Men's Room

So I had just gotten back from a 14 mile backpacking trip with a group of guys from Newport. It was honestly one of the best times I have had with that group of guys, and we decided that it would be cool to stop at Cracker Barrel for a good ole' fashion chow down. We of course pick the hottest Cracker Barrel this side of Asheville and so to pass the time the porcelain heaven was calling my name. While in the men's room I started to realize how men change when they enter a bathroom. Like the guy who just gave you the redneck head dip a few minutes ago becomes an over friendly, pain asking about your t-shirt size and what not. Or the old man in the rocker who glared at you on the way in becomes the single fastest paper towel grabber in the history of the world. If you ever get the privilege of meeting the man who sat you or is your server in the restroom don't expect much. All bets are off in that room, and everyone is on equal ground, the only guys working for tips in there have cologne, or are just SCARY! Why i wrote this is probably not evident and I guess its maybe a little awkward, but I am slowly realizing just how different men are and how irrelevant our churches are today to the needs and feelings of men. For one we have a discounted idea that men have no feelings, and we have forgotten that most of us don't respond to words on a page, or the air-conditioned room with all its bell's and whistles, will call it "The Sanctuary". No, I think God is in the air we breathe that isn't conditioned. I think he's in our male bonds and codes like ripping on each other is cool, but being there when some other guy gets jumpy with your boy, that's manhood. He is in our sexuality, aggression, passion, heart, the way we cant shake a good story, and the times when the girl you love arms are exactly what you needed or reminiscing on lessons you learned as a kid from your old man. I think He is in grease and sweat and blood, and scars with cool stories. He's in the jealously of a good wound from a sport like Rugby that someone else gets and not me. (ROB JEFFCOAT) We are created to be a way, we were not created run away from the way we are. If we want the church to be relevant to men, maybe it should go back to the way Jesus intended it, relationships, friends, family, community, living life together. A mountain screams GOD! to me way more than a choir robe, and I see the love of Jesus much more in a hand held out to help a brother off the court than a cheap smile in the middle of pew on Sunday. I see the Spirit of God in the fear and smallness we feel when we really see God for who He is, stripped away from the box that urbanity has put Him in, and His raw power is shown in the smallest breeze. That's the God that changes people, that makes men's hearts melt away, and makes us strive to be different. Jesus never went to church, He was church.