Since the Arts Conference last month, a number of you have contacted us for information about a poem by Sam Shoemaker, quoted by Nancy Beach in her session entitled The Audacity of Hope. This article is an adaptation of a portion of that message which includes Shoemaker’s poem, I Stand at the Door.

This past year, I taught a weekend service based on the song by the Fray, How to Save a Life.  That song captivated our culture, and its message struck deep:  How do you save the life of someone you really care about? 

A Friend of Sinners
As followers of Jesus Christ, He is our example for how to save a life, so as I prepared for the message I spent a lot of time studying how Jesus spent His time on this earth.  The religious leaders were incensed that He hung out with drunkards, tax collectors, and prostitutes.  They gave him a three-word description intended to be a scathing criticism.  He was called a “friend of sinners.”  Jesus made it clear that His mission, the entire reason He came to our planet, was to seek and to save those who are lost.  He didn’t come to condemn the world, but to save it.

I think many of us Christians communicate a kind of haughtiness and judgment to those outside the faith.  And some of us don’t even have any significant friendships with non-believers.  For those of you on staff at a church, no matter what your role, and also for those who volunteer significant hours there, here’s the tendency as I see it: We become so consumed with the work of building and sustaining our church ministry that we leave no room for relationships with others.  We become “professional Christians” who see our mission as preparing for Sunday morning, and there’s no margin for significant connections outside that.  And believe me, I get this.  I know what it’s like to scramble every week just to keep up with the demands of a growing church, to create powerful experiences week after week, or at least attempt to, and then to lead the community of artists on top of that.  I often find myself on a Friday night drooling on the couch watching whatever shows I recorded that week, asleep before 10:00, because the thought of getting together with one of my neighbors or book club friends or doing anything relational at all absolutely overwhelms me!  I’ve heard members of our Willow team lament this situation, and sometimes justify it by saying, “Well, at least I can contribute to outreach by preparing the Sunday morning experiences for others to leverage.”  Now, there’s some truth to that, but we become more and more insulated from the people we claim to care about who are still lacking hope!