Real, Open, and Safe

A Church's Heart of Vulnerability

by Jim Nutt

My family and I started attending Real Life Ministries -Texas, in Tomball on the Northwest edge of the Houston sprawl.  We met in the middle of the afternoon on Sundays in a room in the original Tomball community center just off narrow old town main street.  The room was functional. It came with four manila walls, a faded white acoustical ceiling and a dingy white speckled tile floor like the floor in every building I stepped on as a kid.  Eight years later, our Sunday space could hold 60,000 of those 12 x 12 inch floor tiles.  I am part of a staff of 21, give or take, pastors and staff who lead and shepherd 1,800, give or take, of King Jesus’ precious flock.  

We are a functional part of the Bride of Christ.  We do meet on Sunday mornings now, twice. But we appear bland.  

In fact, we are bland. 

We are a collection of dingy misfits with speckled pasts.  We are just plain manila folks living vanilla lives.  Some of us are less faded than others, but no one stands out like a new bright white ceiling tile did in our original space.  We love King Jesus.  We want to honor Him.  No more, no less.  Houston, and its glob of suburbs, is full of churches with more and many more churches with less.  But people from those churches with more or less, don’t experience us as vanilla when they step onto our polished concrete floors stained with the manufacturing process of the previous tenant.  I didn’t. 

I grew up going to church three times a week.  Twice on Sundays and once Wednesdays, which was the only time I could wear jeans and formerly white Chuck Taylors to church.  (The church building had the same 12 x 12 tiles on the floor as our original digs had!)  The church was across the street from the Christian college, later university, where both my parents worked.  The same college I graduated from with a degree in Biblical Studies, destined I thought to be one of the brightest tiles in the ceiling, the place where all of us preacher boys longed to be, but only those gifted in oral delivery ascended.  My last semester of college, I abruptly chose to try to stand out as a basketball coach like my daddy, instead of ‘making a preacher’ as my Maw Maw would say.  This decision began my 30 year speckled search of who I was - but that’s another story.  The point is, I was born going to church and I have gone to church, more or less, my entire life. 

What I saw with my eyes in the community center was certainly plain.  Plain people doing less than adequate jobs of leading worship, leading communion, and making announcements.  They were all dressed in jeans, except the softball team who showed up in slide smeared uniforms, which was a win for me! What I saw was nothing special.  But what I experienced, ahh, that was something I had never experienced before.  There was something brilliant about these plain folk.  Without flash, without pomp, without ceremony.

These people were real, open, and safe.  

And without fanfare, they flamed a passionate mission. 

They were being changed by King Jesus.  And I experienced the change in their eyes, in their smiles, and in their voices.  Their conversation was sincere and easy, without pretense.  We found our forever church home. 

I’m guessing it was 18 months later, questions about our new home began to ruminate in my mind as I sat each week listening to simple sermons powerfully declaring “Jesus is King”, “His Kingdom is here”, and “He calls me to follow him, now”.  This place was different, that was a given. 

But what was it exactly that made it so different from my experience at all those other churches with more and with less I had attended? 

About a year later, I had postulated a theory, which I kept to myself.  I collected as much experiential evidence as I could to support my theory before I ever whispered it out loud, which I seldom did.  Five years on, I am quick to say, there are many plain distinctives separating churches simply striving to follow King Jesus from churches with more and churches with less.  

After continuing to collect more and more evidence supporting my theory, I have indeed identified the one ‘thing’ that if you remove, everything collapses like an exploding dilapidated building.  

When you and I meet, we will communicate on various levels.  At first, for a time my conversation with you will be on a surface level.  Hopefully not superficial, just on the surface.  “It’s good to meet you too.  I am glad to be here.  This is our first trip to Canada.”  Given time and proximity, my conversation with you may go deeper and be described as authentic.  “Actually, I am glad my week is over.  It was a rough.  Feeling a little beat up this morning but I am doing better and looking forward to falling asleep on the coach with the (Houston) Texans game on this afternoon.”  After spending more time together, I might dare to be transparent.  “Yeah, the day before we got on the plane, my wife and I got into it. It’s pretty much over now, but we are still in that, ‘who is going to talk first stage.’”  After even more time and proximity, I may take the chance of being vulnerable with you.  “I know she didn’t mean to, but she tore the scab off my deepest, scariest fear.  It triggered all my lies.  Especially, ‘I am not man enough for her, she shouldn’t have anything to do with me.’  And what did I do, I felt threatened and fought back…yelling at her for a good five minutes, which triggered her stuff.  It was brutal.  We’ve both apologized but it will be a minute.   Being here has been great.  All the fun things we have been able to do together has really helped.”  Vulnerability.

