Church Tastes Better in the Microwave
God's calling his church To Fresh, Don't settle For Frozen
Tube steaks, ramen bricks, ketchup, and tabasco paired with Mountain Dew: a meal fit for a dorm room king. Set your dietary ensemble on the horizontal rotisserie, shut the door, push some buttons, and enjoy the sound of electromagnetic waves pulsating through your culinary creation for three snail-paced minutes. Sure, you could start a fire, boil the water, roast a ballpark, and slowdown in life while violating some fire codes, but the Fortnite multiplayer lobby just doesn’t have the patience.
The microwave shifted the landscape of modern day cuisine the same way McDonalds made gourmet dining accessible to the masses. After all, nothing tantalizes the nostrils like a freshly roasted Hot Pocket.
Where microwaves stand atop the culinary podium, draped in gold, is in resuscitating last night’s take-out. After a night-on-the-town, you set your Styrofoam wrapped Cajun Shrimp Alfredo into the food morgue. Only to be taken from its rest in the morning and sentenced to an immediate, violent electrocution, exhausting any appeals. You take one bite, and yes, it is the same meal as last night…but a little different. If you’re not sure on how death works, science has taught us that food doesn’t get fresher after it dies, unless it’s from McDonalds.
While leftovers pair wonderfully with microwaves, your church experience doesn’t.
In the late 90’s Saddleback Church, with their Hawaiian shirts and tan boat shoes, disrupted the liturgical landscape in America with a new formula for church growth. Many remember Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life,” selling over 50 million copies, but most congregants remain oblivious to its prequel. Penned in 1995, The Purpose Driven Church flew onto pastoral desks, like snowbirds returning north from their high desert RV parks after winter.
Chances are, in evangelical circles during that time, you heard Rick Warren preach in your church, he was just wearing different skin. Pastors echoed his quotes and implemented his model exactly as transcribed. Yes, you may have been attending Foothills Family Community Valley City Church, but it had morphed into a de facto campus of Saddleback Church, with Warren pulling the levers behind the curtain. If you can flail through the cobwebs of your mental rolodex and extract an image of a poster in a church lobby resembling a baseball diamond, you were attending Saddleback.
Is Rick Warren Darth Vader and Saddleback The Borg from Star Trek, where resistance was futile? Absolutely not. Although they did experimentations on a Pastor of Assimilation in their lair once. Warren unearthed a treasure for his church that thrived in its context, and mass produced it. Was it successful in other churches? Yes, with an asterisk.
Freshly made at Saddleback, clergy ordered Purpose Driven take-out, hoping Amazon rings your door bell before getting cold. Scarfing the books, pounding the DVD’s, and snacking on sermon templates, the leftovers cooled off in the ice box until Sunday.
You savored every lukewarm bite all week and now your church gets to experience microwaved culinary bliss, just gotta pop it in real quick. Trembling with glee, you spoon feed every nuked bite into a hungry flock, eagerly awaiting their five-star review. Confusion isn’t the look you were going for. Then you take a bite yourself. Yeah, it’s the same meal, it just tastes a smidge different now.
Hand-me-downs remain a fashion sense icon of middle-class America with staying power. Showing up to school in your brother’s Gotcha pants from five years ago is the fastest way to get your crush’s phone number locked away in your cousin’s Trapper Keeper. Who didn’t experience the humiliation of having your brother’s name sharpied on the collar tag of your horizontal striped polo, with the pit stains and signs of rugby all over it?
Pastors force themselves into a one size fits all, passed down palm tree-adorned shirt, hoping to walk in the same anointing, in armor that doesn’t fit. In unhemmed uniforms, we feed our churches leftovers, frozen from afar, fresh out of the microwave.
Ditch the leftovers and pass the brisket.
Low and slow. That’s the name of the game. Take that brisket, trim the fat off, slather it in mustard and rain that rub down all over it. Get that barrel rolling at 225 degrees, get those coals glowing. Place that southern sacrifice on the steel grill-grate altar for fourteen hours. Spray the meat down every few hours. Tend the firebox, don’t let it go out or get too hot. Close the lid and let the heat and smoke do its work. Wrap the meat when it stalls. Prepare the feast. Let that hickory smoke filled aroma fill your nostrils as the bark develops. Hold that slice up with each side draping off your finger. Dinner is served.
A pastor once said, “I begin preparing the meal on Monday so it’s ready for the church on Sunday.”
Don’t settle feeding your church yesterday’s take-out.
There’s no replacement for prayer. Take the time to allow God to develop those flavors, allowing His Spirit to penetrate the fibers of what you’re preparing. Smoke rings never duplicate in three minutes, slowly spinning around while undergoing shock therapy. It takes time, it takes seeking, it takes craving the good stuff.
It’s easy to serve up someone else’s ‘best’ by reading their books or attending their conferences and regurgitating it to your flock. We won’t deluge in the details of the regurgitation process, sparing your screen of vomit, it’s kinda gross. Your church is hungry for fresh food, don’t worry about the Michelin stars, let the Holy Spirit cook.
The thing about good barbeque is, once you’ve had it, you don’t ever wanna go back to anything less.
Be the keeper of the flame God has placed in your church, and tend it like eternity is at stake. He has a specific role He is casting your church in for the kingdom. Allow the Holy Spirit to breathe over, around, and in you, saturating your soul.
Let the Spirit give your church its identity, not Rick Warren.
Serve fresh food, there’s a landfill in need of a microwave.
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I definitely relate to this. A church plant I was part of in 2000 was a Saddleback spinoff and though it started well, it quickly burned out because the demographic of our community didn't fit what was expected by the pastor to build that kind of church. There is no one-size-fits-all in ministry.
Yes he does. The Rock church in Orlando Florida was doing it back in 2005, and lots of Pentecostals in latin communities of Miami back in the 80's and 90's used open there homes to traveling evangelist for pop up services that would become home church plants.