Four Eyes

When I was a computer programmer I took the expression to heart, “It takes four eyes to find a (programming) bug.” So often I found it to be true. Sometimes just explaining the problem would unearth the solution. Other times just walking through the problem with another person helped. Usually I found the problem wasn’t that I wasn’t looking hard enough, but rather I was looking in the wrong place or asking the wrong questions.

It seems like today when then Church is confronted with major cultural shifts in American, and we see a disconnect between the PCUSA and American society, we need to be checking out our observations with others and asking questions, sometimes in outside the box ways. We need four eyes. One striking example of this is found in Jim & Casper Go to Church. Jim Henderson, veteran Christian and director of Off the Map, hired atheist Matt Casper to visit twelve American churches from Rich Warren’s Saddleback to Joel Osteen’s Lakewood with some Pentecostal, emergent and even house churches. Jim figured that if companies would hire a ‘mystery shopper’ to test out a store’s quality of service, why not hire out non-Christians to attend a church service to get their impressions. The honesty of Henderson and Casper are unarming. What follows are a number of Casper’s observations.

“Light shows, fog machines, worship bands, offering plates – is this what Jesus intended?”

One of the most touching churches was a small group that meets in the house of Jason, a drummer friend of Casper. “And even though I don’t share Jason’s beliefs, I really respect and enjoy the guy– his friends, too….Jason doesn’t have a big church or a million bucks or ten trips to Africa under his belt, but I see first hand – almost every time we speak or get together – that he walks the walk.

“He helps African immigrants find their way around town. He and his wife teach English as a second language. He helps people build their homes….He regularly opens his home to others. And he does it all because of his belief that Jesus is his Lord, and for him, this is what Jesus would have done.” (Henderson, 76).

When asked about an inner-city church in Chicago, he stated, “What was bothering me at those (big) churches was the amount of money that was clearly being spent on technology and equipment, which I see as vain at best, hypocritical at worst. How are you helping others by spending your offering money on a Hollywood stage show?

“But more that that, it’s the massive disconnect between the words on the PowerPoint projection and the stuff I saw in the church. That woman at Willow (Creek) smiling as she sang, ‘This world holds nothing for me,’ will be stuck in my head forever.

“And at Saddleback, when you’re basically at ground zero for American wealth and prosperity, the words on the PowerPoint ‘Don’t give up’ just made no sense. “ Then Casper makes a contrast with this inner-city church: “But these folks are singing these words with abandon, real feeling. And I think that if you do worship God and you are in the literal act of worshipping God, you are giving yourself over to a higher power which, in my opinion, should be done with abandon” (Henderson, 67-68).

This book is truly a four eyes experience. Jim Henderson has a number of simple practical suggestions that could help your church better understand how ‘outsiders’ perceive that church thing we do.
David Hall