Inspired: Why My Church Isn't In A Church

A few weeks ago, I was running around the lake at a local park. It was about 84 degrees outside, and of course, I selected a dark gray shirt with a thick breast cancer emblem on the back of it to run in {not my most intelligent moment}. The shirt declares,

failure is not an option

As I was running {rather, while I was dying and about to fall over from heat stroke}, an older gentleman came up beside me, and said, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that your shirt inspires me. Do you have breast cancer?"

I politely said no, but the cause is important to me. He responded with a 15 minute story about how he had stage 4 cancer, but miraculously survived because of the grace of Jesus Christ, and he now believes it is his purpose in life to witness to that grace to everyone he meets {apparently also including random strangers at North Park}. The whole thing was a little cheesy: a person was "inspired" by a lame saying on my shirt, a guy telling me about the healing power of Jesus Christ... I mean, that's nice and all, it's just not my thing. Rather than inspire me, that kind of thing just makes me cynical and skeptical.

The weird thing was there was something about that conversation that wasn't cheesy, wasn't corny...something about that conversation that did inspire me.

As I ran on, I thought about all the motivational speeches, the inspirational posters, the slogans, the patriotic anthems and theme songs, all this stuff that's supposed to "inspire" us toward achievement.

{barf...}

{oh GAWDDD...}

{seriously, Confucius? i refuse to believe he said that...}

I don't know about you, but in my world, inspiration has become a dirty word. Only crazy artists, surface-y college students, and marching band enthusiasts use the word "inspiration;" it's a word that is owned by weirdos. When a person talks about being inspired, I instantly believe they are not actually a part of the real world.

Which kind of stinks really, because it shouldn't have to be that way. Inspiration or to inspire comes from Latin {the King of all languages} the verb "spirare" to breathe, connected in some way to "spiritus" meaning spirit. Other languages do this too: in Greek, we have pneuma which is spirit or breath, and in Hebrew, we have ruach, also spirit or breath. What I love is how this reflects life: those who have life have breath, and those who have breath have a spirit. Genesis 2.7:

then the LORD God breathed into his {Adam's} nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being

I love that image: that our life is breathed into us, and that life and breath and being come from God. Crudely, I almost imagine the scene from Flight when Denzel Washington, a pilot, wakes up with a terrible hangover, and does a line of cocaine to come alive, so to speak. The filming zooms in on his eyes as they fill with life from the cocaine. {heretical side note...God is our cocaine...wait...}

So this leads me to wonder if we thought of "inspiration" as God's breath of life popping up in our lives. What if we thought of "inspiration" as the things in life that catch our breath and burn a fire in our hearts? Where would God show up if God wasn't limited to inspiring people on Sunday mornings?

And that's just it. It's been a long time when the church has felt inspiring. Somewhere between mishandling limited funds and condescending church signs, between the blame game and round-about communication, between an all out brawl over donut holes and intergenerational arguments over clean kitchens, somewhere in this complete mess we call church, we lost our spiritus, our ability to spirare. I'm so tired of settling for lifeless; I'm so tired of the lonely, uphill battle for the spirituality of the next generation; I'm so tired of bickering, backstabbing, and bigotry. While I know I can and have felt the breath of God in a church event, it is honestly no longer the first place I look.

And this is why my church isn't always in a church. Because lately, God has been breathing {cocaine-energy-level} life into the ordinary mud and clay of my life. Here are a few examples:

I am inspired at Pittsburgh Pirates games, where 20,000 strangers become friends, and as a family, we dare to dream of the future. I believe God's breath of life is present in the thrill of the crowd and the faithful who stay to the bitter end.

I am inspired by actual new life. By babies who have their own personalities at day 1, by landmarks and growth in just a few short weeks, but mostly by parents who make it work no matter what it takes. I believe God's breath of life is present in a mom as she carefully watches others coddle her child, that God's breath of life is present in a new dad, as he changes his 50th diaper of the day.

I am inspired by 20,000 odd runners from around the country coming together for the Pittsburgh marathon. But mostly, I see God's breath of life in strangers cheering on the sidelines, in a man holding a young runner up as she pushes forward to the finish-line, in runners stopping to check on an injured stranger who has stepped to the side of the race. As I ran, I thought to myself, "well, I'm glad I get to be outside and not stressing about church today." Suddenly it dawned on me: this is my church. 

Outside of the walls of the church, I wonder where you have seen and experienced the inspiring breath of God at work in the world...