The wheels are turning overtime

Man, I cannot stop thinking tonight. I have all of these ideas... I keep telling Aaron that I want to start something with writing, and I guess my brain is moving in that direction.

One of my thought-tangents lead me to tell you about my church. I go to a church called "The Flipside." Yes, the name of it is Flipside. There's a good reason though... I promise. It's based on the idea that when the first church was forming on the shoulders of the first apostles, everyone thought they were crazy and labeled them as turning the world "upside-down." Well, as a Christ-follower, I have to tell you that it seems like upside-down is the best way to live.

That being said, I have a confession to make.

The Flipside is not perfect.

In fact, I'm sure there are people who have beef against my church for one reason or another, I have friends who have left it both for good reasons and bad, I've seen divisions and splits and arguments.

It's a good thing there's really no such thing as a perfect church, or else everyone would leave the imperfect churches and go to a perfect church and then I guess they'd be dead because they'd be in heaven.

When people criticize my church, or any church, for that matter, I take a little bit more offense now that I work in one. I see how hard people in leadership are trying to make it better, trying to get people to serve and love and grow... trying to refine and prune and adjust to be more effective.

Then there are the feeble attempts that we make to help people. To help the homeless, to give away clothes, to help people in crisis. And the criticisms that come our way over how we need to do things better and differently (for the example that inspired this post, click here).

Maybe if more people rolled up their sleeves and contributed, we would get further. Maybe if people stopped sitting on the sidelines in judgment and started trying to help people work together, maybe if people researched before lashing out on a media soapbox... maybe then things would start to change for the better.

Flipside isn't a big church. I don't even know, as an admin, how to handle the calls we get now about Camp Hope (aka Tent City). I'm pretty sure it has grown much faster than anyone anticipated. For now, I think we're just going to keep trying, keep serving, and keep praying that the God we believe in, the God who has ultimate sovereignty, will make it all come out in the wash.

Because we certainly can't do it as imperfect people with limited resources, ability, and understanding.