When a Kleenex isn't a Kleenex

Among the other stuff that piles into my e-mail "in box" each week is a newsletter from a website called Monday Morning Insight. Even though its aimed at evangelical pastors and church leaders, I subscribe to MMI because...

(a) I'm currently writing a book about the church ("The Church For Skeptics", to be published by FaithWalk Publishing later this year)
(b) I'm perpetually curious about what makes churches tick - or self-destruct
(c) My husband and I have been in church leadership in the past, and somehow, reading the various columns and news stories makes me feel like the sometimes crazy, always life-altering church experiences we've had are not just our lot in life.

The dudes who run the MMI site support the corporate, programmed side of the evangelical world, and feature lots of info. about various leadership conferences and trends. But every once in a while, one of their columnists will focus on something that reminds us how very mustard-seed-like the kingdom truly is.

This guy named Greg Atkinson wrote a little piece about the new Kleenex "Let It Out" ad campaign. The ads feature two people sitting on an Ikea-ugly couch in the middle of a city. One person sits and listens while the other person talks about something that touches them deeply. The speaker is ambushed by their emotions toward the end of the commercial, and reach for a Kleenex brand snotrag.

Though we from the church often ask questions ("Where will you spend eternity?"), Atkinson notes thtat these commercials are a visceral reminder of the incarnational calling of the church in the world. He wonders if maybe we church people are asking the wrong kinds of questions sometimes - and listening poorly to the people who most need to simply let it out at other times. Somehow, the man on the ugly couch with his box of Kleenex made it safe for people to tell their stories.

Atkinson asks, "I believe God works through local bodies of believers, but wouldn’t it be amazing, powerful and revolutionary for the Church to leave its four walls, set out a couch on the street and just listen to people’s stories as they pass by?"

A congregation can't do this. (Just imagine several hundred people trying to squish onto that ugly couch!)

But I can.

You can, too.