One of the first great acts of Christian ministry in my life was for YoungLife.  Well, Wildlife to be exact--the junior high version of YoungLife.  I was in the ninth grade, and I was a student leader for the 7th and 8th grade meetings.  Me and three other guys dressed in full drag and did a lipsync'd song and dance of Aretha Franklin's "RESPECT"!

I was told it was important to be a fool for Christ!  You know what?  They were right.  It was important!  Kids laughed.  They knew we had done it for them.  And they listened openly and easily when the leader presented the gospel later on in the night.

I'm still a fool for Christ in many ways (I hope).  One of them you see in this picture!  Who dresses like that?!!

It's a picture of me in front of Providence Presbyterian Church, Gum Spring, Virginia.  I've been there to preach four times now, and I usually wear the collar and tabs.  Why?  Well, just off my chin you see a couple of memorial stones.  One of them is to Rev. Samuel Davies. 

Here's a picture of him:

Davies founded Providence Pres in 1747.  He was the Jonathan Edwards of the South and is sometimes called "The Apostle of Virginia."  Here's an article about him from Banner of Truth Magazine.  He wound up as one of Princeton's presidents after establishing the first presbytery in Virginia...comprised almost entirely of churches that he, himself founded.  So I wear them for him.  If he came back, I'd want him to feel comfortable.

The truth is, I think the people at Prov Pres feel uncomfortable when I wear the collar and tabs.  They're a pretty casual bunch.  That makes me want to take them off and just dress normal.  Sometimes the Geneva tabs feel natural and right to me, and other times they feel as awkward as wearing a dress stuffed with socks for bosoms.  But the goal is similar.  

The people need to know that their church is not governed by the tyranny of the contemporary; that there are voices still speaking to them from their past.  They need to know that when I come to preach, I don't come as a man of the markets, a vote-grabbing politician, or even a university man, but I come as a man of God who has devoted his life and education to the gospel, its timeless meaning and its proclamation.  Maybe that means dressing a little different; looking a little silly to embody the timeless gospel.

Then again, maybe its self-indulgent.  If it makes people uncomfortable, why do it?  Just because I want to worship with Davies, Knox, Edwards and Calvin doesn't mean the church wants to also.  That's where discussion might come in from any who are still reading this entry.  When do we accommodate and when do we challenge?  When do we choose discomfort, the abnormal, the awkward and silly, for the purposes of the gospel?  When are we fools for Jesus, and when are we just fools?

Hardly anybody wears this garb any longer among the Protestant churches.  It's more important to be an 'ordinary joe,' and not seem to be putting on airs or claiming clerical authority.  But I think there are more an more young Christians who want their spirituality to be more embodied; who need clergy willing to make things a little different on Sunday morning.  Phyllis Tickle writes in The Great Emergence:

"...'embodied' evidences that a religion exists.  In our time and in the case of Christianity, it refers, for instance, to everything from the collar around a priest's neck to the established canon of our Scriptures, from a church building and the debt it carries to a hymnbook and the battle over it, from a doctrinal statement and the battle over that to something so painful as a clerical sex scandal." (p. 31)

"What Diana Butler Bass describes so aptly and well as 're-traditioning' Christians...have also chosen to stay with their inherited church, but at the same time they energetically wish to make it more fully what it originally was.  Like fond refurbishers who have inherited a much-loved and historic house, they seek to update the wiring, install better plumbing, and modernize the kitchen, but not in order to sell the house.  Quite the contrary.  They want to live in it for all of time, while simultaneously increasing its comfortableness, enhancing its natural beauty, and exposing its welcoming worth to all who pass by.  In many ways, theirs is the most remarkable, arduous, and ultimately richests task of all."  (p. 142).

I'm still willing to be goofy for Jesus.  I can't count how many characters I've played in skits!  And I know I'm not the first one to look goofy up there preaching.  Just look at George Whitefield.