The church has nothing to do with people collected together on Sunday morning, but everything to do with people scattered out on any given weekday.

I saw that clearly demonstrated this past week.  It began to take shape in my office on Thursday morning.  It was a gathering I didn’t plan and didn’t have a clear handle on.

My office happens to be less than a block from the Montgomery County Courts Complex.  It was a convenient place for a group of people to gather to pray before moving en masse over to the Courts Complex.  There a family was putting love in action in a way that defied logic and common sense.

The family chose to take up the battle and fight for a girl who had no one fighting for her and no one who would fight for her.

I realized that my friend who had spent a career fighting battles in places nobody knows about with enemies nobody has ever heard of was still fighting against crazy odds.

What he and his family did that day was the church in action.  There’s not an orator anywhere who will preach a better sermon – not from a wooden pulpit, a Plexiglas pulpit, a round table, a tall stool, or no stool.  That kind of sermons doesn’t happen in front of a bunch of bored people sitting in pews.  It happens out there.

My friend and his family modeled the church in action.  We can sit and complain about what we want church to be, but being church calls us to be radical and crazy.

It won’t look the same for each of us.  But, it won’t involve a program.  It won’t depend on a worship schedule.  It won’t matter what the music style is.  No one will be checking attendance records.

My friend is leading the charge storming the gates of hell.  I noticed as he sat in the back of the courtroom that he had the only weapon he needed – a small Bible he read while the judge deliberated.

The next day as we sat reflecting on what he had done, he asked, “Do you think it was stupid?” “No.  The would would call it stupid.  What you did was following the spirit.  That’s crazy but not stupid.”

Are we ready to defy logic and be the church?  Are we ready to be crazy and radical.  Don’t expect it to happen as you sit comfortably in a church pew.

My sister cautions me that impatience is in our family DNA.  Paul — the New Testament apostle dude, for those of you who aren’t tracking – says that patience is a fruit of the spirit.  Man, that’s to difficult tension.

There have been lots of situations lately that have totally tested my patience and torpedoed my commitment to be kinder and gentler.

Patience may be a fruit of the spirit, but I think I’ve got blight in my orchard.  It is pretty difficult to keep enough spiritual fungicide sprayed on the tree to keep the blight of impatience from spoiling the fruit.

A close brother who has embarked on a major project with me knows from experience that patience is not my strong suit. He observed it first hand while working on another major project a few years ago. I’ve noticed he is recommending suppliers based on what he knows of my temperament.  “I could see the two of you clashing and it wouldn’t be pretty,” he said recently when considering one suppler.  The problem is that he is right.  I had previous experience with the supplier and knew that I would totally lose it with him before the project was completed.

There is a fine line between expecting professional accountability and extending grace.  It is pretty easy to fall back into the impatience mode.

My dream is to sit on the back deck communing with the deer and other gentle creatures.  That goes along with my threat to move to Montana and herd sheep.  But, God didn’t put us here to glorify him among the deer and sheep.  He put us here to glorify him among the people he places around us.  Man, that takes a heck of a lot of spiritual fungicide battling the blight of impatience.

I need the industrial strength size fungicide spray.  How about you?

Last week, I marveled at the tenderness expressed by a battalion command sergeant major as he memorialized a young fallen solder from his unit.

This week, an aviation company first sergeant who identifies himself on Facebook as a “barrel-chested, steely eyed freedom fighter” showed another streak of tenderness.

1SGT James Halchishick posted a note on Facebook saying, “I struggle with duality. My hands have been trained to crush the life out of evil men.  These same hands, wet with the drops of tears, now tremble as they embrace my children.”

I know both of these men, CSM Tim Johnson and 1SG James Halchishick.  I know them as gentle, tender, soft-spoken men.  But, I also know they are trained for destruction and to lead men to do the same.

The character of our nation rests on the fact that those we train to fight are not fighters by nature.  They are tender, compassionate men.  And, those I know, such as Tim and Jamie, are men of God and warriors of the cross.  I know they go with these verses tucked away somewhere:

Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

Psalm 91:9-13, The Soldier’s Prayer

Tim, Jeff, and Jamie who are now down range, Elijah, Brady, Pat and hundreds of others who soon will be headed down range, may God bless you and keep you.

