This morning I attended a worship gathering at a church on the west side of town. I needed to study for my sermon tonight at Vintage Faith Church, so I left before the service ended. I was driving back across town to go study at a coffeehouse near the church offices. However, when I hit the downtown area, all the roads were totally blocked and closed with police cars. There was a parade marching by. I remembered when I saw it, that today is the annual Gay Parade downtown.

So, I parked my car and decided to study in a downtown coffeehouse since I was blocked off. I ended up walking out to the street and watched the last 15 minutes of the parade. There were several thousand people there pretty packed along the sidewalk watching.

I was looking around, and my heart began to get really heavy and I started praying. I was just praying "God, what can we do as a church to be the love and light of Jesus here to everyone." There were so many people there. There were a ton of UCSC students, lots of various local businesses and organizations who were participating in the parade in support of it. It felt extremely festive, lots of people laughing, smiling, children with their parents all around...and as I stood there I began feeling the weight of the computer bag I was carrying.

If anyone knows me, when I study I stuff my bag with several big books (usually commentaries), my laptop, daytimer, little jar of hair gel, tons of colored pencils (see the photo of the bag. I just took this photo on my cell phone and sent it to my blog. It is sitting on the floor next to the table I am now sitting at). I usually put so much stuff in this bag that I have actually broken 2 straps because of the weight of the bag. The strap on this one now is from a piece of luggage that I took the strap off of to use on this one since the last 2 broke.

My shoulder began aching, and also my back, because I was standing so long holding the computer bag as I walked around. I shifted the bag to the other shoulder, which temporarily relieved some of the weight and pain now moving into my back. The parade ended and I was walking out among the people on the closed street. Looking into their eyes, wondering who they were, what their stories were, what their thoughts of God and Jesus were. It was last Sunday morning, so most churches were still wrapping up sermons and closing songs with a relatively few people sitting in most of the church buildings here in town. All around me were thousands of people at the Gay Parade.

I must have looked odd as I walked down the center of the closed street hunched over a little because of the weight of the bag I was carrying. I kept praying as I walked over to the park where everyone was gathering. I was praying for people, praying for our church to know what to do. I felt overwhelmed, thinking about eternity, Jesus, and the giant gap between church and culture.

As I was walking along the street, I began thinking of a friend who is a lesbian. I have been interviewing her for a book I am writing for Zondervan (They Like Jesus, but not the Church) - where I am interviewing those outside of the church and finding out why they are respectful and open to Jesus, but the church is seen as something they want nothing to do with. I was thinking about some of the horrible experiences my friend shared with me that she has experienced from Christians calling her horrific names and other things that I am including in the book. As I kept walking around, I saw a booth that had brochures about gay hate crimes, and it made me sad seeing how much violence has been cast against the gay community. People getting physically beaten up etc.

It was a tearing thing, empathizing against hate crimes and violence. I also was thinking how there is a lot of hate against some Christians too, particularly in other countries. And there is instant judgments against Christians made today, in the same way we get accused (and some do) make judgments about others.

By this time the computer bag was really hurting me, carrying this heavy thing for so long. I made my way to the coffeehouse, plunked the bag off my shoulders and it hit the ground hard. But, as it hit the ground, I felt this wonderful weight off my shoulder and relief that I wasn't carrying it anymore, my back and shoulders were even tingling.

I kept thinking and praying, and then I realized that God can carry the weight of what to do about being a Christian and leading a church in our culture today. I prayed and passed the "weight" over to Him. But, at the same time I am excited about what might happen if we as a church did really pray for people, and did not hide in our little Christian subcultures. There were thousands of people at the parade on a Sunday morning , who weren't in church meetings happening at the same time. Can't we do something about all of this? There is such a disconnect between people and most of our churches today, how will a church be Jesus to our community and those outside of our churches, gay, straight, whatever people are?

I don't know what to do. But, I want to do something. I want our church to "be" something. But, my back and shoulders aren't hurting as much because the weight of the bag is now off me. Lord, help us know what to do, and what to be.