The Visitor's Center

In the opening chapter of his book Just Courage, International Justice Mission founder Gary Haugen shares a story of a trip made when he was 10 years old. His father took he and his brothers to walk the paved path up Mt. Rainier. Eventually, the paved path ended and a new path emerged, one that had it's own sign, warning of the potential dangers of continuing up the mountain. Haugen's father assured him they would make it and that he would help his son every step of the way. Haugen opted, instead, for the Visitor's Center. Haugen relates:

The Paradise Meadow had a huge and magnificent Visitor's Center with exhibits and video displays of the wildflowers and wildlife, the history of the mountain, the drama of the extraordinary people who had actually climbed it. The Visitor's Center was warm and comfortable with lots of interesting things to read and to watch. I devoured the information and explored every corner of it. Judging by the crowd, this was really quite the place to be.

As the afternoon stretched on, however, the massive Visitor's Center started to seem awfully small. The warm air started to feel stuffy and the stuffed animals seemed just…dead. The inspiring loop videos about the extraordinary people who climbed the mountain just as weren't as interesting on the 6th and 7th time. They just made me wish I was one of those people going up the mountain rather than just hearing about it. I felt bored, sleepy, and small. And I missed my dad. And I was totally stuck. Totally safe but totally stuck.

After the longest afternoon in my 10-year-old life my dad and my brothers returned, flushed with their triumph. Their faces were red from the cold and their eyes were clear with delight. They were wet from the snow, they were famished, they were dehydrated and nursing scrapes from the rocks and the ice. But on the long drive home they had something else. They had stories and they had a remarkable day with their dad upon the great mountain.

A lot of handwringing goes on today over what is wrong with the Church. I believe that the Church's problem is that it has become the visitor’s center. The place we can go to hear the stories of those who followed Christ and to try and get a picture of what it might be like. The place to escape having to actually do it ourselves. We see it as our job to attract guests to the center, but we aren’t really sure how, because, much as we hate to admit it, we find the center a tad boring and oppressive ourselves. Or maybe we like the center, but only because it’s familiar, we're quick to concede that it’s not for everyone. So we hand out pamphlets on the “following God experience” because we’ve heard it’s really great. And we keep up the visitor's center in the hopes that maybe someone will want to climb the mountain. And we're surprised when people rarely do.

What we forget (or never knew) is that the good news can’t be rumors. 

In the book of Acts, the disciples Peter and John are warned to stop talking about Jesus or risk losing their lives. They famously reply that they “cannot help speaking about what [they] have seen and heard."

The truth of the gospel doesn’t mean we have proof, but it does mean we've had an experience. First hand experience.

But many of us haven't. We don't have our own story to tell, so we invest our time and effort in pointing people to event over experience, to place over person. We've never seen the mountain top ourselves, so we'd rather just show you this video.

The truth is that if all we have are rumors, our faith will falter. When doubts arise we’ll reach for the script and it won’t be enough. So we’ll either go deeper or we’ll walk away.

The book of Job is about a people with a script. The script states that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. And then bad things start happening to Job.

Job's wife sees the failure of the script and encourages Job to "curse God and die." Too often, when the script fails, people's faith falters as well. Job's friends simply stick to the script, badgering Job to think about what it is he's done to deserve God's punishment.

Only Job chooses to actually engage God. Which brings shaking fists and angry indictments and seemingly endless questions. But, in the end, Job states that "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you."

You see it isn’t the gospel that’s the problem. It isn’t that the news isn’t good.

The gospel hasn’t failed us, we have simply failed to pursue it, failed to experience it and therefore failed to believe it and to share it.

And so the answer to our crisis isn't to talk ourselves into deeper belief, but to throw ourselves into a deeper walk of faith.

Then the things that we had only heard second hand we will begin to experience first hand.

This is Christ's invitation to the disciples; "Come and see." Come and experience if this news is good. Come and discover that Jesus is who He claims to be.

Why are we so worried that people will find out what we believe? Is it because we're not sure that we do? And why are we unsure? Is it because we have dug down deep and discovered that there’s nothing there? Or is it because every time the call of Christ scared us or challenged us or threatened to change us, we stopped digging and headed for shallow ground? Every time we are threatened with scrapes, we settle for the script.

We must refuse to do so any longer. We must find out one way or the other. We must not simply stick to a script just because it’s the one we were given, but find out if it’s more than a script. Let’s test it. Let’s live it. Let’s see.

Because it isn’t that there’s nothing to see, but that we haven’t been willing to do what it takes to see.

We’re safe, but we’re stuck. We’re stuck with a script instead of a story.

Peter and John didn’t have a script. They couldn’t help but share what they had seen and heard. They had their story born out of THE story. When we don’t risk, don't seek, don't see we don’t have stories to share. Our gospel becomes hearsay. And anyone whose ever watched a courtroom drama can tell you that hearsay makes for unreliable testimony.

So, what’s it going to be? Are we following God or are we sitting still? Are we willing to risk the scrapes in order to have the stories? 

Because I made a good part of my Christianity and my career as a pastor about maintaining the visitor's center. Newer videos and a warmer environment. But I won’t maintain the visitor’s center anymore. I can’t.

What I can do is start up the trail. This church planting journey has been a step in that direction. What I can also do is invite others to go up the mountain, to risk their lives to follow Christ. No promises of an easy road. Just the promise of "God with us."