Last week I

went to Juvenile Court in support of one of our dear church families.

Yes, even Christian family members get in trouble with the law. As their

pastor, I am there for them and in their corner.

Waiting for

our case to be called, I looked around the room and saw parents with their

children, all waiting to be called before the judge. Good looking kids.

Surely spruced up for court day. Respectable-looking parents, all probably

thinking they never would have thought the infant they brought into this

world was not being brought into court. I felt intensely for the parents,

more so than for the kids.

Waiting, boys

and girls. Crime favors no gender. Daddy's little girl now has to appear

and give an accounting for her behavior. And, it's all very intimidating.

It was designed for that reason. The judge sitting higher than anyone

else. The prosecutor presenting the case from one table. Offender and

parents sitting at the other table.

As I looked

around in the waiting room, I wanted to invite every family and every

teenager to come to our church in order that we could love up on them,

accept them, and teach them a better way. Isn't that the way churches

should respond?

In fact this

may blow some of your snobbish noses but the church ought to be filled

with former public offenders and social rejects and former convicts. The

Apostle Paul made it obvious in his correspondence that the church at

Corinth had members who at one time were "idol worshipers, adulterers,

male prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, abusers,

and swindlers..."(1 Corinthians 6:9-11). That had to be some kind

of church, in fact, my kind of church.

God's church

should be filled to the windows with people with all sorts of sordid backgrounds.

Don't jump on me at this point. Of course, the church should also be filled

with Christians who did not have to go the sewers of life to find out

they needed Christ. There are many godly Christians who are in church

because their godly parents led them in that right kind of direction.

My wife and I for two.

But the folks

who never visited the sewers should not that is, should not look down

on those whose unfortunate decisions took them down the road well-worn

with traffic (see Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Less Traveled").

Jesus had his harshest criticism for those I call "spiritual snobs."

They are folks who are in deep trouble if it started raining in church

like the raining of the Holy Spirit. In fact, I was in a church one night

when the Holy Spirit started raining on repentant teenagers and parents

all of them getting their hearts right with God and one another. Well,

the "spiritual snobs" were close to having a total sinus breakdown.

I am sorry

if I offend all you sterile, sweet to the touch Christians. But church

is not your kind of place. You should stop offending God, join the country

club and faithfully pay your dues (a la tithes). There you can vote to

keep out the riffraff with a clean social conscience and thereby keep

the place clean.

But the church

is not a club! It's the one assembly for God's people people who know

all too well they are sinners to talk about the fact while, at the same

time, brag on God who forgave them all their sins. After all, didn't our

older brother, Paul, often tell folks he was the "chief of sinners?"

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at River's Edge Community Church: "Sinners welcome!"

The Rev. Dr. John Hatcher is pastor

of River's Edge

Community Church in Fayetteville.

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