Just last week I was thinking about the fact that I had not seen any interesting bumper stickers lately. Spending as much time in my car as I do, I am always privy to someone showing their pride in their children’s school as it is displayed on the rear of their vehicle. I am also able to gauge people’s political leanings by their stickers and often peer in to see if I think the face matches the message. I am rarely disappointed. But I had not seen anything new and compelling for quite come time.

And then this morning as I was creeping along in the March snow that seemed as if it was something new to these Minnesota drivers, my eyes fell on the bumper in front of me. “Keep Church Weird” the taped message said. I laughed out loud! I tried to get in front of the person or at least beside so I could catch a glimpse of the person who was carrying this intention into the world. The snow slick streets did not allow this to happen so I could not infer anything into the message by putting a face with it. I simply had to take the words for what they were.

I have pretty much spent my life in the church. In fact I have referred to myself as a “church nerd.” By this I mean that I have almost always found the ‘stuff’ of church……the words, music, trappings, endeavors…interesting. I have not felt the same about the politics of church but that is a subject for another time. Church has been for me a kind of home. Most of the time I know how it works, how it doesn’t, how it is hoped it will work, how it probably never will work. There is a kind of comfort for me in that.

And yet I admit church is kind of weird. There are particularly ‘churchy’ words that you don’t say anyplace else. They can be a kind of code for those on the inside. This can be weird for those who have not traveled similar roads. The clothes….the robes, the vestments, the collars….also weird and from another time. In worship, I now wear them less and less in favor of ‘street’ clothes but each time I put on a robe and stole, I am aware that it connects me with some ancient practice, some community of people that has come from another time. Watching the cardinals gather to choose as new pope, I am aware of the impact these visuals can have on people.

But there is much about the weirdness of church that is such a good thing. It can be, if we are authentic to the one we claim to follow, the place where status, wealth, gender, education and all the other things that divide us mean little. Church can also be the place where those on the margins find a home, a hot meal, a hand to hold. This can seem weird to the rest of the world. Church can be a place where the most well trained musician can stand beside the one who searches for the tune and yet the two make beautiful music together. Church can be the place where the person who cannot find a home any place else, finds their name in print, on a name tag, spoken in prayer. All this often seems weird to those merely peering in through the stained glass windows.

Keep church weird? I think so. Where else could a person struggle with their deepest questions, their unwieldy demons and still be a part of the community? Where else could a bowl of soup or a piece of bread and sip of wine become something that lifts the spirit and fuels the soul? Where else could a person be blessed with water and welcomed into the clan? Where else would friends, enemies, liberals, conservatives, young ones, old ones, people of all shapes and sizes all come together to try to make sense of the More they feel moving in their lives?

Churches may change. They may grow and decline. The ways of worship may shift between what is new and what is ancient. But what makes church ‘weird’ may be the very thing that saves us and helps us continue to be relevant.

What do you think?