Have you ever been caught out of your world?

Ever been lost and having nothing familiar in sight to help you with your bearings? Or maybe you remember being at some social function buried in the back corner of the room, or locked away in the bathroom wondering when someone you actually know is going to arrive and bring a safe sense of familiarity. How about that time when you sat through that new class in school thinking ‘How in the world am I going to make it through this – I don’t have a sweet clue what’s going on in here.’

I could go on and on with analogies of memories that bring up that same sense of uneasiness.

I don’t recognize ANY of this… it all seems so foreign to me… I’ve never seen this kind of thing before… this seems so far away from my own every day life experiences.

This was me in Miami last week.

I took my Master’s group to spend a week there in the inner-city with Rich Wilkerson and his Peacemakers organization (www.peacemakers.org).

And I learned I was out of my own world.

Their community ranks in the top 1% of crime in the nation. Homeless shelters and rescue missions seemed as abundant as gas stations.

When you think of Miami, you picture manicured landscaping, miles of white beaches and scores of beautiful people as depicted on the CBS show CSI Miami.

Not so where we were. Quite the opposite actually.

BUT – it wasn’t the outward appearance that pushed me out of my world. I’ve been to the poorest nation on this side of the planet. I’ve seen people starving, and struggling to stay alive. I’ve walked through shantytowns and scraped the bottom of the barrel in a sense. Seen it before and wept.

This was different though. It was on our own soil. You see, when you travel to Haiti, or Cuba or other impoverished nations… you expect to see these things and prepare for it.

But, when you minister in North America, you don’t really enter into that mode. You make plans to minister the same way you would to your own church of thousands of white overfed, under-performing Christians.

I knew when I drove on the campus last Saturday, that wasn’t going to be the case.

And I was happy about that. I felt free like I haven’t in a long time. Free from the corporate pressures. Free from the need to perform and produce. Free to just be Jesus with skin on. It was amazing.

It all makes me think what we’re really building in our churches. And please – don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to put myself in the dangerous position of tearing down the church of Jesus Christ. I just think we haven’t got everything lined up in the right priority.

Will God look at our accomplishments and say ‘Well done, servant, for building that nice big building and paving that parking lot with 1,000 spaces. Well done for garnering the attention of Christians across the country who marvel at your conquests. Well done for getting your face on the cover of Charisma magazine. Well done for ignoring the poor, broken and suffering all the while.’

Then why do we spend so much time focused on these things?

This trip put me out of my own world. A world of safe and comfortable boundary lines. And I’m happy about that. This trip reminded me of some ever so important priorities that I have to fight to hold on to, and I don’t want to let go.

I want to be a giver in this world, not a taker.

Fredrick J. Streets said this: ‘When we turn our resources into a god, we can become obsessed with acquiring them, possessed by having obtained them and held captive by the fear of losing them.’

There’s a chorus from a U2 song I want to end this post with…

“You speak of signs and wonders, but I need something other. I would believe, but I’m not able. Because I’m waiting for the crumbs off your table”.

JJ