Fear Infection

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself." -- Doyle Corder, quoting someone famous that he couldn't quite remember

 

"You who fear him, trust in the LORD — he is their help and shield." - Psalm 15:11

 

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." - The Apostle John

We are all so afraid. Afraid of change. Afraid of each other. Afraid of being wrong. Afraid of being told we are wrong even when we are confident we are right. Afraid of judgments. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid. We are all so afraid.

 

I'm interrupting the Retreat Chronicles to tell the quick story of a technology minister, Craig, who worked at the West Houston Church of Christ in Houston, TX. After years of  having to spell out c-o-f-c over and over, in person and on the phone and in emails, he changed the web address of the West Houston church website from www.westhoustoncofc.org to www.westhoustonchurch.org, which solved the minor, but frequent, irritation.

 

The tech minister moved to Amarillo, to the Southwest Church of Christ, and upon his arrival here, borrowed quickly on his experience in Houston, and changed the address from www.southwestcofc.org to www.churchsouthwest.org (southwestchurch was taken, probably because there are about 5 billion southwest church's in this nation), saving us, too, from the small, but regular, inconvenience of having to spell it out. Awesome...

 

...Sort of. I got a call today from a brother who said several have approached him wondering if this change is reflective of our move from our Church of Christ heritage (including, but not limited to, the possibility of changing the name on our church sign). From what I could gather in both the love and frustration of this brother is that this is somewhat a regular thing for him to encounter. Little, normal, innocent things take place, and they trigger people's fears. In this case, the fear of change. And also in this case, it even has the power to expose a spirit of distrust, leading to a wave of fear-invoking conversations, potentially leading even to a spirit of accusation (a word used to describe our Arch-Enemy) among FAMILY. It's amazing, and quite honestly, it outlines one of the things I'm most afraid of.

 

I'm afraid of people's fear. People (including me) do horrible things in their fear. As I am typing this, one of our other ministers came in to tell me that this exact same fear came up in a Bunko (some card game, I think) conversation last night...Wow. He said he's resigning...and even though he insists that he is serious, I don't think he is. He'll probably be here Sunday, loving the fearful people that we are exactly like. I think it's his fear that would make him want to quit. I know that it is mine.

 

Fear really is an infection. We all have it, and we all spread it to each other. As far as I know, there is only one thing that works to heal it.

 

Trust.

 

Okay, maybe there are two things...love works, too. But I really think that they work hand in hand on this one. Why are we so afraid? It's so dog-gone unwise to be afraid of such small things.

 

Wisdom (which means, "thinking like God") actually comes from fear, but only from one kind. Fear of the Lord. Those who are have fear of the Lord are not shaken by the change of a website addresses, nor are they shaken by those who are shaken by the change of website addresses.

 

Fear of the Lord...It's the beginning of wisdom. Sometimes I don't think I've even begun the journey of thinking like God, the journey towards wisdom. Things like this point out that I have lots of company. God help us.

 

Unless God screams at us through a modern day equivalent of a burning bush, the servant-leadership of the Southwest Church of Christ has no intention of changing the name on our sign outside the building where we meet. The job we have our sites on is not nearly that easy...we intend on calling every member that meets inside the building to actually live up to what is on the sign. To be a church that is actually "of Christ". We'll know when that happens...the name of a website won't scare us.