I hadn’t intended to follow up yesterday’s blog on welcoming outsiders which mentioned a downtown church’s ushers trained to keep certain people out. When a new senior pastor found out about it, he said:

We have to catch ’em before we can clean ’em!

Something similar happened in the first Calvary Chapel back in the 70s. Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, came to church early on a Sunday morning after the church had installed new carpet. There were signs up saying “no bare feet.” A large part of their ministry was to hippies on the beach, and the sign was directed at them. Chuck tore all the signs down and called an emergency meeting of the leadership team right after morning services. “If because of our plush carpeting we have to close the door to one young person who has bare feet, then I’m personally in favor of ripping out all the carpeting and having concrete floors.”

Here’s the way Chuck tells it in his book Harvest. It’s long but worth the read:

I don’t want it ever said that we preach an easy kind of Christian experience at Calvary Chapel. But I also do not want to make the same mistake that the Holiness Church made thirty years ago. Without knowing it, they drove out and lost a whole generation of young people with a negative no-movie, no-dance, no-smoke gospel. Let us at Calvary not be guilty of this same mistake. Instead, let us trust God and emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit within individual lives. It is exciting and much more real and natural to allow the Spirit to dictate change. Let us never be guilty of forcing our Western Christian subculture of clean-shaven, short-hair styles or dress on anyone. We want change to come from inside out. We simply declare that drugs, striving to become a millionaire, or making sports your whole life is not where true fulfillment or ultimate meaning lies. Because the end of all these goals is emptiness and disappointment.

Perhaps this involves interesting symbolism, but I think that the last barrier to go in our church was the “bare feet” barrier. When we got beyond that, we were home free, The pivotal incident centered on a wide expanse of brand-new carpet that we had just put in. Those who had been inwardly protesting the hippies finally found a target upon which to vent their discontent. Dirty feet soil carpets, and these carpets cost a lot of money. Besides, who wants to see dirt marks on a brand-new carpet? They took it upon themselves, early one Sunday morning, to hang up a sign reading, No bare feet allowed. For some reason I happened to reach the church earlier than usual, and was in time to take down the sign. It was sad to see division over things this trivial. It was also sad to see what really lay behind the outward demarcations of division: a we/they polarity instead of love.

This time, I was the one to call the board meeting, and…I spoke from my heart to the board: “In a sense it is we older established Christians who are on trial before the young people. We are the ones who told them about James 2 and I John 4:7. The kind of action we displayed today puts a question mark across our faith. When things like this happen we have to ask ourselves who or what it is that controls and guides our motives. If because of our plush carpeting we have to close the door to one young person who has bare feet, then I’m personally in favor of ripping out all the carpeting and having concrete floors. If because of dirty jeans we have to say to one young person, ‘I am sorry, you can’t come into church tonight, your jeans are too dirty,’ then I am in favor of getting rid of the upholstered pews. Let’s get benches or steel chairs or something we can wash off. But let’s not ever, ever, close the door to anyone because of dress or the way he looks.”

Yesterday’s scripture still holds:

I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders. (Matthew 9.13, MSG)