David:     Once upon a time there was an emperor who loved beautiful clothing. Karen, do you recall a famous story or fairy tale that began that way?

Karen:     Sounds very much like the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     Okay let’s fill in some of the details of that story just to refresh everyone’s memory all right.

Karen:     Well, let me begin with it. I’m just quoting the first paragraph of the story. “Many years ago, there was an emperor who was so excessively fond of new clothes that he spent all his money in dress. He did not trouble himself in the least about his soldiers nor did he care to go either to the theater or to the chase except for the opportunities they afforded him for displaying his new clothes. He had a different suit for each hour of the day and as of any other king or emperor one is accustomed to say, while he is sitting in council, it was always said of him the emperor is sitting in his wardrobe.”

David:     It’s a great beginning.

Karen:     It’s a great beginning.

David:     And now enter the scoundrels.

Karen:     The rogues they’re called by Hans Christian Andersen.

David:     There are two guys who think we could take this guy out and get a little money in the whole process.

Karen:     They called themselves weavers and they wove they said the most remarkable cloth.

David:     It was so remarkable that you couldn’t even see it.

Karen:     If you weren’t fit for office, you couldn’t see it at all. It was, you know, a way to divide and conquer here.

David:     It was taking advantage. Well, they could have taken advantage of the king and he could have fought for a hook line and sinker.

Karen:     There was one other qualifier about this cloth. It also showed who was extraordinarily simple in character if that person couldn’t see it either.

David:     If the person couldn’t see the cloth, then they weren’t fit for office. So, the king he’s been set up. He doesn’t want to admit that he can’t see what they’re weaving. So, he kind of oozes it to us and thinks, “Oh I got to get some of that beautiful clothing for myself. That’ll be wonderful.”

Karen:     So, he would send members of his constituency.

David:     Two of his top guys.

Karen:     Yeah, the weavers are getting on the clock.

David:     They’re brought into the story.

Karen:     They don’t want to be thought to be too simple and not worth the other of their charge. So, they glowed in odd and who knew about the clock.

David:     Where in the world did you find these incredible men? They’re wonderful in what they do.

Karen:     So, the story goes on. We have seen this parade is going to happen through town and the emperor is under a canopy and everyone in the town is not wanting to be thought of as simple or unfit. So, they’re all owing and eyeing about this extraordinary cloth with a gold woven through it and how exquisite until a little child.

David:     Yeah, little guy doesn’t say when it’s a boy or girl. Doesn’t matter.

Karen:     Doesn’t matter. “But the emperor has nothing at all on.” Said a little child. Listen to the voice of the innocence. Acclaimed the father and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.

David:     Then pretty soon you hear the dithers start.

Karen:     But he has nothing.

David:     And then this great roar.

Karen:     And all on.

David:     Yeah, he’s making a jaybird.

Karen:     The emperor was vexed, finishes Anderson, for he knew that the people were right. But he thought the procession must go on. Now, and the lords of the bed chamber took greater pains than ever to appear holding up a train. In reality there was no train to hold. Oh, my goodness.

David:     Yeah, it’s a moment of truth. It’s a great story and may have been written with some specific situation in mind. I don’t know.

Karen:     Certainly, lasted through the centuries.

David:     Yeah, it has. I want to come back to this story but I’m going to go back right at the moment to a topic we’ve been discussing here a number of times. We live in what’s called West Chicago. Chicago is long and narrow. Runs north and south.

North side or the south side. It takes a long while to get to the center of the city. But if you go west, you get pretty quickly to the center of the city. You can’t say from the east because that’s where the lake is. But West Chicago is relatively close to the city. We’re probably an hour to drive into the loop in Chicago. We have been wanting to visit the churches of West Chicago.

West Chicago is a little over half Hispanic. We love it. We’ve been here for 45 years. We’ve been involved in the church in terms of the country but not in terms of a local church recently. We were attending church in the city but when you got sick that was very difficult to go in there. So, we said, “Well, let’s get more acquainted with our suburb.”

Karen:     So, how many of the West Chicago churches have you visited?

David:     I was amazed Karen. I have 17 churches on the list where we feel like we know the church to the degree we’ve been there and participated in a service or whatever. We go with certain things in mind.

Karen:     This isn’t a critical journey at all. We’re just we feel like kind of impressed by the Holy Spirit that we need to know these churches and then eventually get to know their pastors.

David:     And you wanted to see if we could work out some kind of a hospitality and make this a very hospitable suburb.

Karen:     Could I offer free teachings for those churches on the gift of hospitality and how we’re told to be given to hospitality. And could we reach out to our neighbors in the community? So, we thought we couldn’t do that until we really had visited all the churches.

David:     One of the things that we’re interested in is what does it feel like to be a visitor to come where no one knows you. And are they warm and welcoming and such. And some of them are really, really good at it.

