The Spiritual Gifts of Sunday Morning Hermits

I've been noticing a peculiar habit of mine.

It started as I was having my morning coffee. If you've ever had the coffee at Shoal Creek Community Church you'll notice that 1) It's flavorless, 2) It's odorless, 3) It has enough caffeine to kill a small horse.

Number three is why I love the coffee at SCCC. It's not great coffee. It's often too hot to drink for the first 10 minutes after you pour yourself a cup. The saving grace of our coffee is this: if you ever find yourself trying to avoid Freddy Kruger, our Joe is top-notch.

So my routine on a Sunday morning goes like this:

1. Arrive at about 8:30 a.m.
2. Drop my stuff off in the SCCC Panic Room a.k.a. the Triangle a.k.a. the Media Booth.
3. Walk down stairs and get a cup of coffee from the break room.
4. Go to the triangle and pretend to know something technical as I manipulate sound for the webcast or quarterback the video board.
5. Head downstairs during half-time (between both services) and wander around looking like a toddler who just found himself holding on to the skirt of somebody other than his mom. (I don't actually grab skirts. This was a metaphor for my lostness. I did however have an awkward experience with a man in a kilt once, but in my defense, I've never seen smoother calves.)
6. Repeat steps 3 & 4.
7. Perform the obligatory "Stand Around In the Auditorium with Friends for 15 Minutes" which is only trumped by the "Go to the Restroom for 15 Minutes as the Morning Coffee Rips Through Your Digestive Track like a Battle Axe."

That's my typical Sunday Morning. Granted, there are variables to that, but most of them revolve around any arguments, debates, conversations we had in the Triangle. Before you fool yourself into thinking we had a serious theological debate in the triangle, know that we spent much of this past Sunday morning in a heated argument over whether or not one of us could take professional, female, mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano in a one-on-one UFC-style fight.

Now there are pros and cons to what I do on a Sunday Morning. Pros include: helping to try and create a good Sunday morning experience for the internet, learning about technical video production, & not having to wear pants in my serving area. (Kidding. But I always wonder...)

Pseudo-Spiritual Gift #1: Hiding

The Con of what I do is that it feeds into what I often think of as my 3 greatest spiritual gifts.

I don't think there are many Biblical references to hiding being a spiritual gift, but, I mean David hid from people trying to kill him, Moses was hidden in a basket in the reeds to escape death, and Joseph was hidden by his brothers which ultimately led to Joseph living a pretty neat life. So hiding can be a positive.

But then, of course, I'm reminded of the original Hide-and-Seek enthusiasts and very-well tanned people--Adam & Eve. They hid because they were ashamed of a sin they had committed.

So why do I hide in a windowless room with my friends on a Sunday morning? Nobody is trying to kill me and, in fact, I face more risk of bodily harm in the Triangle where my friends are bigger than me, love to wrestle, and nobody can hear me scream behind 8 inches of brick.

I hide behind serving in church for the same reason I hid behind serving in college. Which is the same reason I hid in my dorm room for the first year of college. Which is why I hid at home during high school. Which is why I hid behind books throughout my life. Which is why I hide behind jokes and a rude, sarcastic demeanor today.

And it's why I'm beginning to think that Adam and Eve were hiding on that awful day in Eden so long ago.

I think Adam and Eve hid because they didn't think that anybody (and at this time, God was the only "body" around that wasn't an animal. And no, this wasn't a Disney movie, animals didn't talk in Eden.) would/could/should accept them. When they sinned, they knew they had done something bad. They may not have had a word for it, but they knew it was bad to have eaten from the tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil.

I wonder if they knew that God was omnipresent; that He could see everything, everywhere. I think they hid much like a child hides under a blanket. If a razor sharp monster wants to make you into dinner, a blanket doesn't do jack squat. But a child hides anyway because even though success is a longshot, it's better than doing nothing. Maybe Adam & Eve were afraid of what God would do to them when He found out what happened.

