We Need Rain

Republished from Facebook

It doesn’t rain much here this time of year. I know that flies directly in the face of everything you’ve heard about Seattle, but everywhere I’ve ever lived gets more annual rainfall than my current home town. This year has been particularly dry even by comparison. Some are even starting to worry about the output of fall and winter crops. (in other words: really expensive apples. Everyone panic)

My grass, in the absence of rain, is dead. Crunchy. Brown. Flammable. Literally set the yard on fire Fourth of July. That dead. After weeks of hoping the grass would take care of itself, I finally decided I might should do something about the situation. I remember thinking as I stood in the yard spraying my dead grass with a hose, “we really need some rain.”

That thought, combined with a message by Damon Thompson I heard a while back, got me thinking. I hope any of the rant that follows will be useful to anyone. Even if not, I’m basically just talking to myself here anyway, so no harm no foul.

All the farmers up here in the rural suburbs north of Seattle depend on rain. Not so they can have nicer grass than their neighbors, but so their trees, bushes, plants and vines can produce fruit and in turn their livelihoods. That farmer- he needs rain. He and his family have probably had the thought more than once, “if we could just get some rain … we need it so desperately.”

See, in my depraved mind, I had myself convinced that I needed rain so my grass will look good. That farmer needs rain so his children can eat.

I think the church has spent the last several years asking for the rain that makes us look good instead of asking for the rain that can feed a generation. We’ve traded spiritual gifting for small groups. Prophecy for programs. Healing for hospital ministries. Spirit Driven church for purpose driven church.

If the church is to remain relevant and continue to save lives, we must stop seeing rain as something that would be nice to have in addition to church functions and start seeing rain as something that we must have if our seeds are ever going to produce fruit.

What’ll happen then? People won’t be coming to church because they like the building. They won’t be coming to church because they like the coffee in the lobby, the music, the preaching, the personality of the pastor, or the reverence we give to some brilliant guy several states away who believes the same version of the gospel as we do. People will come because they see the fruit that’s been produced. They’ll see people getting healed. Lives being changed. Marriages being saved. Teenagers spending more time in the word than they do on Facebook.. Addicts getting sober. Porn stores closing because they don’t have any business.

We’ll stop condemning those who are living in sin- JUST LIKE WE ARE- and stop somehow deluding ourselves into believing that their sin is worse than ours. We’ll stop kicking people out of church because they’re living in sin. (This just happened to some friends of mine. Seriously.) After all- church would be great if it wasn’t for all the sinners, am I right?

We’ll stop shaming hurting people into complacency. We’ll stop labeling everyone who walks in the front door. We’ll stop seeing the bitterness and anger and start trying to understand the deep intense pain that’s causing it.

We’ll stop interpreting all feedback as negativity or criticism and allow for the ghastly possibility that we might actually be capable of improvement. We’ll start healing people in hospitals and worship services without taking a video crew with us. We’ll start ministering to the hurting without asking for a handout (aka “love offering.”) We’ll start loving people the way Christ loved His church- enough to die for it. We’ll stop showing the “evidence of the Holy Spirit” by trying to knock people down in church and start telling people in wheelchairs to get up.

“That sounds awfully radical, doesn’t it?”

Um … yeah. That’s the point. We have allowed our relationship with Christ to be relegated to 90 minutes on Sunday morning. We’ll get together in nice clothes, sing three fast songs, three slow songs, pass the offering plate and listen to a 45-minute sermon but so help me God if the preacher talks for 46 minutes I’m gonna zip up my bible and head out cause we gotta beat the Baptists to Cracker Barrel. And most sit there stone-faced and silent with hands folded nursing a latte and don’t say a thing to anyone while they’re there.

“Well I’m a quiet person.”

Right. The same people that lie themselves into believing that raising their hands at church isn’t manly or socially acceptable took off their shirt, painted their chest, wore a coconut bra and a neon curly wig at a stadium to scream and cheer for a group of teenagers one day earlier at a college football game. Why in the heck will we cheer a football team more than we cheer our God? I’m the biggest Gators fan any of you know (yeah, even you Derek) but nobody on any Gator team in any sport ever did anything for me. We must stop acting like God isn’t a big deal. He’s the biggest deal I’ve ever known.

“That loud music and hand raising stuff is for the youth service.”

Maybe so, but why is it we’ve relegated passion to age? Why do so many revivals, movements, outpourings, etc start in the youth group? Because mom and dad are too busy clock watching in big church to get a taste of the Jesus who’s changing lives in the youth service. And if the main service ends before the youth service, how many moms and dads will go get their kids and take them home?“

Well, he has homework to do …”

Ok, but you and I both know that if his baseball game goes into extra innings, not one of us would go into the dugout and have the coach pull our kid off the field.

Look, I’m not suggesting that the only way to show we’ve experienced the true and living God is to drink snake venom or stop eating or to move into a plywood windowless compound. But when we stopped taking our bibles to church and started taking our blackberries, we took a wrong turn doctrinally. When we stopped preaching, “so says the Lord” and replaced it with “so thinks the pastor,” we jumped headfirst into a methodical shift that will be years in the undoing. God as my witness I will NEVER have a website with my name in the URL. Too many preachers spend their time trying to further Virgil Richardson Ministries International instead of furthering the kingdom. I will NOT be that guy.

So I pray for rain. Coincidentally that’s also the name of my favorite Christian band of all time, but that’s probably only relevant to about three people I know. I pray for the rain that makes my seed bear fruit, not the seed that makes my grass green. Thank you Jesus for loving us enough to leave the Holy Spirit when you left. I just pray we don’t continue to waste the blessing.