The Outlaw Car I Desire

It was an evil looking car.  

I rent fun cars for fun on the regular, because I am old, of a generation that still thought cars were cool.  Convertibles. Sports cars.  Luxury cars.  All of the vehicles that I find delightful, but that I lack the resources or desire to own.  I'll request contributions to my rental car fund for birthdays and Christmakkah, and on a beautiful weekend, I'll get one for my pleasure.  

This last weekend, it was a 2017 Dodge Challenger T/A 392, rented through a service from an utterly friendly dude who lives nearby.

Menacing.  A little too obviously criminal, the sort of vehicle driven by a villain in a slightly dumb but entertaining movie intended for the undiscerning masses.

Dark as night, the wheels similarly blackened, what is now typically called "murdered-out" in the car community.  The engine, an immense eight cylinder, each bank of the vee larger than the straight-six under the hood of the perfectly quick BMW I last rented.  The exhaust note ranged from a growling rumble to a snarling, vicious roar, and unlike the blatty falseness of so many "performance" exhausts, the bite was as deep as the bark.  Four hundred and eighty five horsepower gets you going real fast real quick.  Or it lights up the rear tires.  Get too hard on the throttle in a turn, and it sends you sideways.  Zero to sixty comes in the low fours, with a top speed of over a hundred and eighty.  

This was the sort of car that would have gotten me into some real trouble when I was seventeen. 

It radiated "outlaw," and I found myself very much noticing every single law enforcement officer I drove by.  The engine growled and spat as each patrol car passed, though I drove as gently as I could.  Because people...and cops...do make assumptions about such a car.  Why drive one if you're not planning on doing something extralegal?  

Rumbling about in the beast for a few days got me thinking again about a car that is actually an outlaw.  To possess this car and drive it on American roads is actually against the law, a criminal act, one with all sorts of penalties, including confiscation.  

I desire it.  In fact, I desire it so much I'd own one.  

Here it is:

Radiates menace, doesn't it?   It's a Honda N Box, which one pronounces En-uh Bock-su if you're a total weeb.  

It's a kei car, meaning a teeny tiny vehicle designed for Japanese cities and roads.  It comfortably seats four six footers, has all wheel drive, and all the modern safety features.  It's easy to get in and out of.  It is astoundingly practical, perfect for in town errands.  It gets over fifty to the gallon.  Though it's tiny, it has been designed to accommodate a wheelchair.  It's capable of puttering along all day on the highway at between 60 and 65.  It gets to 60...gradually.  Top speed?  Maybe eighty five, assuming you're going downhill with a following wind.  It costs, brand new, under twenty grand.

It is exactly what I need.  Not just want, because it's cute as a button, but need.  I don't need more car than this.  Most of us don't.

It is also illegal in America.

Some outlaws are bad.  And some outlaws are outlaws because the law is bad.  You'd think we'd know the difference.

The Sin of Being Small

An article made its way to me through my media feeds multiple times in the last week, so I bothered reading it today.   "Five Really Bad Reasons For Leaving Your Church," or somethin' like that.

It was a blog-missive from a church-plantin'-pastor type, admonishing Christians for some of the less-valid reasons they find to abandon a congregation, structured into one of those nice neat little lists that are a surefire way to drive web traffic.

It wasn't terrible, and I found myself agreeing with it, mostly, with one notable exception.

That exception came with bad-reason-number-two:  "The Church is Getting Too Big."   As a reason to leave, that tends to occur when a community is experiencing significant growth, and folks feel a sense of loss as the thing they valued disappears.

That, frankly, can be a major problem for some churches, as legitimate growth is sabotaged by human beings whose personal power within a community is threatened by newcomers.  On a more neutral front, it can be hard for others to find a way to let go of the sense of identity that a little fellowship provides.  There's real loss and mourning there, but that shouldn't prevent a community from being a place of welcome.

But the pesky thing with bloggery is that it tends to push us to make bolder statements.  Like, say, that: "Remaining small is a sad and unbiblical goal."  He then goes so far as to accuse those who like intimate communities of being "in need of repentance." As a small church pastor, that gets me dander up, it does.  But I took a few deep breaths, and tried to see it from his perspective.

Because even there, I can see where he's coming from.  We're not supposed to hide our light under a bucket, after all.  We are charged with going out into the world and spreading the Good News.

But organizational expansion and the Great Commission are very different things.  If I tell the Good News to another human being, and they are changed by it, that's the growth I seek.  I do not care if they choose to live that changed life out as a pledge unit in my community.  If I do, then the growth is about me and my desire, and not about the spread of the Spirit.

In point of fact, "remaining small" is paradoxically central to the growth of the Gospel.  This is why Big Parking Lot Churches so assiduously and carefully support small gatherings.  That's where relationship happens, and conversation happens, and sustained transformation happens.  It's where the Spirit moves most freely.  The big emotional hit of a perfectly choreographed crowd-worship?  That fades away as quickly as Psy's fame.  It is not growth.  The meat and life of the Way is in those places where you are connecting to other flawed, struggling, growing, beautiful souls, and walking the walk with them.

Those places are small.

"Growth is inevitable," he suggests.  It isn't, because it can't be.  Not every community is growing.  I recently spent a weekend in West Virginia, and as I wended my way down some lovely, twisty country roads, I passed dozens of small churches.  There is no sprawl there.  It's rural, and population is either stable or declining.

Churches there do not grow large, because they are not in the urban, suburban, or exurban places where growth in our culture is occurring.  Are these rural gatherings illegitimate?  Are they not places where the Gospel is needed and legitimately expressed?  I cannot believe either of those things to be so.  But it is easy, in our consumer culture, to equate numerical expansion with what is good.  This is not so.

"If you don't like big churches, you wouldn't have liked the first church, and you certainly won't like heaven," he suggests.

I'm not quite so sure on either of those points.  First, the "first church," assuming he's talking about the ones Paul and Apollos and Cephas and others planted?  Those were house churches.  Not large, not flashy, not hundreds and hundreds of souls.  By our standards, those were small gatherings.  So I'm not quite sure what that means.   And second: heaven?  I don't think it bears any resemblance to Big Stadium Worship.  Or anything we now understand.  I mean, seriously, dude.

Yes, I know American culture venerates expansion and growth.  Just look at our midsections.

But let's not cast aside the small without considering what we're throwing away.