New Church Smell

I don’t consider myself much of a car guy. I like cars and all that but, I’m not like my buddy Darrell who knows what every make and model of every car looks like since he was born. Since he was born somewhere in the 50’s that’s really impressive. Right now we have a 10-year-old Honda that seems to be missing some paint and that creaks and moans around every corner but, it has never had any major repairs. We also have a 7 year old minivan that looks (has more paint on it) and sounds a lot better than the Honda but, in the last 6 months it seems to like visiting the mechanic’s garage more than it likes ours. So, naturally Sandi and I started talking about possibly getting a new car. We hadn’t gotten really serious about it until all of a sudden 3 of our friends got brand new cars in about a 1 month period. So I looked in them, sat in them, and sucked in that new car smell and guess what? Yep, I started to get excited about the idea of getting a new car. Literally, every day for like the last 2 or 3 weeks we’ve started to talk about getting a new car; what we should get, when we should get it, how much we should put down. And, of course, the kids are all excited about this too. So last night I started thinking….what if this same phenomenon; you know, me not being much of a car guy getting all excited about a car, was true with church. What if church was as exciting as a new car? What if church could have that new church smell to it and people who are not necessarily church people would get excited about coming every Sunday morning and they talked about it throughout the week? What’s so cool to me is that this is the kind of church we are creating at C3. We are not creating a church that some day will be an antique that everybody just looks at. Instead, we are putting all our energy into creating a church that is dynamic, creative and embraces change. We are creating a church where week after week people tell me their stories about how they had given up on church and God but now they love coming. I love the way one dear lady put it, she said “I feel born again.” That’s exactly right! What I love too is that folks seem to have a great anticipation of – “what they will do next” and that makes it a blast to come to church. I absolutely love being part of a church that doesn’t creak and moan around every corner, but instead looks for ways to be new and fresh.