The Church of the Woeful Countenance

I've had people ask me, from time to time, about starting or planting a church. There's always been a sense of excitement about that conversation for me; however, the flash has always fizzed for one reason or another. Some of it due to my fears, some of due to the particulars of the situation I found myself in, and some of it due to the belief that it just wasn't the right thing to do at the time.

But if I were to start or plant a church, here's a little of that if. These are things I SEE; just one thought today and more will follow. First of all, the name - The Church of the Woeful Countenance. Boy, that'd really bring the folks in, huh? One of my favorite literary characters is Don Quixote. And he is known as the knight of the woeful countenance. There is adventure and danger and folly and romance and insanity and beauty throughout his story; however, there is a woefulness that is always seen on his face. It is not a resigned face, nor a timid face, but a wise face, a face that knows that this life is hard and that courage is needed to dream the impossible dreams. If I were to start a church, I see a group of people with woeful countenances, their faces etched and weathered, eerie and peculiar to most observers. But our visages would be woeful because we're searchers and seekers. I hear some pastors describe their churches as seeker-oriented; the implication being that those churches are somehow not the mature and faithful, but the beginners or something. Hell, we're all seekers are we not? Asking and knocking and seeking and sweeping and searching and turning the blessed room upside down and hopefully finding coins and pearls and beauty along the way, continually searching for the peace on the other side of hope. To say that we're not searchers betrays even the slightest experience with the Text, in which Paul talks about not having arrived, not having it all together, but pressing on toward the mark. And the faces of people like that are woeful; it is a countenance which is not tempted by the siren songs the world sings. Many churches I've pastored or visited (now that I'm out to pasture) have been full of faces plastered with painted on smiles or courage that has been screwed up from the bootstraps. We worship a Savior who was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief; yet we long to avoid that like the plague. I'm not talking about starting a church where everyone's face is sad; no, I'm talking about starting a church where everyone's face is eroded with joy. There would still be smiles, but they wouldn't be from ear to ear; no, they'd be from eye to eye, the natural borders of a true smile. There would be weeping-Jeremiahs all over the place, but we wouldn't rush in to wipe away one another's tears; no, we'd let them fall as witnesses to the not-yet reality of our lives, as we await that day when HE will wipe away all tears. And there would be a set-like-flintness to our faces that we learned from our Father, who art in heaven and also decided to walk this earth, that reveals our cries of kyrie elison - Lord, have mercy! for we're riding into hell for heavenly causes, we Don-Quixotes, we knights and princesses of the woeful countenance who have been adopted as sons and daughters, children of the King, and therefore we will not give our hearts to less-wild-lovers (thanks, Eldredge and Curtis). It would begin with a name - The Church of the Woeful Countenance.