Rubbing Belly-Buttons with a Leper.

There is much rhetoric among Christians about changing the church. This has been the theme of my conversations and passion for the past 10 years with most every Christian I have come to know. There is much exchange about models, methods, theology, spirituality, and leadership in the church, but has anything truly significant happened in the church in the past few hundred years? Yes, countless individuals have enountered God.

I talk about new ways to lead, new ways to think, and new ways to pray versus new ways to live out my baptismal vows. Most of what I do is talk. Don’t get me wrong, I have participated in some life-enhancing acts of ministry, but I spend most of my time thinking about ministry more than I engage in ministry. I do think it is important to read and think, but not if it paralyzes me from doing. I am reminded by St. Francis of Assisi, who said, "Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord our God for up to now we have made little or no progress." As the story goes, St. Francis started a movement (not so intentionally) by being transformed while embracing the leper at the cross of San Damiano.

During dinner tonight I told my wife that I am not sure Christianity has much to do with Jesus. When I read the stories of Jesus in the Gospels I am often left with the sense that "up until now we have made little progress." My office is surrounded by books on leadership, theology, spirituality and church development. I am not sure I have one book on how to embrace a leper. I am not sure I would read one either, unless of course it was "How to Win Friends and Influence Lepers." I can talk church, theology, and Jesus all day, but I am lousy at truly following him. I am afraid to lose my life. I am afraid to rub belly-buttons with a leper.

There is an old saying in business, "Nothing happens until as sale is made." You can read every book ever written regarding professional selling and marketing. You can know a lot about selling, marketing, engineering, and management. You can have the greatest product in the world and spend years forecasting your target market potential and demand. You can sit in the board room every day pontificating about future business deals, but until someone is willing go to the street and get belly-button to belly-button with a prospective client and closes the deal, nothing happens. Everything hinges on having the guts to make the call. It is the same with church, until I rub belly-buttons with the "lepers" of this world, nothing happens. Perhaps that is why I have made little or no progress for everything hinges on my making the call.