Since it was published about ten years ago, I’ve managed to read Philip Yancey’s book Church: Why Bother? several times, about every two or three years. I pulled it off the shelf last week and started it again. I suppose the reason I keep coming back to it is because I still ask myself that question every now and then, more often than I read this book, and I also enjoy Yancey’s writing more than any current writer out there.

We’ve actually had trouble finding a church where we really feel at home since we’ve moved back to Little Rock. We’re at our second church now, and over the last 6-8 months, we’ve almost left several times. And, that’s still a possibility today. There are a number of reasons for that, which I don’t wish to discuss here (at least not now.) I will say that we very much loved our church in Huntsville, Alabama, and have been particularly disappointed that we have been unable to find a Little Rock equivalent to that church. Our kids, after nearly a year and a half where we are now, still would like to go back to our previous church here in Little Rock that we left last year. So, it continues to be a struggle, and frankly, sometimes I feel like I just don’t want to bother, if only for a while.

Nevertheless, I always find it interesting to read stories about other churches, and sometimes find myself thinking, “I’d like to be a part of a church like that” (and other times thankful my church is not like that.) The following story is from Yancey’s book, about his former church when he lived in Chicago. First of all, it sounds like an interesting place where no Sunday would ever be considered dull. But the thing I liked about the story was the message of grace that seems to be so central to their lives and mission. If this account is any indication, this church is a group that embodies the grace God has extended to themselves.

Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to share it anyway:

Perhaps in reaction against the legalism of his childhood, Bill Leslie, the pastor at LaSalle Street Church, never tired of the theme of Grace: he recognized his own endless need for grace, preached it almost every Sunday, and offered it to everyone around him in starkly practical ways. As I sat under his ministry Sunday after Sunday I gradually absorbed grace, as if by osmosis. I came to believe, truly believe, that God loves me not because I deserve it but because he is a God of grace. God’s love comes free of charge, with no strings attached. There is nothing I can do to make God love me more-or less.

Grace, I concluded, was the factor most glaringly absent from my childhood church. If only our churches could communicate grace to a world of competition, judgment, and ranking - a world of ungrace - then church would become a place where people gather eagerly, without coercion, like desert nomads around an oasis. Now, when I attend church, I look inward and ask God to purge from me the poisons of rivalry and criticism and to fill me with grace. And I seek out churches characterized by a state of grace.

I learned an enduring lesson about what grace looks like in action from my church’s response to Adolphus, a young black man with a wild, angry look in his eye. Every inner-city church has at least one Adolphus. He had spent some time in Vietnam, and most likely his troubles started there. He could never hold a job for long. His fits of rage and craziness sometimes landed him in an asylum.

If Adolphus took his medication on Sunday, he was manageable. Otherwise, well, church could be even more exciting than usual. He might start at the back and high hurdle his way over the pews down to the altar. He might raise his hands in the air during a hymn and make obscene gestures. Or he might wear headphones and tune in rap music instead of the sermon.

As part of worship, LaSalle had a time called “Prayers of the People.” We would all stand, and spontaneously various people would call out a prayer-for peace in the world, for healing of the sick, for justice in the community around us. “Lord, hear our prayer,” we would respond in unison after each spoken request. Adolphus soon figured out that Prayers of the People provided an ideal platform for him to air his concerns.

“Lord, thank you for creating Whitney Houston and her magnificent body!” he prayed one morning. After a puzzled pause, a few chimed in weakly, “Lord, hear our prayer.”

“Lord, thank you for the big recording contract I signed last week, and for all the good things happening to my band!” prayed Adolphus. Those of us who knew Adolphus realized he was fantasizing, but others joined in with a heartfelt “Lord, hear our prayer.”

Regular attenders came to expect the unexpected from Adolphus’s prayers. Visitors had no idea what to think: their eyes would snap open and their necks would crane to get a look at the source of these unusual prayers.

Adolphus called down judgment on all the white people in the church who had caused Mayor Harold Washington such stress that he had a heart attack. He railed against President George Bush who sent troops against Iraq while people were being killed in the streets of Chicago. He gave regular reports on the progress of his music group. Some of these prayers were met with an awkward silence. Once Adolphus prayed “that the white honkey pastors of this church would see their houses burn down this week.” No one seconded that prayer.

Adolphus had already been kicked out of three other churches. He preferred attending an integrated church because he enjoyed making white people squirm. Once he stood up in a Sunday school class I was teaching and said, “If I had an M-16 rifle I would kill all you people in this room.” We white people squirmed.

A group of people in the church, including a doctor and a psychiatrist, took on Adolphus as a special project. Every time he had an outburst, they pulled him aside and talked it through, using the word “inappropriate” a lot. “Adolphus, your anger may be justified. But there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to express it. Praying for the pastor’s house to burn down is inappropriate.”

We learned that Adolphus sometimes walked the five miles to church on Sunday because he could not afford the bus fare. Members of the congregation began to offer him rides. Some invited him over for meals. Most Christmases, he spent with our assistant pastor’s family.

Boasting about his musical talent, Adolphus asked to join the music group that sang during communion services. It turned out that he had absolutely no musical ability. After hearing him audition, the leader settled on a compromise: Adolphus could stand with the others and sing, but only if his electric guitar remained unplugged. Each time the group performed thereafter, Adolphus stood with them and sang and played his guitar, which, thankfully, produced no sound. Generally this compromise worked well, except for the Sundays when Adolphus skipped his medication and felt led to do a gyrating Joe Cocker imitation across the platform as the rest of us lined up to receive the body and blood of Christ.

The day came when Adolphus asked to join the church. Elders quizzed him on his beliefs, found little by way of encouragement, and decided to put him on a kind of probation. He could join when he demonstrated that he understood what it meant to be a Christian, they decided, and when he learned to act appropriately around others in church.

Against all odds, Adolphus’s story has a happy ending. He calmed down. He started calling people in the church when he felt the craziness coming on. He even got married. And on the third try Adolphus was finally accepted for church membership.

Grace comes to people who do not deserve it, and for me Adolphus came to represent grace. In his entire life, no one had ever invested that kind of energy and concern in him. He had no family, he had no job, he had no stability. Church became for him the one stable place. It accepted him despite all he had done to earn rejection.

The church did not give up on Adolphus. It gave him a second chance, and a third, and a fourth. Christians who had experienced God’s grace transferred it to Adolphus, and that stubborn, unquenchable grace gave me an indelible picture of what God puts up with by choosing to love the likes of me. I now look for churches that exude this kind of grace.

- pp 33-37

Considering that my experiences with church growing up were in some ways similar to that of Yancey’s and his pastor - where legalism was more likely to be found than grace - it’s always refreshing to read about a church truly being Jesus to someone who, elsewhere, might quickly be shown the door. And it is stories like this which continue to give me hope that maybe church is worth the bother after all.