Chapter 36 A Certain Type of Lifeguard

A while ago, I wrote about a certain type of lifeguard. Pardon me for doing this, but I need to mess around with the metaphor a little -- because, well, I just do.

I was a lifeguard once and let me just say for the record that it was a pretty cushy job; you know, sitting in the sun with lots of authority. For three whole summers I possessed certain mysterious powers -- not only did I know how to blow my whistle at just the right time, but I had an uncanny ability to get a perfect tan while I protected the weak from the dangers of the open water. Everyone knew that if it should all go down, I was the man with the red shorts on.

In my case, thankfully, I never had to save a soul. By the end of the third summer, I wasn’t even sure if I remembered how to save a soul.

Still, the one thing I’ll take with me for a lifetime is the feeling, the hunch, the sensation that when I'm by the water, I just know that someone is about to drown. And since I'm expecting the worse possible scenario, well then, no one should be having any fun under my watch; because, come on, if they’re having too much fun they might go under. Accordingly, I keep the frivolity in check and I suppose I blow my pretend whistle. Repeatedly.

I actually observed this in myself and it scared me enough to write it down. As if somehow identifying it might break the pattern. For instance, as a father of four, if my kids are getting a little out of control with their frolic and fun in the sun, I’ve noticed that I'm often more prone to watch and warn instead of participate. I may not have a whistle around my neck but I might as well get one. I’m barking orders like crazy:

“Stop that, you’ll break your neck!”

“You two -- separate!”

Stop hitting, stop kicking, stop splashing, stop doing whatever it is that’s about to cause great harm to your body.

Unfortunately, this can play out well beyond parenting. It applies to the church too. We can very easily become the wrong kind of lifeguard church. Why? Well, here’s the thing. When I was a lifeguard, I sat up high where no one else could come. I knew the rules or at least I pretended that I did and I enforced them from my perch. I stopped all running, rough play, diving, chicken fights and basically everything that made being a kid (or even an adult) fun. I didn’t get involved with the melee because someone had to be responsible. I didn’t get into water to cool off because I might have missed someone drowning. I was the heavy and everyone knew it.

And so, with that mentality, all too often lifeguards and I suppose churches made up of people like me just speak when they choose, and much prefer to be the one controlling the dialogue. If interrupted, we speak in short sentences because we don’t want to make eye contact and take our other eye off the shoreline of "spirituality" for too long. We don’t have time for the common man below us and the non-lifeguard-ish messy issues they bring us, so we stay detached, hiding behind our mirrored lenses and our stained glass windows. We do our thing best when we're on the outskirts and watch with our eagle eye because we’re in control and we’re special. And everyone becomes more used to the barking of our voice and the shrill pitch of our whistle than the touch of our skin. Maybe they’ll try drowning a little so that at least we’ll come and be with them, even under false pretenses.

Or maybe they'll just swim far enough away that the whistle and the shouting and the rules and the orders are just a faint memory.

So, I guess these are just some questions we need to ask of ourselves, because we know that we’re the church.

As the church, are we just basking in the sun with lots of authority?

Do we consider ourselves better than others, blowing our judgmental whistle at just the right time, while pretending to protect the weak from the dangers of the great big open water?

Do we perceive others that aren't like us as having too much fun out there, so it's time for us to step in and warn them of the great harm they're about to do to their body instead of just listening and joining in to see if the fun, is actually, well, fun, and maybe not so bad afterall?

Do we only jump in when we perceive that people are drowning? Do we care about the ones that swam away, or do we only blame them for not trusting our ability to save them?

Are we guilty of allowing the bark of our voice to replace the touch of our hand?

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you and I spend enough time like this, we run the risk of becoming that lifeguard of a church who has lost touch from too much time spent sitting in the sun. Maybe by the end we won’t even know if we can still help someone. Maybe everyone will eventually realize that we’re just a bunch of people sitting in a tower with red shorts on and a whistle around our neck and we just blow it a lot and shout orders and we never get in the water. And then the whistle will grow more distant because it loses its meaning when it’s blown too much.

A funny thing happens when we do church from the lifeguard tower. We spend so much time guarding that we miss life.