Breakfast In Bed

Now my wife loves breakfast. There're no two ways about it and I used to make breakfast for her every Saturday. We'd sleep in and then make a big production out of this ritual and drag it out all morning. However, if I woke up before her, she didn't just get breakfast, she got breakfast in bed. Week after week she'd eat it up and smile dreamily all morning.

I on the other hand, can't stand breakfast. I'd sit around drinking Diet Coke all morning while counting down the seconds until I could eat lunch.

One Saturday, I woke to an empty house. As I stumbled groggily through the house looking for her I heard the front door open. She peaked around the edge and ordered me to get back in bed. Though full of curiosity, I obeyed right away. I heard her rummaging around the kitchen for a minute and then she appeared in the bedroom wearing an impish grin on her face.

She was carrying the tray I used to serve her breakfast each week and it had this huge white takeout Styrofoam box sitting on it. What was in it? IT WAS BBQ!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH! She'd brought me a huge heaping mound of BBQ beans and sausage for breakfast. Oh, the ecstasy. I slurped Diet Coke and smeared sauce all over everything as I ingested this forbidden delight.

Breakfast...yummy for the first time. For one beautiful morning, I got to be me and break all the breakfast rules, customs, and traditions.

Sometimes I wish the church would take a lesson from my wife. God has called beautiful communities of faith together in every corner of your town or city and filled each congregation with people who have all of these amazing gifts, abilities, experiences, and passions.

So what happens when we hit rough spots or loose our relevance to the community God has placed us within? We latch onto the latest church growth book...curriculum...trend-OR-we entrench...do it like we used to...or hold tightly to structure and traditions.

In and of themselves, none of these reactions are bad. However, we often forget to look inward at the most important tool we have...the Holy Spirit working through the incredible people that already make up our communities.

When we imitate other churches in our search for answers, we chance missing out on discovering what God is doing in our midst. When we forget to look inward at the incredible community God has already called together, we often become weak reflections of what God is doing somewhere else.

It is hard to trust that who you are called to be as a church may already be expressed in who God has called to be in your church. Your special place in the kingdom may best be found by giving voice to the folks who are already a a part of your community.

In other words, we may have to eat BBQ instead of eggs for breakfast when we listen to the heart beat of the Holy Spirit within our congregations. Who knows where giving voice to our memebers could lead.