Welcoming the not-so-beautiful people

John Hatcher is pastor of Outreach International Center, 1091 South Jeff Davis Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30215. 770-719-0303

By John Hatcher
Contributing Writer

He was a friend to tax gatherers and sinners! That was the scuttlebutt making its rounds in Jerusalem and its environs. This healing, teaching prophet from Nazareth made a point to make friends with the outcasts of his day: like prostitutes, lepers, and yes, tax collectors (Today we don’t believe tax collectors are so unscrupulous. Our Fayette County Tax Commissioner is a fine man and, unlike his Roman counterparts in Jesus’ day, he doesn’t skim off the top before he allocates the monies to the various agencies). The point was and is: Jesus sought out these kinds of people for his church.

Look at us now. We want the beautiful people. We want the rich people. We want the successful entrepreneurs. We want high society. “Oh, did you know he belongs to the ‘Snobs,’ one of Fayette’s finest and oldest families?”

We want the educated people to come to our churches. “We have more Ph.D.s than any church in Georgia!”

We want famous people. “She is the mother of the cousin whose brother is in the movies.”

We want solid people who will strengthen the church. “He was the chairman of Deacons when his last church fired the pastor. Isn’t it great he in our church now.”

It’s almost despicable to think that the kind of people to whom Jesus extended his unconditional love and acceptance are the very ones we overlook as we try to build our great churches. Who on earth do we think we are? Our Commander and Chief has given not only verbal instructions, but also he has laid out an example for us to follow. Yet, we hear the words of the chairman of the finance committee, “Yea, but those kind of people don’t give.” And, since those kinds of people don’t give, we write them off, set aside a modest sum for the county goodwill fund and go our merry way.

Doesn’t it make you sick you look out at your congregation Sunday after Sunday and see everybody and they all look like you, drive an automobile similar to yours, and go to the same restaurants you enjoy?

More than a year ago I had the opportunity to visit a ministry in urban Louisville, Kentucky. I found the ministry smack dab in the drug and red light district. Rev. Dennis Lyons serves as pastor.

In an interview with Louisville’s Courier-Journal in December 2003, Rev. Lyons said he “proudly declared that his church welcomes gang members, hustlers, pimps and prostitutes. ‘I don’t mind the church being known as a church full of crooks, because the crooks need faith to get them to where they can get to Christ,’ Lyons said. ‘They’ve got to have faith, and somebody’s got to deal with them when they don’t have faith to give them faith. ... We embrace the people of the street.’”

We, on the other hand, embrace people with a stock portfolio.

In an attempt to help my church, Outreach International Center, to comprehend ministries that touch people who are not so beautiful and not so well off, I’ve invited Rev. Lyons to preach a series of meetings Sept. 26-29. He preaches the Gospel couched in the language of the street, even in language we in pampered Fayette can understand because even if we don’t invite these people to church, we see them on television in series after series.

Rev. Lyons is one of the most entertaining and effective preachers I have ever heard. He becomes riveting as he tells his true-life stories with an animation that seems to make him featherweight. He shares his tact of the Gospel with obvious joy that contagious. One almost wants to follow him home and join his Louisville ministry.

But we don’t need to go to the other side of the railroad tracks in Louisville to find people who are marked for the devil and who are more comfortable with a needle in hand rather then a Bible in hand. I learned long ago serving in Palm Beach County that where there is great wealth, there is also great need.

We have terrific pain in Fayette and neighboring Clayton Counties. Just like Jesus, we need to go after them and ask them to populate our churches so that when Jesus comes again, we all won’t look like alike, smell alike, think alike and act alike.

John Hatcher is pastor of Outreach International Center, 1091 South Jeff Davis Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30215. 770-719-0303