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During any given Sunday morning worship service, the person with the best view in the house is the one standing in the pulpit.
I’ve been entrusted with that view on a number of occasions.
One can see, at a glance, an astonishing spectrum of humanity: young and old, eager and bored, hopeful and defeated. In the churches that I served, the great majority of worshipers wore clean clothes and had clean faces. They prayed sincerely, sang as best they could, and laughed at my attempts at humor.
Behind it all, I knew, were stories I suspected might never be spoken aloud: the one concerning the teenager who didn’t come home the previous Friday, the explosive secret that a spouse was keeping from their partner, the big fight that happened in the family minivan – on the way to church, of course.
All too often, the sanctuary proves to be a wonderful place to hide – where everyone pretends all is well.
But all is not well for most of us most of the time.
Stephen R. Haynes has written a book whose title says it all: Why Can’t the Church Be More Like an AA Meeting? Alcoholics Anonymous gatherings, like all Twelve Step groups, tend to bring together a mixed crowd you would never see in the average church service. There are bank managers sitting next to bank robbers, surgeons associating with drug abusers, socialites in this year’s fall colors seated alongside women whose clothes haven’t seen a washing machine for weeks.
What they all have in common is that they know they are desperately in need of recovery.
Haynes acknowledges that while “good church people” may feel relieved they aren’t in such dire straits, it’s really the average congregation that stands in need of recovery. Can the church be more like an AA meeting? Of course – but only as long as church attenders are willing to be more like alcoholics.
Good luck with that.
Those who gain the most at Twelve Step meetings choose to embrace profound levels of humility and self-surrender, something rarely experienced, let alone imagined, by the average church attender. Growth begins with this fundamental conviction: “There is a God, and it is not me.”
I am powerless. I need to stop pretending I’m OK. I must come to the end of my own strength in order to receive God’s strength. I’ve gotten sick by myself, but now I need others who will help me get well. I know I’ve hurt others, and I need to make amends. Most important of all, I know this isn’t a One and Done transaction. I will need to stay on this path for the rest of my life.
If this sounds more than a little familiar – and suspiciously like the core teachings of the New Testament – it’s because AA and its cousins were forged on the anvil of the Christian faith.
Bill Wilson, who originally penned the Twelve Steps, was fully aware that Jesus just happened to pick 12 disciples.
In his book Renovation of the Heart, the late Dallas Willard wondered aloud how AA has gotten it so right while the church always seems to be lagging behind:
“It is one of the all-time greatest ironies of human history that the founding insights and practices of the most successful ‘recovery’ program ever known – insights and practices almost 100 percent borrowed from bright spots in the Christian movement, if not outright gifts of God – are not routinely taught and practiced by churches. What possible justification or explanation can there be for this fact?”
Our church welcomed a weekly gathering of Narcotics Anonymous. The group met on Friday evenings in a room on the far side of our building.
Why so far off the beaten path? Our impulse was to protect the identities of the participants – to give them plenty of privacy. But I also recall another impulse. Most of those NA folks were not “our people.” They were unlikely to join us on Sunday mornings. Were we reinforcing an invisible wall of separation?
If our church had had a basement, it’s likely the Friday evening group would have gone downstairs.
For generations, AA meetings have happened in basements – often on folding chairs, in humble surroundings, with simple snacks.
Upstairs people may think they have it all together, while downstairs people are the first to admit they are trying desperately just to make it through another day.
There’s an old saying in AA:
When you come to church, you can go upstairs and hear about miracles, or go downstairs and actually see them.
May God grant us the humility and the grace to find out what might await us at the bottom of the stairs.