Real Spirituality

Corey Mullins, a minister in Wollongong, Australia, shared this story about one of his recent Bible study groups. This was such a cool story that I thought I’d pass it on.

Thursday night, we were reading in the book of James about the nature of true religion – that quality of life that leads to helping the less fortunate. In the middle of our reading, a drunk prostitute started banging on the glass door, asking if she could use the bathroom. One of the guys said, “No, don’t let her in.” I went to the door and let her in anyways. Afterwards,we picked back up with our reading. As we were reading through some of James’s descriptions, one of the men said, “This sounds just like that prostitute.” After the reading, we had a very frank discussion about the challenges of dealing with a complex, broken world. What should we do with people who seem to be beyond our ability to help them? It was great to listen to their responses and see them wrestle with the text. One of the men concluded, “Sometimes you just have to let someone in to use the toilet.”

God works in amazing and surprising ways. I am very proud of Corey and his opennes to seeing God work in this situation.

Corey’s story reminds me that theology is alway practical, otherwise it is just philosophy. By the same token, practical ministry is always theolgical, otherwise it is just management.