Often things happen in life and they aren't good things. They are maybe things that happen to you or things you do and you feel shame or guilt or just tainted. You don't know what to do with those things, so you hide. You hide behind confidence or behind sex. Maybe you hide behind hard work or even kindness.

You think, "If I do these things, if I act this way, I won't be noticed. I WILL be noticed, but the person I want others to see in me will be noticed. The good me will be noticed. I can hide the rest of me--the shameful, stubborn me--behind this shield of hard work, kindness, beauty, religion, etc"

Me? I hide behind humor and pessimism. I make myself unattractive on the outside of the car so that nobody will peak into the trunk of the car. I hide physically too. Sometimes I love to sink into the corner of a room and just watch people mingle. I avoid people a lot.

Especially on Sundays for some reason. Hundreds of people gather on Sunday mornings at Shoal Creek to worship together, to ask questions about Jesus together, and to seek the Trinity together. It's odd that I feel a need to hide there at what should be a hub of grace and understanding.

And as a side note: I've never been to a community as warm and inviting as Shoal Creek. I love my home there quite a bit. But even in their own home, people hide. Until I learn to trust God with my mess, I will always be a boy pretending to be a hermit.

Pseudo-Spiritual Gift #2: Telepathy

I remember my freshman year of college. I had guys on my dorm floor who wanted me to go out with them on weekends to parties so that I could experience college life. I went a couple of times, but...I have this other weird gift--I think I can read minds.

Now read that carefully. My gift is not that I can "read minds." My gift is that I "think I can read minds." My gift--that has caused me as much difficulty in life as hiding--is that I have this uncanny ability to assume what people think about me.

So when a normal person enters a college party, what happens in the first 10 seconds? They scan the floor and say, "There's the beer. There are the ladies. There's the bathroom. OK, go."

What happens during the first 10 seconds when I enter a party? I say, "That guy wants to punch me. Those girls are all laughing at me. The party just lost 100 fun points because I walked in."

How do I do this? How am I able to read minds so accurately? I'm not sure. Like I said, it's a gift. I'm psychic.

Psuedo-Spiritual Gift #3: Misreading the Data

If you have noticed, Pseudo-Spiritual Gift #1 is fed into by Psuedo-Spiritual Gift #2. Let me show you what feeds into PSG #2.

Maybe my greatest gift is an ability to feel unwanted wherever I go. Like I said, it's taken me 4 years of my friends trying to convince me over and over and over and over and over again that they legitimately want to be my friend. Which makes no sense to me given the data. I'm not cool. I have no talents of use to anybody--actually I take that back. I make a great wing man because I can scare women off like no other, but that's beyond the point.

I hide in the Triangle, mostly, because I see all of the people who come to Shoal Creek on a Sunday morning and I think, "Wow. God is doing amazing things here." And then I about 2 seconds later, I think, "Wow. These people are going to think I'm the worst person they ever met." So I hang out with the people that it took 4 years to believe they weren't completely annoyed with me.

When I think about this outside of the context of myself--meaning I think about my place in my fear as opposed to how I feel about it--I realize that God has blessed me in a huge way and I kind of just push it away.

My whole life I have longed for a place to belong and to feel less like myself (awkward, geeky, bland, etc.)...and God has granted that. Shoal Creek is a place where I honestly believe that I can be real and authentic and I can ask hard questions about God and have people point me back to God when I stray. God has given me a place where he says, "Here, you can be you..the you that your sinning has made you into and the you that I am redeeming you into." Continually, God shows me examples in the lives of people who didn't think they would be accepted in a church, but they come to Shoal Creek and they feel accepted. (Others churches do this phenomenally well also, so don't think I believe we have a patent on this.)

God gives me the gift of an accepting community and I say, peek through the mail flap on the front door and say, "Thank you God. Just leave it on the step and I'll get it when it's safe."

I misread the data of who I am and who God is. That causes me to assume I know what's going on. That makes me want to hide. Maybe if I spent less time trying to justify what God is offering and spent more time just trusting Him, I'd be less of a hermit.