What separates vulnerability from transparency, authenticity, and surface interactions is this: When I am vulnerable, you can hurt me. 

You can weaponize my words and hurt me.  You can scold me.  You can tell your wife my wife is mean.  You can share a prayer request on Facebook for my ‘marriage’.  You can tell an elder you’re not sure if we are fit to lead the small group that meets in our living room on Sundays after the Texans game.  You can hurt me.  Which is to say, you can shame me.  Everybody ‘gets into it’ with their bride or groom every once and a while, right?

(Transparency.)  That’s not much of a risk.  But yelling at my wife, for five minutes…that right there, that’s called ammo.  That right there, that is called vulnerable.  That right there, that is the ‘thing’ if removed the whole ‘real’ church gig disintegrates into a rock show or a library, more or less. 

Consider this.  Where does your and my vulnerability come from? 

It comes from grinding our Chucks into the solid rock and grasping the gospel with both hands in a life and death tug of war with Satan over the truth of our brokenness.  I can preach to myself Satan’s truth that I am not good enough for Jesus and He shouldn’t have anything to do with me. 

Or I can preach to myself the truth of the Gospel that although my yelling broken self is not good enough, the blood of Jesus offers to heal me of ALL my nasty junk.  I am beloved of God, He has adopted me, written me into his will, and He has given me the privilege of being a royal member of His called-out priesthood and His ambassador to the world!  

Just within the last month, I have experienced three prominent men in our church be publicly vulnerable, two of them in Sunday morning sermons.  One described his emotional collapse after losing the last fragments of his identity and being $128,000 dollars in debt to the IRS who was trying to take everything.  Another man in a sermon on compassion, or lack thereof from Jonah, admitted while he was writing his sermon, he saw his pretty much estranged father’s name appear on his iPhone out of the corner of his eye.  He did not want to talk to his dad.  He let him go to voice mail.  “I have some work to do around this compassion stuff”, he said.  The third man, one we all look to, confessed he had allowed his abiding to become routine.  It was lacking the ferocity required to sustain him as a leader, and he knew it.  That’s vulnerability.  On display for all to experience.  And it ripples from the pulpit and positions of leadership to the very fringes of our first time guests.  

These stories were not told as ‘gimmicks.  I could feel their truth in my gut.  Real vulnerability is a byproduct of the power of the Gospel.  Like Paul, these three men had exposed the belly of their brokenness to the sufficient grace of the Gospel and had witnessed first-hand the perfect power of what God can through a broken life submitted to him.

When I hear these stories, I am inspired to be more vulnerable.  My vulnerability creates a safe space for you to be vulnerable.  Your vulnerability reinforces my vulnerability.  With enough time and proximity, I realize you are right behind me, grinding into the ground, grunting and gripping the gospel with all you got.  And those same three guys have grabbed the gospel just in front of me and are leaning so far back in their effort to pull I can see their scrunched red faces.  That right there, that’s called church.  Plain and simple. 

The more vulnerable I am, the more real I become.  And you can sense that.  And when you say, “I’ve been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.  It’s a bit worn, but your welcome to borrow it,” I can sense how real the change is in your eyes, your smile, your voice, and your ratty ol’ t-shirt.  I experience being loved by someone and a God who knows the ugly in me.  And I am changed by King Jesus.  This sincere and easy conversation without pretense, the sense you are coming along side me in my gospel tug of war, the experience of sufficient grace perfecting God’s power in the weakness, this begins with me taking the risk of being vulnerable.    

In our forever church home, top down and bottom up, people are real.  Real plain, ordinary, broken people who have been called by Jesus, are being changed by Jesus and are on mission with Jesus.  We are nothing special.  But He is.  We love Him.  We want to honor Him. 

No more, no less.