The Beach, Billy Graham, and the Check-Out Line at Kroger

"You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake" (1 Thess. 1:5b).

For me, being at the beach is a balancing act - a negotiation between time spent with children in the ocean or the pool and time by the ocean or the pool reading. Actually, there isn’t much balancing to be done. I read until my kids plead with me to “get in.” I know that pretty soon we’ll go to the beach and they won’t want me anywhere around, so they never have to plead too long. Once I’m “in” I throw them around until they (and I) have had enough, then back to my chair and my book until the next invitation.

For the past five days we’ve been enjoying the Atlantic coast near Charleston, S.C., and when I’ve been able to sit in a chair on the beach or by the pool I’ve been making my way through Donald Miller’s Searching For God Knows What. So far Miller’s message boils down to this: Christianity is not a formula. You don’t become a Christian by following a formula, and you don’t live the Christian life by following a formula or doing certain Christian things. Miller says that we’ve tried to make Christianity formulaic and this presentation of the faith is simply no longer compelling. The formulas don’t make people want to become Christians. To say “believe these things in this order” and then instruct people to “behave this way and do these things” just doesn’t get it. Miller still has a firm grasp on the doctrines we believe and the kind of life we are called to live, but he insists on a relational context for all these things. The neglected relational dynamic of Christianity needs to be recovered. That’s what I understand this book to be about.

He’s not had to work too hard to convince me. As a seminary student I was required to take a course in personal evangelism. The course rightly required students to actually go out and share their faith with another person and then report on the encounter. The church I attended at the time had a Sunday afternoon evangelism ministry whereby people were trained to share the gospel and then sent out along Hemphill Ave. in Fort Worth to do just that. I signed up and for several weeks walked up and down Hemphill Ave. trying to initiate conversations that would eventually allow me to “witness.”

What I noticed on these Sunday afternoons was that directly across the street from the church was a park where large crowds of people – mostly Hispanic – gathered every week to play soccer. Oddly, none of us who had been trained to “witness” ever went over to the park to play soccer. Sure, there might have been a language barrier. But the larger barrier was a relational chasm. We shared the faith by laying out a formula, an explanation of ideas. We didn’t share the faith by playing soccer. Miller is trying to tell us to do less explaining and play more soccer.

With these ideas in my head we left Charleston yesterday and made the five hour drive home. On the way back my wife and I listened to a radio talk show from Flushing Meadows, New York - the site this weekend of what may well be Billy Graham’s last crusade here in the U.S. Billy Graham is 86 years old and still preaching. With the Milleresque take on the Christian faith fresh on my mind I listened to the talk show host interview Franklin Graham about his father’s ministry. It occurred to me that when Billy Graham preaches, the heart of his message seems to be what Miller calls a “formula.” He often describes life apart from Christ, then moves to what life can be like with Christ, then tells people how to move from one condition to the other, which is to say from “life without” to “life with.” Tens of millions of people have heard him preach and no doubt thousands have had their lives impacted by his message.

And yet now, when interviewers talk to him or talk about him, what seems to captivate them is the man’s life. Not a formula. A life.

Fast forward a few hours. We’ve made it home, I’ve unloaded the van, and it seems we need milk. One thing you’re sure to need after being away for a week of vacation is fresh milk. So off I go to make a Kroger run. I quickly get milk and a couple of other impulse items and get to a check-out line behind someone else who had only come in for a few items. Pleased with my luck at finding a fast moving check-out line, I place my items on the conveyor belt, barely noticing the lady who has gotten in line behind me. I pay my $13.00 and change, take my receipt from the cashier, and just as I’m about to bolt for the car I hear, “God bless you sir.” I turn and the lady behind me hands me a tract – bold red with white and black lettering. The front of the tract reads “Is Jesus Christ your Savior?” I say “thanks” and head for the car.

No conversation with her. No real connection. Her style was more hit-and-run. Only I was the one on the run. I don’t doubt that this is well intended by her. She may know that people don’t like to talk to strangers about religion. So she just does the quick hit with a tract and lets it go at that. She thinks of it as planting a seed. Again, freshly Miller-minded about such things I thought of the “formula.” The tract told me what I need to believe for Jesus to be my savior and for me to go to heaven. As far as I can tell from a hurried glance, every word of it looks true. But this truth came to me void of the relational context Miller writes about.

After a few days at the beach, the drive home listening to the radio talk show, and the run to Kroger, I’m aware again of how critical it is that doctrine be lived. Doctrinal truth shows itself in a life. The absence of a life doesn’t render the doctrine untrue – but it does seem to render it weak, even boring.

Billy Graham is effective with his formula because of his life. A piece of folded paper is less effective because a life is absent. The paper is no less true. By the Spirit, it can change a life – but the Spirit most often seems to work through other lives.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians he says to them, “you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.” This statement comes right on the heels of his summary of how the gospel message came to them – not only in word but in the power of the spirit and with full conviction. Their message was backed up by their life.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I’m back at church, doing things pastors do: Teaching the bible, helping lead worship. But this isn’t a day for me to “go back to work.” I want to get back at it tomorrow simply living a life. That’s fairly obvious and quite simple – but not always easy.

With some help from Donald Miller, I’m trying to come back from vacation but not go back to a “job.”