Karen:     But not a whole lot, David.

David:     The majority would not be good at it. We went last Sunday to what would be called by most people the contemporary church and it certainly fits that category. We got there early. I looked at my watch when we walked from where we parked, and it was like 12 minutes before the start of the service time. I could see very quickly there were greeters at the door. They were in conversation as we walked up…

Karen:     …with one another.

David:     Yes, as we walked up, they stopped and each one of them said, “Welcome, welcome, welcome.” Nobody said, “Haven’t seen you before. Are you visitors? What brought you here?” Nothing like that.

Karen:      “Where do you live? What are your names?” Nothing like that.

David:     Then when we came in, there was like an usher, and he was very good. He conversed. I thought he was very friendly. We went into the sanctuary and sat in the very middle so you could hardly miss us.

Karen:     Too white-haired old geezers.

David:     I don’t know where geezers but we’re white haired.

Karen:     Whatever that is.

David:     No one said anything to us the whole of the service before or after.

Karen:     And it was in the pre-service. It was a chatty time. So, it was a communicative time among those who were used to coming there. But not anyone said, “Hey I don’t think…”

David:     I don’t think we’ve seen you before.

Karen:     Yeah, nothing like that.

David:     As the service was over people talked with one another and we didn’t race out. We just kind of…

Karen:     …lingered a bit and slowly walked out. Same thing.

David:     The only person who said something was a lady who was giving away postcards that advertised the special service of the church. And she said, “Hope you can come.” And we walked to the car and that was it.

Karen:     That was it.

David:     But that was more typical. There were exceptional churches. I think of one church where the gentleman we hardly got in the door. I said, “Wow, I’ve not seen you before. What caused you to come here to our church? We’re thrilled that you’ve come.” And he engaged us. And then he said, “Let me introduce you to some of the people.” Walked into the sanctuary.

Karen:     Wonderful.

David:     Here are some new people. It was kind of like, “Wow it’s working.” And we stayed and talked a long time after that service.

So, there were situations like this. Karen, we went to traditional services. We went to contemporary churches. We went to Catholic churches. We went to Protestant churches. It’s been a very interesting time.

I want to add another element here. If you go back over 100 days anyway the huge news story was Ukraine. And so, we know 100 days because it’s past that point. Everyone is talking about Ukraine. The next big story that happened was the mass shootings in Buffalo.

Karen:     Buffalo.

David:     These people in the grocery store. Then the next thing was in Uvalde in down in Texas and the little children.

Karen:     Slaughtered the little children. Unbelievable.

David:     It’s impossible not to know those things were going on. Nothing! Nothing was said in any of those 17 churches about anything that was going on. Nothing that said we live in Chicago. Chicago is the worst city in the whole country as far as shootings. I mean people driving by and shooting into block parties. It’s just incredible. But nothing was said in any of those churches except for two that I can remember. One was a beautiful testimony by the pastor who was talking on the topic of gratitude and how good it makes you feel when you do for others as you would have them do for you. Do you remember that? He was excited.

Karen:     Yeah, excited and they have very practical consequences that they were attempting to enact.

David:     Yeah, and they had sent an amazing amount of money for that church to have this person go to Ukraine by certain necessities and present it to the people over there. And how good that made everybody in that congregation feel.

Karen:     Yeah, well they all contributed to it.

David:     I was an outsider visitor. I was enjoying it immensely. I thought “Praise the Lord, this is really good.” The other time I remember a church where they prayed kind of as a routine because I was there a couple of times, and they would pray for our president and our vice president.

Karen:     That’s probably a liturgical church. And that’s built into the prayers of the people, which is wonderful, doesn’t disqualify it at all. It’s being done and every time you do pray those words you do remember your president and other people in the government authority.

David:     But apart from that almost silence, it’s as though…

Karen:     …the world goes on and we have no part of it.

David:     Either they were not interested in what was going on or it never registered that the two were the same world. I would say that over a period of time, you got the feel, and that this was Protestant, Catholic whatever, that the church was more and more irrelevant. Because you’re being screamed at by the media and you know these are very big stories. I’m not saying that the churches have to be political in the sense that they choose one side or the other.

Karen:     We’re asking them not to do that actually.

David:     No, but even this last church we were visiting, they had a baby dedication, and they had a prayer. You know it’s so easy to say, “Lord we’ve gone through terrible times as a country where children in our country are shot and killed.”

Karen:     “We ask that you protect these children, put your angels watch over them.” Nothing that related it.

David:     I could have come up with several such easy ways to connect the real world with the church world. But it wasn’t happening.

Karen:     So, what are we fearing here?

David:     Well, I’m not fearing I’m just saying the time has come to be the voice of the little child that says the kings start naked. He doesn’t understand that this is silly; that there’s no connection going on that says, “What we’re doing is vital to the lives people are living.” Does that make sense?

