4.15.2026

I wasn’t much of a Mr. Rogers fan when I was little. He was nice enough, and I liked his opening song, but when he broke out the hand puppets, I was gone. I mean, I could turn to Sesame Street and those guys – Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Kermit – were REAL. 

But the older I got, the more I appreciated Mr. Rogers’ wisdom. For example: 

Mr. Rogers would often say, especially at college graduations, some version of this: “From the time you were very little, you had people who smiled you into smiling, talked you into talking, sang you into singing, and loved you into loving.” 

Isn’t that the way it should be everywhere and especially at church? 

I’m thankful that ours is a loving, nurturing congregation. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told something like, “When you walk in the door, you can feel the love.” I recently mentioned this loving spirit to someone and they said, “That’s why we’re here.” 

Unfortunately, that’s not true of all congregations. Now, I enjoy enthusiastic sermons where the word is proclaimed boldly . . . but the fire and brimstone stuff  – which were a lot of the sermons I grew up listening to – have little to nothing to do with the Bible. They were miles away from the biblical depiction of a God who is fundamentally Love (I John 4:8). 

Some people have issues with my take, and I understand. Remember John the Baptist? His sermons included messages like “every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire,” and of Jesus he said, “the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” But when John looked at what Jesus was doing, things like welcoming sinners and eating with them, John sent messengers to ask Jesus, “Are you really the one to or should we look for someone else?” (Matt. 11:3) 

So if John the Baptist can misunderstand Jesus . . . 

The churches I grew up in often treated Jesus like a background character. We rarely heard sermons from the gospels except at Christmas and Easter, and occasionally Matthew 24 and 25 (and that was often brutally out of context). Most of the sermons I heard were from Paul (and a lot of those were horribly out of context, too). And these sermons used emotional manipulation rather than encouraging genuine heartfelt relationships with a loving God. 

The love of God was often sidelined in favor of keeping lists. These lists were identity markers – things you did (well, mostly didn’t do) that showed you were part of the congregation. And you had to keep the list if you were going to be part of the church. The list often included these “essentials” of Christianity: no dancing, no worldly entertainment, (a broad category that included going to the movies and all sports), women not dressing like men and, of course, no use of alcohol or smoking.  And in some of the churches where I grew up, there was a LOT of preaching on the list. 

My dad conscientiously kept the list, but it didn’t keep him from punishment. Dad led music at a church we attended in the early 70s. One Sunday the preacher came to him right before service and said that Brother Whoever would be leading the music from then on. 

Which was fine with Dad. He didn’t really want to do it anyway. But there was never any explanation as to why. Fast-forward 30+ years. We were visiting with some old friends of Dad’s and the son brought that episode up. He said that someone had seen my dad smoking a cigarette while working and told the preacher about it . . . who then promptly removed Dad from his little church job with no explanation! Now, my  dad never smoked anything other than rabbit tobacco – and he was 10 years old then. It turns out that Dad often used chalk when he was working and someone saw the stick of white chalk and assumed it was a cigarette! And told the preacher! And who knows who else!  

So much for loving others.

Churches like this focus on fear of punishment and that fear leads to psychological distress, spiritual paralysis and a faith motivated more by the terror of hell than the love of Jesus.   

I had a guy in one church (we’ll call him Melvin) who always harped on “the fear of the Lord,” but the sort of fear he meant was not the kind of fear that is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). What he meant was less the fear of the wrath of the Lord and more fear of the wrath of Melvin!  

The  fear of punishment is a terrible motivation for being a child of God! On Sunday, I mentioned Romans 2:4 where Paul emphasizes that it is God’s kindness, forbearance and patience that leads us to repentance. There was wrath . . . don’t get me wrong, but in the gospels the wrath was reserved for the people of his day that kept lists, not for the folks who couldn’t keep them. 

There are always people who keep lists and who mistake lists for relationships. 

But God doesn’t call us to lists. He calls us to love. 

The verses we’re memorizing as a congregation are lists, too. But you won’t find movies, not mowing your lawn on Sunday or women wearing pants on Paul’s list. Instead, you’ll find the true marks of a Christian congregation – marks like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and gratitude. And the climax of the list is the one that binds us all together in perfect harmony: love. 

My dad used to say you could tell a compromising preacher by the way he talked too much about love and forgiveness. But that was before he found out he was almost booted from church for holding a piece of chalk. 

We’re called to love God and love others. That’s a long enough list for me.

Blessings,
Pastor Terry