Have you ever gotten a phone call that you just don’t know what to do with? No clue how to process. What to say? What to write? If it’s even OK to try and express anything at all?

Two short days ago, a colleague, co-laborer, and dear personal friend lost his life. As the new day was dawning, a woman walked into his church, pulled out a gun, and stole him away. From his wife and two year old daughter. From the community of Christ-followers that he heroically led. From all of us. He was 29 years old.

Heart attack and died.

Cancer and died.

Car accident and died.

Death is always tragic, but at least my brain can process those scenarios.

I don’t have a place for this one. It doesn’t fit. Doesn’t compute. I just don’t get it. And that insatiable need to explain can easily turn tragedy into triteness. These are the moments that birth cheap cliches.

Human beings are meaning machines. We need purpose. To know “why?” But I find, in times like these, my drive to understand is often a self-protection mechanism to dodge the pain.

On days like these, perhaps the most God-honoring response is just to grieve. Reflect. Remember. Weep. Feel it all. Fully.

Death will always feel foreign to us. Offensive. It wasn’t a part of God’s original design–a disastrous byproduct of man’s sin and rebellion. When we grieve, we acknowledge the imperfection of our current struggle and longing for the day when God will finally complete the restoration of His Creation. With that focus, grief itself can almost become an expression of worship.

Jaman my friend, I miss you already. Your wisdom. Your sense of humor. Your way of cutting through the bull and forcing the us to see the point. Knowing you changed me, and for that I am grateful.

Today we grieve. Not without sadness, but not without hope.

See you again buddy. But not soon enough.

I was unpacking my bag on the bench when I caught two guys walk into the locker room out of the corner of my eye. There are three identical, contiguous locker bays at my gym–the other two were completely empty–yet this duo chose to pile their bags up next to mine and squeeze (just closely enough to make it awkward) into the same locker space I was occupying.

Alright. Relax. No big deal.

But when a fourth guy walked in, assessed the situation, completely ignored the other two empty locker bays, and proceeded to lean impatiently against the wall until I was finished, I had a sudden, involuntary flashback.

This is the same guy that used to attend my church when I was a kid! He and his wife would insist on the same seat each Sunday and go all wrath of God if your cheeks dared imprint on “their” cushion.

Wait a second. Maybe this isn’t a religious, “church-people” issue after all. Could it possibly just be a human issue?

I know you get a lot more attention when you rip on your own. Democrats who bash Obama. Republicans who light up Newt Gingrich. Pastors who criticize the church. That moves the needle. Makes people look. I’ve been known to do it myself (and sometimes it’s absolutely necessary).

But today I want to do something that may be a bit unpopular…

…come to the defense of church people.

(I know, I know….where’s he gonna go next? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Lindsay Lohan?)

Look, I admit, we’re quirky, hypocritical, naive, simplistic, condescending, annoying, unforgiving, myopic, rote, and graceless (at far too many times). And I’m guessing what probably irritates you the most is when we act like we’re better than you. Like we’ve got it all figured out. Like we’ve solved all the mysteries and our bathrooms don’t need air freshener. Nobody likes to feel “less than” (I’ll put myself at the top of that list).

You hate when we “church folk” seem to forget that we’re broken, fallen human beings.

So please, please, please do me a favor: don’t you forget it either.

We’re sheep following the Good Shepherd. Sometimes we wander. Sometimes we take our eyes off the Master. Sometimes we break a leg or fall in a ditch. Sometimes we make Jesus look real bad. We’re the sheep (not the brightest of animals), not the Shepherd.

That’s the beauty of the Gospel. Because of Jesus, God always welcomes us back.

Our issues aren’t “church people” issues. They’re human issues. That’s why I love this tweet from the pastor of the LA Dream Center, Matthew Barnett:

“The church is not a social club of fake perfection, it’s a place where broken people fall in love with a perfect God.”

We “church people” will do our best not to forget that, but do us a huge favor and please remember it, too.

What’s your “church pew?”

Some people make me uncomfortable. They say hard things. Offensive things. Their very presence makes me bristle. Raises my blood pressure. Makes me flat out angry.

And it’s good.

They’re called prophets. A term we don’t hear thrown around much in pop culture today (unless they’re referencing some crazy in a sheltered compound with a chalice of red kool-aid and 300 blank-eyed followers). But I believe the prophetic gift is still alive (Ephesians 4:11), and at times the brokenness and deception in our lives will be violently accosted by very difficult truth. Painful truth. Prophetic truth.

The Old Testament prophets were nut jobs. Often outcasts. Recluses. They’d marry prostitutes or walk around naked to visually illustrate the sins of God’s people. Their call was to repent. They weren’t easy to ignore, but they were pretty easy to marginalize.

I undoubtedly face the same impulse when encountering a prophetic voice today. They like to point at things in me that I don’t want you to see. That I really don’t even want to see myself. I prefer to move them to the crazy line and get on with my life.

But there’s another kind of voice that can sound strikingly similar. That also leaves you bristling, irritated, and maybe even a little PO’d (for a whole other reason).

The cynic.

Haters. Full of self-righteous condescension, a sharp tongue, caustic wit, and an uncanny ability to make you feel like a pile of dog crap. And here’s the difficult thing about The Prophet and The Cynic…

…sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference between the two.

