My cool Church (Re-post from 10/?/06)

Today I was thinking about cool people at church and how I'd like a church just full of cool people. My cool church would be full of cool people. Aaron Hasten would be our cool preacher. He'd have killer sermons every Sunday. We would all sit and make hmmm noises every time he made a thought provoking comment. He'd have cool stories to go along with his cool lessons. Some Sundays we wouldn't even have sermons just praise and sweet fellowship. We wouldn't have a song leader. We'd only have Chris Thompson sitting on the front row with a microphone. He wouldn't be the song leader, only the song starter. Yeah, that'd be cool. Oh, and Stephen Lamb would be there to do the Sunday morning adult class. He would have amazing lessons every week about salvation, and tying in current events with our Bible lesson. Lessons about the LRA, Christianity in China, and cool stuff like that. The Harding University Ultimate Frisbee team would be in charge of Sunday evening services. Guys like Justin Bland, Luke Dockery, Whit Jordan, Branson Bridges, Johnathan Lindsey, Jordan Walters, Daniel White, Jake Beveridge, and Landon Ganus. We'd have better attendance on Sunday evening because of people who's church's weren't as cool sneaking over for our service. Serving communion with cool communion thoughts would be some of the greatest servants that I'll ever know; Matt Fields, Kyle Jurek, Jeremy Stoneburner, Curt Harbuck, Brandon Stone, Danny Vaden, Thomas Kinsley, Stephen Jennamann, and Kevin Stewart. We'd have cool outreach ministries too. Ministries like a homeless ministry lead by Daniel Tignor, Sam Travaglini, and one of our deaconesses Amanda Pratt. I think it'd be cool to have deaconesses. We'd have a church athletic program headed up by Sean Brown, and we'd field a team for every game played at the park. And we'd be good because we have a cool church and cool people like Greg Maddux and Doug Flutie would come to our church. We'd dominate in sports. We'd have cool computer stuff because David Kelly would keep us up to date with everything. We'd also have cool elders, elders like Greg Beam, Dr. Klein, and James Taylor. I think having James Taylor as an elder would be pretty cool. We'd have cool functions like singles ministry mixers, multi-denominational worship services, and of course pot-luck lunch, except on every Sunday. And pot luck would be cool because we'd have like a lot of different nationalities go to our cool church so we'd have lots of different foods. Sam's mom would be in charge of the potluck.

People everywhere would want to come to our cool church. Max Lucado would send his resume' once a month and ask if he could preach for us. We'd just tell him that we might have a spot for him one Sunday about three years down the road if he wanted to be a guest speaker. Donald Miller would come to our church and help with the college class. Byron Nelson would have helped with our Retired ministry and golf lessons. Joshua Harris would want to come to our church but we'd make him take care of the toddlers during class; without physical contact of course. Weird Al would host Karaoke night on Thursdays. Barrack Obama would come to our church too, he'd be in charge of our bus ministry (I think that's a joke but I'm not really sure). Bottom line. Lots of cool people.

But there would be alot of problems with our cool church. First of all I think I'd get too old for our singles ministry and find myself not fitting in anywhere. I also think that I would eventually get kicked out of my cool church for not being cool enough. But even worse, I think people would start coming to my church because it was the cool thing to do and not because of their devotion to Christ. Also, Jesus didn't just invite the cool people, but everybody. The fact is at church you're gonna have to deal with some not cool people. Which you can already tell I have the wrong attitude about. Sometimes it is difficult to find a common ground with the people you go to church with, especially if you go to church 9000 miles from home. Bottom line: Jesus loves everybody and thinks they're pretty cool. I should probably find out what so cool about them.

Paul "got kicked out of his own cool church" Murphy