don't forget, you can help support www.ginkworld.net with the green stuff - [click here]

why is it that people in the church want us to change before we are allowed in?

the question of the ages - more so this age then any other.  in short, who knows?  i can give you my thoughts on the matter.  in reality, not all churches are so exclusive - but a great deal are.  here's the catch 22 in church outreach.  most churches today will say that outreach is important, and most will claim that they are a loving welcoming community, yet what they say and how they act are very different.  i call these churches, "dishwasher churches."

when we moved into our first apartment tod (my wife's name is tod) was excited that we had a new dishwasher.  it had all the features one could ever desire in a dishwasher.  in fact, it was the dishwasher that sold her on the apartment.  one night while we were doing the dishes i noticed her washing the dishes before she put them in the dishwasher to get cleaned - and i asked why.  she explained, "the dishes become cleaner if you 'rinse' them before you put them in the dishwasher."  i questioned the logic, and took out the manual for the appliance and started to read.  according to the manual, the dishwasher is designed to clean even the dirtiest of dishes.  it says that there is no need to rinse the dishes off - in fact, it even claimed that there was no need to 'scrape' the dishes.  it had built in some wonderful features:

it had a 'food catch' designed to catch the food particles to big to go down the drain.  it had a pre-rinse cycle that took care of the 'stubborn' food stuff.  it heated the water hotter than any other dishwasher and was guaranteed to clean the dishes cleaner then any other dishwasher - while i was reading all this to my wife, she reminded me that it was all marketing hype, and no dishwasher could do all that, without a good rinsing.  she mentioned that with all the food stuff in the trap, it would be gross to clean up after - "to touch that garbage is gross," she said.

a great many churches are like this.  they do not trust in the guarantee of scripture that God will take care of our sins and bring us to his place, in his time.  many of then desire you be 'rinsed off' before you come in.  they like the idea of people being rinsed before they come in, because they do not want to "clean out the food trap" and they are afraid of the crumb of our life.  they do not believe "God can do all that" without their help.

another major problem my wife mentioned was the fear that someone would get a glass with 'stuff' on it.  she felt that would show we had a messy house, and were unclean people.  the church has the same impression.  they fear that if another believer comes and sees people who are 'still dirty' they might think the church is not 'a true church' because not all people in the church are spotless.  they fear other believers questioning the status of their church.

why are people required to clean up before entering the church?  i would say, because the church fears what they do not understand.  and most churches do not understand those outside the church.  it is easy to exclude, and hard to include.  when you exclude you live protected, when you include to live exposed - but it more fun to be exposed.