What If Church Had No Perfectionists, Programs Or Presentations…But Instead Broken Worshipers & Open Doors?

“Broken people, call His name.”

It was a muggy Friday, summer evening. I could hear their collective voices, as my four wheels pull up slowly to the gravel parking lot.

Double doors propped open. Because where He is, everyone should be welcomed.

There was no “getting to know you” period. No recruitment, hand picking, or stringent, selection process.

Where He is, all are family. Nothing separates. The call isn’t just some title on a church bulletin, “Come as you are.” His Spirit leads us…

Like it did that summer night.

I have not known many things in my life. And often come, not in measures, with parameters, with conditions, but accepting people, until they prove me wrong…

But…

• This place…it wasn’t even about me.
• This place embodied something deeper, what the core of our spirits long for.
• This place wasn’t about show or performances, great strategies or individual images…

It was His residing place, our upper room. The threshing floor, where people cried out to Him.

“Helpless children praise the King.” I approach closer as they sing.

Not the wise or educated, visibly blessed or those with every answers, filled the room. These people were humble. And there was only standing room in the back….but I didn’t care.

They were children and they knew it. They came helpless, hands lifted, turning their faces upward, keeping their aim looking to the One who had clearly called their name.

Like little infants, they were drawn to Him by the same Spirit that led me to this simple building.

Yes, I have seen it again and again in the land of the living….God confounds the proud, will bring down those who are wise in their own eyes…but gives grace to the humble.

Yes, these were babbling, begging, burdened children. They needed a Father, not just to look at and turn from…

Instead, they longed for a Father they could wrap their arms around, one who met them where they were and walked with them day after day, moment after moment, week after week.

He was their ever-present help in time of need….not just a crap shoot they would throw dice at in hopes to win something….

“Nothing brings Him greater fame, when broken people call His name.” Their song keeps rising…like weightless birds taking flight.

Their song wasn’t clean and tailors, but instead teary-eyed, unapologentically loud and defeaning in it’s exuberance.

I pack into the hot, sweaty, one floor room, where faces are glowing. Eyes don’t even notice the child I am, the one I had tried to avoid for so long….

Yet, I am safe here. Safe in the collective cries of the broken, needy people just like me. Those feeling lost in a world of weakness….

I heard someone tell me one time, “That church is a bunch of low-lifes”. And maybe that was true.

There were people who met Jesus in prison, who used to walk the streets like addicts. There were the divorced, the handicapped, those ungroomed, untailors, collectively maybe o.k….not always looking so perfect.

Still, in just three years, God radically transformed my life a thousand more times than attending another church, my whole life.

Nearly a thousand others who were beggars, just like me, also were visibly tranformed.

And once you are transformed, you don’t need plastic smiles, superficial looks, self-help sermons, or to work harder at your own perfection….

You just need to admit my sin and then long to continue to abandon yourself to His love.

It all became highlighted to me in Scripture…

• Jesus walked toward, touched, and healed the misfits.
• He delivered the chained-demon possessed, He rose the little girl, touched the lepers, those living outside the city nobody wanted.
• He healed the women with a blood disorder, walked to the scorn woman at the well society rejected…

Yes, I liked this Jesus here. Where misfits gathered without agendas, empty motives, crying out in abandoned worship….

Afer all, isn’t it the wanting who find Jesus?

Afer all, isn’t it the wanting who find Jesus?

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Isn’t it when the broken call His name in humility and repentence that Jesus makes Himself seen?

And I would be lying if I said the world didn’t need more broken people. People who knew where their hope came from, lived like He alone is their sole Savior…The One who takes away the sins of the world.

I was tired of counterfeit saviors when I stepped into that church. Tired of man’s programs, shallow performances, people propping themselves up as leaders, instead of fixing their eyes on Him.

I knew….yes, I still know…we are all really misfits on the inside….

Houses can be painted white, but truth will rise. Eventually the world will know what rests behind the walls of each and every life.

Everything in darkness will eventually come to light.

They cannot hide. And neither could I. I was done. I needed rest. And here, I was home.

This unified cry of broken children, reaching up, looking somewhere outside themselves for freedom and deliverance, hope and happiness, joy and peacefulness….

Yes, these were my people, the broken. Because only the vulnerable find healing. And plastic smiles, in time, have proven themselves in history to always crumble to nothing.

Leaders get on their knees here. People cried out randomly in repentence for their sins. Praying for other people were normal and healthy. The entire church was it’s own “prayer team”.

Yet, it was not chaotic. It was a move of something greater. A move people became scared of, because they couldn’t understand or control it. 

Oneness reigned here; rich and poor, educated and simple, those who came from religion and the prisoner literally just let free…

We knew personally and intimately…God was no respector of persons. So why do some play act like spoiled offspring….as if God likes them the best?

In fact, I wonder if He just listens….Listens and waits for those praying, praising. Waits for those who will turn their hearts to Him in humble repentence….

If He cares more about whether we are hungry or needy. If He looks at what we put our hope and strength in….and measures His response by that?

I have a room full of children. There is much hustle and bustle and noise. What child would I come? Which one will I reach to and pick up? Draw to and adorn first with unrestrained affection…

The one who looks at me and calls my name. The one who I know is most needy, dependent and wanting.

Yet, isn’t it the same with God? Won’t He respond to those first calling out His name? Won’t He come to those dependent, in relationship with Him, or who are most helpless, clearly?

And I wonder…could He maybe even despise our own self-sufficiency…Those times we prop ourselves up as perfect, so as we won’t be wanting, needing, dependent on God for anything?

Does He long for our child-likeness, our sincerity of heart, our intimate and dependent affection, and relationship with Him?

• Is that why Jesus sent out His disciples without anything…. “Take nothing for the journey–no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt.” (Luke 9:3) Because He wanted them to remain dependent?
• Is that why He moved His followers frequently, never letting them settle in buildings, houses, big ministries that sat stagnant, their following molding to their own theology and never reaching anyone?
• Is that why Jesus searched the heart for those most needy? He looked for the Lazarus’ in the tree, those riding to Him like the Centurian, or calling to Him like Mary and Martha, who just lost their brother in recent days?
• Is that why God says He is near to the broken-hearted? Why He is a physican that came for those who are sick? Is that why He chose to be a baby, so those child-like might be able to recognize Him?

Then, I hear the saints, there, in that sweaty room, with doors open, voices carrying to the streets, eyes lifted to their Savior singing….

“Lift high your chains undone