Dialing 911

It was May 25, 2005, and she was desperate in Charlotte, North Carolina. She dialed 911 and begged for help, but help didn't come. She dialed again; no one came. She called again and again and again, but no help. Records show that she made 20 frenzied calls in 30 minutes that day in May.

A local outrage of national proportions? You decide. The woman was dialing 911 to complain and ask for the arrest of the manager of a local pizza parlor who wouldn't deliver to her apartment.

It was a 911 operator who called the police who then went to the lady's apartment to arrest her for misusing an emergency number. They knocked on the door and an 86-year-old woman, standing 5 feet tall, and weighing 100 pounds answered. "Yes," she said, "I made the calls."

Upon being informed that she was under arrest, the woman (described by the pizza manager as a "crazy old coot") attacked, kicked, scratched, and bit the officer. That's when she went to jail.

From her viewpoint, a pizza had become a 911 situation, one that required emergency measures. To say the least, her perspective was warped. But from her viewpoint, her reasons were good and rational. What she did, in her mind, was neither extreme nor illogical; it was both normal, good, and moral, hers was a just and right cause.

It some ways she's a picture in miniature of how the church can lose its perspective by dialing 911 for multitudinous molehills. We laugh (albeit uneasily) when we hear of the church that made a 911 issue out of the color of the new nursery carpet; those claiming to be on the side of the Lord battled for beige, while others (also on the side of the Lord) fought for blue.

Does the church have a 911 cause? Jesus gave it in Matthew 28-get out there and persuade people to follow Him. He called it, "making disciples." That's the cause for which the church dials its 911. That is the mountain and not the molehill. Disciple-making is the 911 for which the church expends its blood, sweat, toil, and tears. It's a cause big enough for any believer to give his life to, and millions around the world have and are.

Although they were brilliant and America's greatest generation, is the church giving more of its attention to the Founding Fathers than to Christ? Sometimes it seems so. Is the church referring more to the Constitution than to the Bible? Is she spending more blood, sweat, toil, and tears to make sure a plaque of the 10 Commandments is in full view in Alabama than she is on getting up close and influencing people to follow Jesus?

Is the church targeting certain "traitorous" senators for defeat at the polls rather than staying on target by making disciples? Is the church frenetic over declaring who the next Supreme Court appointee will be or is she excited about declaring faith alone in Christ alone? Is the church dialing 911 to cancel its subscription to "Newsweek," and then yawning when her seminaries compromise the free grace gospel of faith alone in Christ alone?

Is the church dialing 911 with the latest venture to "save America," or is she more interested in saving souls? The church's mission is to make disciples, not "to save America." If the country is saved by making disciples, then so be it, but that's not the church's purpose.

There are many good causes out there, but no matter how good they may be, the church must expend its 911 energies to persuade people to follow Jesus. In Charlotte, "the old coot" scratched, kicked, and bit, all for a pizza. The church isn't to expend its 911 energies for the earth's temporal pizzas, instead, we're on an mission that reaches all the way into eternity.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor