Shorts and Church: A Personal Study

A couple of weeks ago I ran into an unforeseen issue while working at my church job in Danville, Kentucky. I was invited by the pastor as a new seminarian and budding pastor myself to share a message for the Sunday evening informal bible study. Note the qualifying adjective there: “informal.” So I wore my usual informal garb, including a pair of shorts and sandals as lower-body wear. Decently modest shorts, too--cargo ones that cover the knee, and a very nice t-shirt that I had just bought two days prior (for a good cause, too: Abort73). The text I preached on was Mark 10:17-31, and the thesis of my sermon was that Jesus calls us to drop everything that we’ve made into a god in our lives and to follow after him at once and without delay. Here’s a snippet of my manuscript, towards the end:

What if we as a church were doing so much good in Danville that the Government would be recommending people in need to come see us? What if we were one-upping government assistance programs like WIC? There are plenty of single moms right in our neck of the woods who could use that kind of assistance, but the overwhelming attitude of the mainline Church is one of “okay, we’ll help you, just don’t get our pews dirty.” That’s insane, people. And we wonder why the church in America is declining.

Jesus gave us two Great Commandments. The Rich Young Man couldn’t get past the first one! I think we’ve gotten the first one, but the second one is where we’re getting stuck at. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Mike James already talked about who our neighbor was—the poor guy who got beaten up and left for dead. Did the Samaritan whine about getting blood and what not on his clothes or on his saddle? No. Did the innkeeper? No. And you can be sure that the guy who was half-dead wasn’t going to be able to repay the Samaritan in any way.

And later on:

In the passage we’ve looked at tonight in Mark 10, Jesus is re-hashing something he said earlier in the same book, chapter 8: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

To lose everything and gain the kingdom, even with persecutions, even with a cross, is to gain everything that matters by losing everything that does not. Mike Breaux, a former pastor at Southland Christian Church, put it this way: you are either all in or you are not in at all.

That is what Jesus requires of us, end of story. A complete selling-out to him and his cause. A literal one for the rich young man, the neoniskos. Maybe Jesus needs some of you to sell off some of the things you are putting first in your life and give the money to the poor in order to follow him. But I think what Jesus needs more so from us is for us to lay down the things in our lives that keep us from fulfilling the Great Commandment and Great Commission. Don’t pretend anymore; it’s not helping you and it’s certainly not helping anyone else.

I later found out that week that, while the people gathered found my preaching passable (and that I did not have, as Jodie’s dad did after his first sermon, just “a sweet spirit”--more on that later), the greatest clamor was being made by the four or five individuals angry at me for dressing down to talk about Jesus. Why? I understand that it’s a nice sanctuary, and I didn’t mean disrespect by choosing to dress authentically for something that I had understood to be informal to begin with.

Do churches sometimes go too far to avoid being “whitewashed tombs” in their eschewal of cultural dress standards? Sometimes, I think. On the other end of the spectrum, when dress code gets in the way of you hearing about Jesus--for that matter, when music styles or seating or coffee prevents anyone from coming in and knowing that the number one priority of any given church is unquestionably the kingdom of God, then there’s a heart disorder that needs to be addressed. But then I remember what Paul says: “I have become all things to all people, so that by all possible means I might save some. It’s my responsibility as a pastor-in-training to do just that, but it’s also the church’s responsibility to make sure, once again, that none of their actions in and of themselves turn anyone away from Christ. It’s not just the pastor that needs to live in the fishbowl, but everyone in the body of Christ.

I’ll just wear pants next time.