Rock of Ages

I’m in love. With a weird little (growing) group of people who don’t do things “right”. They wear jeans. Some have tattoos and piercings. Many of them never attended Sunday School. They didn’t grow up on Bill and Gloria Gaither.
They show up at a public high school on Sundays mornings and turn it into a church. With no pews or stained glass or organs or choirs or neckties or pantyhose (yeah!). They turn a cavernous auditorium into a sanctuary. They ARE a church. Some people call us the “Rock and Roll Church”. Officially we’re Metrosouth Church (www.metrosouthchurch.com). I love them (the church) and it (the church).
Downstairs I’m playing a CD of our worship music and it makes me anxious for Sunday morning. I was raised in church, complete with pews and stained glass and organs and choirs and neckties and pantyhose. I didn’t hate it, I loved it.
That’s the awe in our Awesome God. He’s indefinable and uncontainable (as one of my favorite songs just played). He hung the stars in the sky and He knows them by name, He is amazing...God. I learned that song at Metro. I sing it alone, with a CD and in a crowd of jumping teenagers and pierced bikers and Wayne County Sheriffs and single parents and recovering alcoholics and I can’t imagine heaven being any better, and yet I know I’m just catching glimpses.
I have seen worship flow thick and tangible through the strains of Amazing Grace on an organ. I have felt it flow over me in waves as a bunch of ragamuffins pull cables out of storage closets three hours before church starts in a high school.
I have seen altar calls with weeping glory-streaked faces after a revival service. I have seen living rooms where small groups gathered and wept together before their God and I have seen explosive kick drums announce a corporate push toward heaven.
I have seen my humble little pastor in the 1970s in suit and tie preach holiness and compel me toward Christ. I have seen my Pastor, younger than me, in jeans in his basement say, “You are so close to grace because you know you suck!” (Now one of my favorite quotes). I have been challenged anew toward Christ.
I have requested prayer by “the upraised hand” and on the internet. I’ve worshiped acapella and with music so loud it vibrated.
I have memorized verses for Sunday School awards and heard them 30 years later with no less amazement.
I have discovered and rediscovered God countless times. In high heels. In jeans. With an elderly pastor and a guy still in high school when I had my babies. With people who have known Christ since childhood and those just discovering Him in midlife.
God’s people. God. Heaven reaching down and us reaching up. That’s church. That’s life. God isn’t in the pew, or the neck tie or the stained glass. Or in the backbeat or the power point or the internet. He’s not in the organization with the established name. He’s not in the upstart who challenges the system. He’s in the heart, right where He’s always been. He’s ever new and ever the same. He’s the master artist sweeping His brush across our lives and slamming into open hearts to reveal His love.
If I can’t seem Him in a seventeen year old who shows up early to set up the stage for church then I probably wouldn’t see Him in the Crystal Cathedral.
If I can’t see Him in a Southern Baptist revival then I probably wouldn’t see Him in the Rock and Roll Church.
Another favorite worship song says “Show me your glory, send down your presence, I wanna see your face”.
I learned to see Him at four, I see Him through different eyes at thirty eight. I see Him though, still everywhere. In the heart of people worshiping in unlikely places. Desserts. Shipwrecks. Prisons. Coffeehouses. High Schools. Cathedrals. Hospitals.
It’s amazing. It’s the awe in the Awesome God. When your heart says “show me Your glory”, He does.
Everywhere.

Exodus 33:18
Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory."