I used to have a friend. (He passed away about a year and a half ago.) He didn’t go to church, hadn’t been in a church for over twenty years. Robert lived across the street from the church where I was the pastor. Every so often I would walk across the street and visit with him on his front porch. We talked about a lot of different stuff. At first, Robert was leery of me and skeptical of my motives. I never asked him to come to my church, because I knew he would be uncomfortable.

One Sunday, we were having our worship outdoors and everyone would be in jeans and t-shirts. I thought Robert might find it less intimidating, so I asked if he’d like to come . . . and, to my surprize, he did. And the next week he came to worship indoors. And the next week, the same. He told me that he kinda enjoyed that first Sunday outdoors, and that people treated him OK. The second and third Sundays were tests, to see if people would keep being nice to him. “I figured I’d scare ‘em,” he said. [Robert was a large man . . . he wore bike leathers, sported large, dark tatoos, a bushy beard, and long (usually dirty) hair. I'd have been frightened if I'd met him in a dark alley, rather than his front porch.] He was surprised that people were still nice to him on his subsequent visits. (Truth be told, I was little surprised myself, but I couldn’t have been happier).

After a few months of never missing worship, Robert wasn’t there one Sunday. Monday morning I was walking toward the church and Robert was sitting on his porch. He waved me down and started to cross the street toward me. I couldn’t read his expression from where I was standing, so I considered running. [Remember, he was a big, burly bikeman.] But I stood my ground. “Brother Bob,” he called out (I don’t know when he started calling me that, but it was a good sign). “I wanted to explain where I was yesterday.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I replied.

“But I want to,” he insisted. “We have a friend who’s in jail. The prison visitation is only on Sundays and we went to see her yesterday. I’m so sorry we weren’t at church.”

I was taken aback by his explanation . . . not so much by what he said he was doing, but because he felt it necessary to rationalize his absence from the church service. I wanted to say, “Robert, please don’t come back to my church. I don’t want that kind of attitude rubbing off on you. I don’t want my church to ruin you!”

Instead, I said, “Robert,” “that’s God-work! Visiting people in jail is just the kind of stuff Jesus taught us to do. And it’s much more important than being at church.”

I’m really careful about who I invite to church nowadays. I wouldn’t want any of my friends to be ruined. To them I say, “please, don’t come to my church”

[Actually, my church is a great church and I don't think it would ruin any of my friends. But a certain kind of mindset sometimes kicks in sub-consciously. It's part of the "church culture" baggage that we seem to have in this country . . . but I guess I'll save that rant for another day.]