Pastor BoOur church is not exactly “normal.” I get that, and I am OK with it. No, actually, I am more than OK with it, I actually like it.
How can you not like a church where the custodian hides on top of the supply cabinets in the office wing hallway?
Perhaps I should explain
My wife and I came in recently to find the wife and the son of our custodian looking for her husband/his father. They had finished cleaning the church for the day and had enough time for one of their favorite pastimes: a 10,000 square foot game of hide-and-seek.
Upon inquiry, I found that this is actually a fairly regular thing they do. It seems they have been hide-and-seek aficionados for years and salivate at the thought of playing in a building with a foyer, six Sunday school rooms, two nurseries, two offices, a break room, two storage rooms, a music supply room, a sound booth, a broadcast booth, four bathrooms, a janitor’s closet and three hallways.
On the day in question, his hiding place of choice was on top of the supply cabinets. His family passed right by him multiple times and never found him. It seems that looking up is something people do not normally do in a game of hide-and-seek.
Mind you, these folks are not in any way being disrespectful to the house of God. Their games have “off limits” areas. To me, there is nothing “holy of holies” about the top of a supply cabinet or the underside of a nursery sink.
Furthermore, as good of a job as they do on all things custodial, I am more than willing to allow fringe benefits that cost the church absolutely nothing. Most people would ask for regular raises, these folks just count to 100 and then shout “Ready or not, here I come!”
I wonder, though, how many churchgoers there are across the land who play a far more serious game of hide-and-seek in church? In Revelation 2-3, Jesus delivered seven messages to seven churches through the pastors of each. When it came to the Church of Sardis, he said, “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”
The church of Sardis was engaging in the worst kind of church hide-and-seek: It was maintaining a reputation of spirituality that it no longer deserved.
Everyone is concerned about reputation. But reality is far more important than reputation. If your reputation for being a voracious reader of Scripture or a real prayer warrior is no longer deserved, do not take care to hide the failure; fix the failure.
If your reputation for purity and holiness is still intact but would be in tatters if your sin were exposed, do not think of more elaborate ways to hide what you have become; repent and become what you once were.
If you are sitting together, looking like the ideal family, carefully masking the fact that you are coming apart at the seams, lay aside your pride and get some help from your pastor or a trusted church counselor.
Ben Franklin once said, “What you would seem to be, be really.” Wise words, Ben, and words that mirror the teaching of the Bible. In Matthew 23, Jesus eight times ripped the Pharisees as hypocrites. In verse 27, he said that they were “like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
You cannot hide what you are forever, not even if you are lying on a supply cabinet in a hallway.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., and the author of several books that are available at wordofhismouth.com. Contact him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.