What to talk about

Monday, I had lunch with Major Steve Ashcraft, area co-ordinator for the Lexington Corps of the Salvation Army. He's also my pastor. It was a very inspiring and much-needed meeting, I think. Not only did I have a chance to share a lot of my thoughts with someone like a pastor, but hearing him share how much he loved his job and how many lives he's able to touch in the name of Christ really opened my eyes. When we went back to his office, he showed me gave me a tour of the facility and I then saw why he liked his job. We walked through a shelter that housed several families that were homeless, a food/clothes donation center, a school for at-risk kids--babies even, an after-school program, and of course...the chapel that I knew already.

What I think was so refreshing was to see a church that had built up more outside of the sanctuary than it had inside it. When I think of the Salvation Army, I don't think of it as a church. I think of it more as an organization; a backwards business that pays its customers in services, rather than the other way around. However, it is a church, but it functions entirely differently. What I see is that it realizes how there's more to a church than just its sanctuary and offices and classrooms and gyms. Few churches get that, I think. They throw most of their effort into making a great service on Sunday and think that save for a few services and small groups during the week--that's it.