I Go To Church And I Cannot Say It

You were in a warm room on Sunday.

People were pleased to see you. Somebody asked after your week and meant it. You sang something you believe. There was coffee afterward and it was genuinely good.

And you drove home to a house that nobody in that room has ever seen and that you would not let any of them past the door of.

That gap is a particular kind of tiring, and it is not hypocrisy, whatever the voice in your head calls it on the way home. Hypocrisy is pretending to believe something. You believe all of it. What you are doing is much more ordinary, which is being in a room where nobody has ever gone first about anything like this.

Because that is the actual problem in most churches, and I say this as somebody who has spent his life in them. It is not that people would judge you. It is that nobody has modeled it. Everyone in that building has decided, privately and independently, that they are the only one, and they are all sitting in rows being the only one together.

Confess your faults one to another

There is a verse in James that gets quoted about sin and is doing something broader.

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:16, King James Version)

One to another.

Not to a leader. Not from a platform. Not in a meeting arranged for the purpose. One to another, which is two people, sideways, in the ordinary way that people talk.

And the word faults there is wider than sin. It is faults, failings, the places where a person is not managing. That covers a house.

And notice what it is for. That ye may be healed. Not so that a record can be kept. Not so that somebody can help you fix it. Healing is the stated purpose, and healing happens in the telling, which is a strange claim that anybody who has told somebody something hard will recognize as true.

You are not being asked to make an announcement, and James 5:16 has never once required this to happen in front of a room. It is written as one to another, which is two people talking sideways, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that possible in a church parking lot at half past twelve.

You have been in a building full of people who are each certain they are the only one. The word puts the confessing between two ordinary people, and the Spirit of God is the one who goes first when nobody else has.

The one who would understand is in that room

Now let me say something I have found to be true almost everywhere.

In any church of forty people, at least four have a house they would not let anybody into. At least two have not opened a particular door in a year. And at least one is sitting there on a Sunday having done nothing about it since something happened to them.

You do not know which ones, and that is precisely the problem, because they do not know about you either.

You have been sitting in rows with three or four people carrying the same thing, and not one of you has ever once had a way of finding out. James 5:16 assumes an exchange between two people who both have something to say, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been holding all of you in the same building on the same Sunday.

The first person to say it out loud in any group changes the group. Not by being brave. By making it sayable. And whoever you tell will very likely tell you something back within about a minute, and the something back will surprise you.

You are about to make a thing sayable in a building where nobody has said it, and that has never once required you to be brave about it. James 5:16 assumes a two way exchange rather than a disclosure, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves first in a room where everybody is waiting for somebody else to.

So tonight is a message to one person from that building. Not the leader, unless the leader is genuinely the right person. Somebody sideways. Somebody your own age or your own kind of life.

You are permitted to go first, and going first has never once required you to be the strongest person in the room. It is written that the confessing is one to another and the purpose is healing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a text sent to somebody from church on a Tuesday night.

Text one person from church

So here is the whole of what I am asking.

You are being sent sideways tonight and not to a platform, and no verse in that letter has ever once asked anybody to say this in front of a room. James 5:16 puts the confessing one to another, which is two people talking in the ordinary way, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that possible in a parking lot at half past twelve.

Pick one person from that building. Not a leader by default. Somebody sat next to, or served alongside, or spoken with in a doorway. A house is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the person driving home from that room.

Send them: the house is bad and I am working on it.

Do not frame it as a prayer request. Do not add a verse. Do not apologize for bothering them. Those are all ways of making it a church transaction, and this is one person telling another person a true thing.

Then put the phone down and clean nothing.

You are able to say one plain thing to somebody from church tonight, and saying it has never once needed to be dressed up as ministry. James 5:16 puts it one to another for healing, and the Spirit of God is present in a message with no verse attached to it.