September 6

Of all of the devotional readings today, one really leapt out at me. That was the Gospel reading from Luke 8:40-56. The passage contained two stories: the story of Jairus’ daughter and the story of the hemorrhaging woman. There was one aspect of the story of the hemorrhaging woman that dealt directly with issues I had been sitting with/wrestling with this summer during my sabbatical experience. It has to do with how an individual and/or community reaches out to folks. Let me set my insight up. Lots of churches spend lots of dollars trying to draw in others through things like perfectly worded letters to visitors, splashy leaflets and brochures to canvass the neighborhood, the promise of programs to fit every life circumstance, etc. All of these things are predicated on what WE can do for YOU! Then we wonder why the folks who show up in our churches arrive with consumerist expectations. Well, it would seem, it’s because we attract them with consumerist approaches. The wisdom of the story of the hemorrhaging woman is that two things had to happen in order for the woman in the story to be truly healed or made whole. First, she had to reach the point in her life where she was ready to seek out a transformative experience (for some, this means exhausting every other possible resource; for others it means a willingness to abandon a piece of our identity that’s grounded in our previous situation). Second, the woman had to actually reach out and seek that connection. This takes time and effort on the part of the individual. No one - or no entity - can do it for you. What would it be like if we redid the way we approached church and focused more on spiritual formation (helping facilitate in ourselves and others a connection with God that in turn creates a transformative and invitational way of being that encourages folks to reach out) and less on marketing techniques or gimmicks? Til next time…