The Sermon, Stripped Down

[This is a guest post from Kimberly Majeski.  She is a board member of Church on the Street and an assistant professor of Biblical Studies at Anderson University School of Theology.  Kimberly is also involved in a ministry that enters strip clubs to love and provide hope to the women who work there. Contact Kimberly to find more information about this wonderful ministry.]

Spoken sermons are one thing. God at work through you, a stage, some lights, just the right music and you can get swept up in it all. It is a beautiful thing to stand in that space and herald the word of God  to the people of God. When it’s all said and done, you have this built in measurement, you know how effective your ministry was because people respond.  They teach you in seminary that this is not how you measure, but you do. Even the humblest of preachers walk away knowing that God has allowed you to connect by the power of the Spirit
to the folks who have gathered in God’s name to hear God’s word.

It’s not like that in the strip club, in the dark corners of the smoke filled bar where sex and lust and greed and poverty of spirit confront you at every angle. You do your best, you serve the meal, talk with the dancers and the staff and work hard not to stare while they earn their keep. You hope, no you pray that they don’t render you useless because you have
several degrees hanging on your wall and are therefore not able to relate to their reality. You talk with them about their day, their new apartment, their new perfume, what it’s like to walk in 10 inch heels, and you hope. You hope that just by showing up week after week, offering love instead of the judgment they have come to expect from people like you, that they will begin to see and experience the relentless love of this Jesus in whose name you have come.

You don’t leave the lived sermon feeling lauded or in any way qualified to do what you are attempting. You don’t leave being praised for your preparation or acumen. They hug you and say “thank you” and go back to practicing their trade as if your warm food and friendly embrace has made no impact on their lives.

You come home and wash the stench of the strip club off of you in a hot shower and you ask yourself, “What am I doing? Is this a waste of my time?” And then you sit quietly collecting your thoughts in front of the Christmas tree while cyber shopping at Overstock.com and the utter ridiculousness of your dream confronts you, the uncertainty of the outcome, the lack of strategy, the sheer impossibility of it all.

But then you remember this other ridiculously, impossible story, of a baby born to a virgin who was the hand made of God. This ridiculous love of God that sent this baby into the world, weak and fragile, to grow and live among humankind hoping some would hear his words, believe in him and follow his teachings knowing still others would reject, mock, shame and betray him. What an insane risk! What a feeble plan, and yet, love came down. And you remember that as the ages proclaim of every force known in the universe there is nothing more powerful than love, love is stronger than the grave; the flames can not burn it out and the waters can not drown it out (Song. of Sol. 8.6). And you remember that this love IS the entire plan, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1.37), and you are bound up in it. So you decide you will go back again, and you will love because love, divine love is what has sent you and is the power that changes the world.

Christmas Gift

I am so thankful for God’s faithfulness in 2010.  Just this year Church on the Street has served over 25 different churches and organizations through our Mission Trip/Training program – that’s over 750 individuals encountering Christ in the guise of the poor and being equipped to minister in their home communities.  We developed a new volunteer driven outreach program called Saturdays on the Street that has now trained 10 individuals for leadership and has hosted over 100 volunteers who have cared for our homeless friends.  I have had the privilege to consult, train or speak at over a dozen churches and organizations across the country.  And when the economy has remained difficult for most Americans and giving has leveled off for Church on the Street without any significant increase, we have been able to maintain strict financial responsibility with your gifts by trimming our expenses by 20% and remaining in the black.

Although we have had to trim our budget and cut back on some of our staffing and programming God has continued blessing the ministry of Church on the Street by allowing us to develop meaningful friendships with large swaths of our outsized homeless population.  No doubt the reach of our ministry is far greater than our size would suggest.  We have been witnesses to God’s hand moving in the life of our poor and homeless friends as well as in our own lives.  We have seen drug dealers come to Christ, addicts freed from their bondage, and the outcast become active members of their communities.  We have also seen the hearts of the most skeptical of society softened and the minds of the cynical transformed.  Our greatest joy is seeing two people from two different worlds with two completely different histories come together to listen to and love one another through the ministry of reconciliation – or what we call friendship.

We have even greater expectations for this next year and hope that you will consider being a part this wonderful thing that God is doing through Church on the Street.  We need your prayerful and financial assistance as we end this year and enter into a new one.  Never before have we felt more centered in the will of our Heavenly Father.  Never before have we felt more convinced that we are doing the right thing, with the right message, in the right place at the right time.  Come along with us brother as we love the unlovable.  Come along with us sister as we do the work of our Lord.

You can change a life by clicking here to make a safe online donation or by mailing your donation to:  Church on the Street, P.O. Box 54717, Atlanta, GA  30308.

Your Missionary on the Streets,

Pastor Andy