I’m a pastor, so I live and breathe in “church world.” Admittedly, this can become it’s own subculture of competing philosophies and debate. The tension between prophet and cynic is one I wrestle with every day (at times even in my own soul).

The Western Church could use a good kick in the pants. A cold bucket of wake-up reality check. We’ve bought into some idolatrous (and perhaps even dangerous) lies. At times, we’ve even misrepresented the Gospel. We need the prophetic voices to radically and urgently point us back towards the truth.

But some of you so-called prophets need a gut-check of your own. You’re not oracles, you’re just haters – finding visceral satisfaction in expressing your animosity towards things that may have hurt you, that make you envious, or that simply don’t line up with your own personal preferences.

You’re just negative people. Nothing’s good enough for you – ever right or worthy of celebrating. When you’re not bashing mega-churches, worship styles, church structures, or the latest comment made by some well-known spiritual leader, you’re angst turns towards the idiot repairman, the forgetful waitress, your overbearing boss, or the ridiculous common area mowing schedule of your neighborhood association.

You’re not a prophet, you’re just a whiner with verbal acumen. Having a condescending opinion might make you a great ESPN analyst, but it doesn’t qualify you as the voice of God.

How do we know the difference? I fear mistaking prophetic words for the ramblings of a cynic. But I also fear gravitating towards the emotional woo of a hater assuming I’m hearing from God. So here’s a simple thought:

The prophet is motivated by redemption.

The cynic just wants to feel right.

What do you think? How do we discern between the two?

My wife and I eagerly took in Donald Miller’s new movie, Blue Like Jazz, on our date night last week. Don probably doesn’t need a “save the date” for Oscar night, but the story was moving. Challenging. Sobering. And artistically well done.

(In fact, if any of my non-christian friends want to take in the film, I’d love to meetup for a coffee conversation afterwards. My treat. Seriously, call me).

Three days later, I met with a campus ministry leader here in Indy that vulnerably shared his own story of leaving the faith in college and returning only after a serious bottoming out. A massive crisis of conscience and faith that literally took him to the brink. It was eerily similar to Miller’s screenplay, and not unlike many of the stories I hear over lunches and coffee shop tables every week.

Church was forced on me.

Church people are (oblivious) hypocrites.

Church avoided the uncomfortable questions I was actually asking.

Church was just my social connection.

Church taught me information about God, but that’s about it.

For far too many, until the crap hits the fan, until the bottom falls out, until they make an absolute mess of things – until they have a crisis of faith – they never really know God for themselves. They may be connected to the culture, but they’re disconnected from Christ.

Personally, I never really had one of these Blue Like Jazz periods. Or did I?

I was a by the book kid. Don’t rock the boat. Play by the rules. So for me, a crisis of faith didn’t manifest as an 8-month rave party. (What can I say, even my breakdowns are safe). But just because I never spent a year sowing wild oats doesn’t mean faith and me didn’t duke it out.

And I’m starting to believe everybody should.

My daughter is 13. She’s starting to look more like a woman than a little girl. And to make things worse, she’s smart (she just won a school award for her cognitive reasoning skills…God help us). How can I, as a pastor but more importantly as her daddy, walk her headfirst into her own crisis of faith? Yes, I’m serious.

How can she start tackling the hard questions she’s inevitably going to ask?

How can she take on her doubts?

Now.

With me.

Slowly. Intentionally.

Together over the next 5 years, instead of alone in some college philosophy class.

So that her faith becomes more than a way of life I’ve hung around her neck. So that it becomes her own conviction and not just a mimic of mine. Her own thought through, lived out, real and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That kind of strength only comes from stepping into the tension.

Is it possible to force a crisis of faith without creating a heavy bag of regrets you’re forced to carry through the rest of your life?

What do you think?

We dedicated a bunch of kids yesterday at City Community Church. And we could’ve dedicated more. Lots more. I’m starting to think the Central Library Cafe is spiking the java with little tax deduction incentives.

If you dare to drink the water, don’t say you weren’t warned.

As my wife and I were prepping, talking, and praying about what this beautiful moment should look like within the context of our church’s weekly gathering, I couldn’t get a key verse of Scripture out of my mind:

So God created human beings^[a] in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27 NLT

My good friend, mentor, and personal counselor, Jim Falk, will tell you (with deep conviction) that nearly every issue he deals with in his practice ties back in some way to this verse of Scripture. Sin breaks our connection to the Father. In our brokenness we embrace lies. In our deception we lose site of the foundational core of our identity.

At that point life always seems to get a little messy.

The truth? We were created as image bearers of God. Of God! You know, the Creator of the Universe. Formed. Fashioned. Knit-together. Known. Valued. Loved.

Our prayer for these beautiful children yesterday was really pretty simple:

Regardless of what life throws their way.

Regardless of their social hierarchy or socio-economic status.

Regardless of their insecurities.

Regardless of their successes or failures.

Regardless of their grades. Their looks. Their seat at the school lunch table.

Regardless of who their friends, pop culture, or even their own families convince them that they are.

That they will forever hear the sweet voice of the Father whispering (shouting!) that eternal reminder of their true identity: “You were created as an image bearer of God!”

My prayer for you and me today is no different. Let’s not forget who we are.