Karen:     Yes, I think what we’re trying to say is that we are fearing that our secular culture has more influence over the church than the church is having in influencing the culture.

David:     I think that’s a very good way to put it. And we actually get it into a sentence that I’ll read in just a moment. But somehow this has to be addressed. I don’t want people to hear us say that we need to start saying what are the answers to these matters. But we need to, at least, recognize that these things are going on and that we are heartbroken. It troubles me deeply, Karen, that these shootings continue to go on in the city of Chicago. And they’re senseless. Absolutely senseless. It troubles me deeply that people in our Congress can’t even talk about the problem that is humiliating. And, in many ways, and that’s not even a good word. It is sad. It is so very sad. And these media keep saying, “I don’t know how these people, who have lost a child, I don’t know how they go through it. This has to be heartbreaking.” And it is heartbreaking. But when you go to church, suddenly the heartbreaking people they don’t mention it at all. You know, that’s a very sad thing.

Let me put it into a sentence. Okay? I don’t want to sound like know-it-alls. And I don’t want to sound as though we have all the answers. Or that we’re pointing fingers. Or I don’t want people to take up the challenge with a fist and screaming. I want to say as gently as I can.

The time has come for congregations across America to confess that our churches have become increasingly irrelevant and to ask God for the courage to repent and to plead for divine direction in bringing about the necessary changes.

Let me say it again.

The time has come for congregations across America to confess that our churches have become increasingly irrelevant and to ask God for the courage to repent and to plead for divine direction in bringing about the necessary changes.

There needs to come a change. There needs to come a relevancy that connects these two worlds because Jesus said in a very similar situation where true religion was irrelevant in a lot of ways. He said, “If the salt has lost its saltiness, it’s good for nothing. It’s good only to throw on the ground and let people trample it.”

Now he was talking about Judaism as a religion. He was incredibly relevant. Jesus was. But we’ve come to that place where we’re not even relevant anymore and we don’t recognize that we’re not.

Karen:     So, I think one of the things that we need to do is to pray for spirit of repentance. We can look at this rationally and intellectually and say, “We have a problem.” And say, “I’m sorry about that.” But, I think, God through His Holy Spirit has to move us to a point where we really feel that we’re part of the problem. And that we have strayed from our major calling as a church in any nation. And that’s to be Christ, in that circumstance, to that population that is around us. Relevant to the needs of that environment of that citizenry and not to be misled into politicizing our faith. That’s the worst thing we can do and it’s a very easy thing to do.

David:     It’s a dangerous, very dangerous thing to do.

Karen:     And all of this diatribe going on. So, imagine what happens when you have someone who is on the other side of your political bent and yet you treat them like a brother. Imagine what it’s like when you have someone who you’re in disagreement with and in the Holy Spirit convicts you that your attitude toward that person not their position but toward that person has been unworthy or even unholy. At that point then we need to ask for that spirit to repentance to sweep over us and it can do that.

We open the scripture and there it is blurring on the page. We haven’t even looked it up. Something that convicts us that we have been misbehaving either in word or attitude or in deed or with our tongue. This is what we need to be praying for.

David:     Let me hold up one good example.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     One of the churches that you and I went to, I would say, “If they had 15 people that would be generous in discussion with the people said, ‘What are the things that the church is doing?’” And they said, “Well, if you go across the street, we have a garden.”

Karen:     Common Garden. Yeah.

David:     Common Garden. And what is that for your people? Oh no that’s for the poor people of our community.

Karen:     That’s for our food pantry.

David:     And I almost cried. I thought bless your hearts. You know you’re not doing it for yourself. You’re doing it for others because you know that there are people who don’t have adequate food. There are poor people in this suburban area.

Karen:     And can’t get their hands on good produce, you know.

David:     And here, there’s a little tiny congregation that probably is going to be dead as a congregation in another five years, because they were all old people, but they had just started again, the summer’s coming, and the garden was being tended; and I’m sure there were a lot of people who had sore muscles because they were working on it. But they were concerned about people who didn’t have enough to eat. So, there are shining moments but for the most part the church has a long way to go.

The time has come for congregations across America to confess that our churches have become increasingly irrelevant and to ask God for the courage to repent and to plead for divine direction in bringing about the necessary changes.

I don’t think we’ve got raised fists and I don’t think we’re hollering. We’re just saying there needs to be this moment of truth and it needs to come soon.

Karen:     Yeah, where some little child says, “You know what daddy, the emperor doesn’t have any clothes on.”

David:     His under pants on.

Karen:     And we say, “Whoops, oh God, forgive us.”

David:     Yeah, let us again in our whole simple efforts be a part of the solution not a part of the problem.

Outro:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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