Church Voices

rab·ble n.
1. A tumultuous crowd; a mob.
2. The lowest or coarsest class of people. Often used with the.
3. A group of persons regarded with contempt.

Everywhere in every society an effort is made to keep the rabble out. Cover charges at clubs and bars are designed to do exactly that, union membership is about restricting the work force to a select few in order to raise wages, things like the bar exam and medical boards are intended to restrict their respective fields to qualified individuals. Recently, there’s been tension between mere bloggers and official press. It begins with the debate about whether bloggers are covered by press protections passed into law, and continues on now in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks banning and then unbanning bloggers from the locker room. At first, reporters and other full fledged members of the media resisted bloggers as anything more than pathetic hobbyists, now as bloggers have flexed their influence and audiences the question isn’t whether or not bloggers are proper members of the press, the question has shifted to which bloggers are legit.

In all of these cases there’s a clear monetary and/or prestige benefit to keeping the rabble out. Doctors, lawyers, the press, union members and bartenders all can charge more, and be seen as more important than otherwise by drawing a bright blue line between themselves and everyone else.

Now let me make what should be an entirely uncontroversial statement. A statement that you’ll probably agree with and amen. And that is that the church should never keep the rabble out. There should be no cover charges or bar exams to keep people from the gospel. I imagine everyone probably agrees with that statement. But let me share a couple of stories with you.

The first happened to one of our occasional writers here, Ben Walker. He invited a friend of his to church and after awhile the friend came. Now this guy had a shaved head (back before aging Gen-Xers figured out that a shaved head was better than a balding one), and his clothes would certainly never have been described as “church clothes”. He walked into the building, took a look around and said, “I can’t do this” and walked out. Without a single met gaze, smile, or conversation the guy figured out that he was rabble.

The second is happening at a church I’m familiar with. They have a Saturday night service that is constantly in flux. People begin coming to the Saturday service and then at some point shift to a Sunday morning service. When the Senior Minister began asking people who had made the switch he found the same story over and over again. These were people who had gone through divorces, bankruptcies, and other socially frowned upon situations and so felt as if they didn’t belong in a church. However, the Saturday service was just far enough away from a traditional church service they would go to that. And as they learned about the tidal wave sized vastness of God’s grace they moved to the Sunday services.

No one told the people in these stories that they were rabble. No one was charging a cover charge, or handing out requirements for church attendance, but somehow they either figured it out, or got the wrong idea (depending on how charitable you want to be).

Now this is where contextualization comes into play. Despite the few people who continue to cling to the idea that its possible to not contextualize, the hard, cold reality is that everything you do is contextualized in some way. How you dress, talk, walk, breathe, and socialize are all contextualized to your culture. And if you don’t want to keep the rabble out you need to contextualize well, rather than poorly.