Chris Staniforth Died Today

Last night, Chris Staniforth suddenly woke up, jolted out of a much-needed night’s sleep. He later said, “I felt a strange feeling in my chest.” He noticed that his heart rate was low, but it went back to normal, so, on his last night on earth, Chris went back to sleep.

On the last day of his life, twenty-year old Chris joined a friend and off they went to what the Brits call a “JobCenter, ” one word. After spending some time there, Chris and his friend walked out of the building. He told his friend about the night he’d had and about the strange feeling in his chest.

Chris had a pack of gum in his hand, and during the conversation, he dropped it. He bent over to pick it up and as he did, his friend said, “He jolted back and his body went into a spasm.” This wasn’t funny; this was no joke.

Terrified at what he was seeing, Chris’s friend calls for an ambulance. It arrives and paramedics pour out of the vehicle to save Chris. They do all they can, but right there on the street, Chris Staniforth died today.

A twenty-year old with chest pains? Come on. Get real. He had no medical history of any cardiac problems. A twenty-year old just keels over in the street right out there in front of everybody and dies? They notify his fifty-four year old father, and of course, he says, “Perform an autopsy.” Dad wants to know why. And that’s how they learned why Chris Staniforth died today.

Cause of death: sitting. They found that Chris died from an attack on the inside from an assailant of which he was unaware. Chris died today from a blood clot. A twenty-year old with a blood clot? What’s going on?

Chris’s father knew exactly what was going on: Chris was a gamer, an Xbox addict who would spend twelve hours a day playing his games, sitting and sitting, and sitting some more in front of his computer.

His dad explained how Chris would sit engrossed for hours in games where players battled against alien invasions: “Chris lived for his Xbox. When he got into a game, he could play it for hours and hours on end, sometimes twelve hours in a stretch.”

Gamer Chris was serious; he would play people from around the globe and owned an entire range of consoles, including a Playstation. Chris isn’t an isolated case. "He got sucked in playing Halo online against people from all over the world,” his father said.

Online computer games are extremely popular as thousands interact in shared science fiction worlds.

“Reports of gamers collapsing after spending 15 hours in front of video games are fairly common throughout Asia,” a news report says. In 2005, a South Korean gamer died after playing online games for three days without taking a break.

Chris Staniforth died today from sitting. When Chris did get up and move around, his “exercise” was only to take care of himself—to eat, to get a glass of water, to check the mail, grab a snack, but then it was right back to that wonderful, mysterious box which plugged him into worlds which don’t exist.

A father loses a son to “sitting.” The clot got into his bloodstream, and Chris Staniforth died today. Heartbreaking. It’s just as much a tragedy and just as heartbreaking when a church gets a spiritual blood clot.

A spiritual clot forms when a church doesn’t get her exercise, but spends her time sitting and getting flabby by feeding herself and getting up to tend only to her needs. The clot begins to form, silently. While the clot is forming, the church continues to contribute to its formation by sitting back and watching its hired hands, the paid professionals, get the all exercise, “After all, that’s what we pay them for.”

When a church gets a spiritual clot, she loses her Holy Spirit-generated energy; there's no life. Death from too much sitting in the pews, from sitting in too many committee meetings.

We can sense a clot because there are symptoms. If we attend a youth group meeting and leave saying, “That group is dead,” we know what the problem is—the group has a blood clot; it’s existing only for itself. In such a group, the fires of evangelism and discipleship have gone out; they’ve quenched the Spirit. The group fills its time by sitting and enjoying refreshments, sitting and reading the minutes of the last meeting, and by sitting and planning the next car wash which their parents will wind up doing anyway.

A clot forms in a church when its members become gamers who gather together, sit and play with their Bibles for a while and come back next week for another game. Deadly.

The good news is that the Bible has a prescription for the prevention and cure of spiritual clots: exercise. Paul writes to Timothy: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”

The exercise prescription for the church is a discipleship relay race which was started by Paul who handed the baton to Timothy who handed it to reliable people who would then hand it to others. This is the essence of the discipling principle. The elders of the church do not focus on making disciples. They focus on making disciples who make disciples.

When Christ gave instructions concerning the modus vivendi of the soon-coming church, He gave her a command to exercise: “[Don’t sit, but instead] go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Paul told Timothy to get his exercise when he wrote, “Do the work of an evangelist.”

Had Chris gone to the doctor about the “strange feeling” in his chest, the medicos would not have messed around. They would have told him, “You are not going home; get into this gown; you’re in the hospital now, we’re starting the shots (two a day) in the stomach. Here's the nurse with the needle. Brace yourself.” It’s radical, but this is what they have to do.

A believer with a spiritual clot is in critical condition. A church with a clot is on life support. The treatment is radical and uncomfortable. Instead of only sitting in the pew, instead of sitting only in a committee meeting, 1) “Go and make disciples,” 2) “The things you have heard, entrust to reliable people who will be qualified to teach others, 3) Do the work of an evangelist.”

If you’re showing the symptoms of a spiritual clot—no participation in evangelism, no involvement in being made into a disciple or mentoring others to become disciples, too much sitting, a clot is either there or on the way. So, what to do? Don’t mess around. Brace yourself. Get biblically radical.

Choose new friends, friends involved in giving the good news of the gospel and who are either being transformed into a disciple or building disciples. As Proverbs says, you become like those with whom you associate. If your friends are sitters and gamers, you’ll sit and play games. If your friends are evangelists, you’ll evangelize. Iron sharpens iron.

By all means, get with your spiritual leaders. They know and are practicing the prevention and the cure. (If your spiritual leaders can’t or won’t train you to prevent or get rid of the clot, you’re in the wrong church. Leave immediately and quietly.)

It’s simple: it’s either the prescription or the clot.

Dr. Mike Halsey,
Pastor, County Line Church

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