If Only Church Looked Like an AA Meeting

Susan was not returning my calls, which wasn’t like her. No response to my texts. So I drove to her house and I knocked repeatedly at the front door. Still no response even though her car was parked in the drive. I walked to the side of the house and banged on a large window where the curtains were closed. I called out Susan’s name as I continued to knock on the glass.  And finally the curtains parted. My friend motioned for me to go to the front door. There her tiny frame of less than 100 pounds stood, shaking and ashamed. She was as so intoxicated from a three day binge of drinking Vodka (and not eating) that she could hardly walk. Susan had been a part of a Bible study I taught each week at a drug and alcohol recovery house nearby. She had recently completed the program, found a job, and was putting her life back together. And there she stood … very messed up.  

I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew she was hungry. I helped my friend get dressed and into my car and then drove through a McDonald’s drive through to get her a meal. Susan was oriented enough to know what time it was and that her Alcoholics Anonymous meeting was about to start. As embarrassed as she was to be seen in the condition she was in that day, she felt safe to walk into an AA meeting. She felt safe to go into a place knowing that others there battled the same demons she did. I think my friend knew that her fellow alcoholics would not condemn her because they could identify with her struggles.

And my friend was right. That morning, with Susan clinging to my arm to keep herself upright, I didn’t ask for permission to enter the small building where AA meetings were held. We walked in and found two seats together and sat down to wait for things to start. And here is where “church” began. I call it church because I believe it’s what the church should look like.

The other women in the room, seeing the obvious pitiful condition Susan was in, came directly over to where she was sitting. She didn’t know any of these ladies but each one embraced her with a hug and offered her words of hope and encouragement. Not condemnation or shame. Several of them handed my friend their name and phone number on pieces of paper asking her to call on them anytime she was in need. There was no doubt in my mind that every single person who reached out to Susan that day truly cared about her. They knew the despair and shame that comes with relapse. These people were willing to be inconvenienced if their new friend did have a need they could fill.

When the meeting started, people went around the room and one by one said out loud, “My name is _______, and I am an alcoholic.” When it came around to me, I said, “My name is Kirby, and I am a friend of Susan’s.”  What I should have said is “My name is Kirby, and I am a sinner.” Because that’s what I am. And though, by the grace of God, I don’t struggle with alcohol or drug addiction, I do struggle with sin. And you and I ‘relapse” in our sin daily.  Everyone of us struggles with sin. Yet we somehow put ourselves in some sort of pecking order as to which sins are bigger and badder than other sins. And we look down on others whose sins are more obvious or more socially unacceptable than our own. I know I have done it, yet seeing one fellow alcoholic reaching out with a loving hand of fellowship to another alcoholic has opened my eyes to “doing church.”  

“There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:22-23).”

Wouldn’t next Sunday morning be especially pleasing to our Heavenly Father (who knows we are all a work in progress), if we walked across the church room and extended a hand of unconditional love and fellowship to another fellow sinner? If we said, “Hi, my name is _______, and I am a sinner, forgiven and redeemed and grateful! How might I be able to pray for you this week? Is there a need you have that I can help you with?”  It might catch a fellow church goer off guard for a moment, but it sure would be an exciting new way to do church!