functions.

Anyways, I went this morning, had a ton of fun, laughed about airport security and a conspiracy theory around the shooting threat at NMU and football and what types of energy are most efficient. The most important part for me, though, is that we laughed. We laughed and laughed. Laughter, to me, is how I connect with people. It's my love language. One of the biggest things that really drew me to my wife was the fact that she could make me laugh. Not just 'haha, you're cute and thus I will laugh at your jokes in order to obtain your approval'...but legitimate laughter. (And she's drop-unconscious gorgeous and filthy stinking rich, but that's beside the point. Also, she's not filthy stinking rich)

Human beings are very complex entities- each one is a labyrinth puzzle, with a dynamic set of interlocking parts. We can't just assume that our tried and true ways of doing things will work for everyone. But I do believe that one universal truth for building relationships with people is that we start with the small and gradually work our way into their lives.

I think that's one thing that the church does backwards (and I'll talk about more in depth in my upcoming post)- there is this expectation that you come in, and because you have this mutual ground of being a 'Christian' with other people, or because we have this Biblically-based security clearance that somehow we're all just kumba-ya and we can jump right into the deepest parts of the relationship pool. But that's not how it should work- we need to get to know people in a progression before we can really, and meaningfully, get involved in their lives. That's why a get-together like this morning was so important. We didn't break out our bibles and discuss the implications of Zechariah 3:7 (note- completely pulled that verse out of the air. Seriously.) or the different eschatological stances and how they relate to the events of our modern world. And that's okay- because there can be just as much life in the laughter about bodily functions and drug houses closing down as there is in our spiritual expositions.

Besides, the shop they frequent has the best Apple-crunch muffins. So if nothing else- there's that.