Only one brigade of the 101^st is down range in the current deployment and I have already received a message from a friend about the death of a young soldier in his unit.  My friend gave details of the event and paid tribute to the young soldier.

I’ve heard far too many similar stories over the past decade.

For me, the saga goes back to Dec. 5, 1990, when my friend and fellow Tennessee National Guard soldier died in Daharan.  Joe and I had served together on staff the previous summer during National Guard annual training.

By the summer of 1991, most of us were back in Tennessee mowing lawns as if the previous winter in the desert had never happened.  We had seen way too much death and carnage scattered along the corridor from Hafer al Batin to Basra.

I still have the newspaper clipping on my wall where I told Tim Ghianni that I hoped our sons would not have to fight for peace.  Unfortunately, almost 20 years later, that young generation is now on the front line for peace.  The young 3^rd BCT soldier who died in Afghanistan this week was hardly two years old when I returned from Kuwait.

I will never adjust to hearing these reports.  The first time I read Hal Moore’s We Were Soldiers Once…And Young, a personal account of the 1965 1^st Cav battle in Ia Drang, I cried through every page of chapter 25 as Moore gave a brief bio of each soldier who died in the three days of carnage. Sean Naylor’s account of the Rakkasan’s battle of Anaconda titled Not a Good Day to Die had the same impact.

Moore started that powerful chapter with a quote from Plato – “Only the dead have seen the end to war.”  There will be more emails like the one from Tim this week.  And more tears.

In an eight-day span, I have attended three funerals.  I’ve attended my share of funerals in the last few years but this may be a record for me.   This grouping included an aunt, the father of a co-worker and a civic organization colleague.  The services ranged from Southern Baptist to Free Will Baptist to Catholic.

It was interested to see how, in different faiths, we deal with the inevitable reality of death.  Interestingly, in these three situations, the funeral services were celebrations of lives well lived.  Each of the individuals had lived long and full lives.  Each died suddenly and unexpectedly.

While the services were different, the focus of each was similar.  The Southern Baptist service leaned toward informal.  The Free Will Baptist service was in a small, rural country church with the burial service out back behind the church in the cold, biting February wind.  The Catholic service was filled with pageantry packed with symbolism.  Because he was aware of the percentage of non-Catholics in the service, Father Ed, who is also a colleague in the same civic organization, did an excellent job explaining the rituals to us.

Whether in the eulogy of the Southern Baptist service or the commendation of the Catholic service, each one focused on highlights of the individual’s life.

None of us are going to make it out of this world alive.  Whether you exit soon and abruptly or fade off into the sunset, somebody is going to have something to say at your service.  Are you living a life well enough to provide detail for a celebration?

On my last day in Zaremtenga, in the East Mamprusi region of Ghana, I was invited to join the old men’s after breakfast group.  I could speculate on way I was invited but I’m certain it was not because of any wisdom I could add to the group.

They specifically didn’t invite the young guys.  They didn’t invite our interpreter.  (That was my clue that conversation with me was not on their agenda.)

It was kind of like the men gathering at Hardee’s, or at Moss’ in Clarksville.  They each had a gourd of their morning brew to sip on as they discussed topics of the day.  I suspect it was very much like the gathering of men that happens pretty much anywhere in the world.

I suspect that their objective for inviting me was the laugh they enjoyed as they passed a gourd of brew for me to sip on.   They were all in anticipation of my reaction at my first sip.  I didn’t disappoint them.

I would liked to have been able to listen in to the conversation with understanding.  It would have been interesting to know what the wiser elders discuss as they gather in the cool of the morning.

But, I have to think about the gatherings I am involved in many mornings – at Starbucks, Arby’s, Lasaters, my office, and other places such as the one I had this morning.  I hope that the sessions I am involved in are God-honoring and positive rather than gripe sessions.  What is the discussion like when you sit down with brothers and sip on a gourd of your favorite brew?

While in Africa, I had the opportunity to work with three tremendous young guys.  They were the best.  The four of us lived together in a mud hut room in a village for almost a week.

We had a lot of great times together and some interesting conversations throughout the nights.

