Seekers

I have a friend who did not grow up going to church. It just wasn't a priority in her family. What she knows about the Bible is what you pick up from just being a smart person engaged in the world. She didn't know what the 23rd Psalm was until I started reciting it. Then she knew she had heard it at every funeral she'd ever been to.

She is at a point that many of us reach in our lives when we begin to feel the need to intensely search ourselves and the lives we have created for meaning above and beyond the simple answers we've always relied on.

It's not an easy place to be.

Wasn't it Socrates who said "the unexamined life is not worth living?"

I know a whole bunch of people who are perfectly content to live an unexamined life. I can't speak for my friend, but for me, the work of examination, wrestling with the questions and learning to live with my answers is very much worth the work it demands.

She has started going to one of those mega-churches in Colorado. They are mega for a reason. The music is top-notch. Every service is a production with lights, multimedia, precision and dress rehearsals. The sermons are funny, challenging and the preacher is self-effacing and humble – a guy you can relate to.

We've been talking a bit about her faith journey. Church "insiders" would call her a seeker. That's a word I love. With any luck, I want to be a seeker my whole life.

seek – verb

1. to go in search or quest of

2. to try to find or discover by searching or questioning

3. to try to obtain

4. to try or attempt 

5. to go to

6. to ask for; request

7. to make inquiry

Her new church is "seeker friendly" meaning it doesn't use a lot of churchy language, the context and content are relevant, the format is informal and you leave feeling good about having been there. She sent me a link to Sunday's sermon yesterday and I listened to it. We wrote back and forth for awhile about the central point of the preacher's sermon – What are you willing to sacrifice your life for? What cause, idea, problem or situation so gets under your skin that you are willing to sacrifice your time, your money or your energy to do something about it?

It's an interesting question. The sermon was about money and it ended with the offering plates being passed – much to the groans of many who were uncomfortable being trapped in a 50 minute (!) sermon about money. The twist was that when the plates were passed, they were filled with one-dollar bills. Each person was to take one and come up with a plan about what they were going to do with it to make an impact in the world. He encouraged everyone there to use it to make an impact that would last forever.

My friend and I bandied around some ideas. The preacher said that you could add a few of your own dollars or you could use a few of the dollars of those who were seated around you so I told her that my idea was to collect all the dollar bills from the people there who were interested in making some of the most wounded people in society feel welcomed in that church and start an outreach to gay bars. I also laughingly told her that if I could only get 4 or 5 dollars I would definitely see that as a sign!

I was being kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, but that's exactly what I would do with it. . .

Then I remembered another question that I have struggled with my whole life with God –

"What would you do right now if you weren't afraid?"

Ouch.