As young guys will do, they loved to play around, goof off, explore, climb trees, climb rocks, chase crocodiles, and joke around.  But, when it was time to work, they worked.  Our work was sharing the gospel.  They did it.  We spent much of our days walking through the village talking with people about their faith, telling them about Jesus and answering their questions about following Jesus.

The guys had more opportunities to share the gospel in a week than most guys their age have in a year.

Greg, Ben, and Jonathan took turns presenting the gospel.  As we moved through the first day, they each had the kinks worked out of their presentation.  They developed a smooth presentation.  They learned how to alter their presentation based on the situation.  They learned to answer questions and come up with appropriate biblical texts to back up their statements.

Along the way, they developed greater confidence in their own faith.  As they answered questions, they resolved some of their own questions.  During a few group Bible study sessions, we answered some of their deeper questions and addressed issues.

The guys became stronger in their faith during the week.  They gained confidence in their ability to present the gospel.  They had opportunities they will remember for a lifetime.  And, I’m certain that they now will be bolder witnesses in many other situations.

Now each of them has the experience and the potential to lead other teams back to villages in the future.  I’m proud to have had the opportunity to work with these guys.

I’m sitting with a couple of my buddies in a local breakfast spot this morning.  One of the guys found it only after I gave him the address to punch into his iPhone.

Last week, in my frustration trying to give him directions to a funeral home in a neighboring community, I insisted that he was directionally challenged.  I observed that he could only navigate with a visual screen in front of him.  In reality, he navigates better than most of us ever will.  He guides a huge green helicopter into who-knows-where by following what he sees on the visual screen in front of him.  He’s very good at what he does.

Part of the reason he is good at what he does is that he trusts his navigational devices.  He has been trained to rely on the equipment more than what he sees or thinks he sees around him.

We need to be better at that.  God has giving us navigational tools.  He’s given us his Word and his Spirit to guide us.  Too often, we want to follow our own instincts or rely on what we see around us.  Those usually lead us to bad choices.  Like my friend, we need to rely more on our navigational tools – even if it does cause people to say we are directionally challenged.

There’s a group of young guys who think I have wimped out.  We were going backpacking today, but I pulled the plug. Against my nature, I said it’s too cold.  The high will hardly be above freezing and I just can’t see spending two nights on the trail without getting warm.

I introduced this group of high school guys to backpacking back in the fall. They have been eager to go back and this was to be the weekend.

I generally don’t back out when I get a chance to go.  I am increasingly drawn to the mountains, the wilderness and this one spot on Savage Gulf in particular.  I enjoy the camaraderie with peers when I can find them.   But, taking a group of young bucks like these guys is a special opportunity for mentoring.  There are easier ways to accomplish this, I know.  There is not much that beats a day of backpacking followed by an evening around a fire.

These are the adventures that build character and make a young man grow bold.  It’s a tough world out there.  A young man needs all the steel he can muster to stand strong.  I don’t know how it will help them in days ahead.  That’s not for me to see.

Tell me what things you use to toughen up those you get a chance to lead.

I don’t know that there is any choice but to persevere.  That was my response as a young brother attempted to affirm me last week.

We had taken the holiday break to check up on each other since he has been away at college and now grad school.  Somewhere, I missed the transition between his middle school years and now when I was constantly pouring into his life to where he is speaking truth into my life.

He has had opportunity to observe me for many years and critically evaluate how I have handled the rough waters of life.  By God’s grace, he saw something positive there.

As unappreciative as my response was, it does ring true.  As I have had time to analyze it more, I come to these classic John Newton lyrics:

“Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come.  T’was grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

Indeed, those of us following Christ are on a journey.   We have not reached a destination, nor will we until grace leads us home.  Until then, our best option is to persevere.  The journey will take us through many dangers, many detours, many pitfalls, many broken paths, but it is grace that will lead us through.

Arrogance heads us into the rocky shoals where we believe we have what it takes to navigate on our own.

Chris Tomlin dropped the dangers, toils and snares stanza from the John Newton classic in his praise song update.  But, his added lyrics are appropriate:

“My chains or gone, I’ve been set free.  My God, my Savior has ransomed me.  And like a flood, his mercy reigns, unending love, amazing grace.

It is when we dive headlong into the river of grace that we have what it takes to persevere.