On Platform

We enter the familiar building with rows of pews littered with Grandma’s shawl, Brother So-and-So’s “church” Bible and the occasional box of tissues. Arriving home means kicking off our shoes and letting out the pent-up breath of a day’s work. Entering this place means removing figurative shoes and exhaling with our spirit the dust of the world through which we’ve just worked our way.

As preacher’s kids, we have a unique familiarity with this building. We’re here every time the door is open. We accompany our parents in between times to vacuum the carpets, grab some supplies for Sunday school, or to drop off some item we’ll need to use this coming Sunday morning.

Mom and Dad busy themselves about these things, and we join in a game of hide-and-seek. An empty church is filled with hiding places. The creaks in the floor and the noisy settling of a building shut up for over half of the week rival a haunted house for the shivery thrills they provide.

We skip up the aisle just ahead of a called reminder, “Don’t run in the church!” We slow to a barely contained walk, then stop just at the edge. The platform. We wouldn’t dream of calling it a stage. Those are for money-seeking entertainers. Not for bearing the meaty message of the Gospel and projecting it to hungry listeners (and a few apathetic ones).

It’s been ingrained in us since we were toddling up this aisle: “Don’t play on the platform.” The platform is the place where God’s message is doled out. It’s holy, serious business. While any other pew is fair game for a hiding place, we don’t dare to roll under the pulpit or platform chairs.

In our church, it’s easy to tell where the platform begins and ends. A wooden rail runs between it and the congregation. We call it an altar. It’s not there to block entrance to the platform but rather to prepare for it. The platform isn’t for the qualified. It’s for the transformed. It’s not for accolades. It’s for a holy humility that bows before others in the truest form of ministry. To minister is to serve. To hunker down and share in the hard spaces of the lives you’re privileged to meet there. You may give a word set to music or a word carefully prepared over week-long Bible study. Or you may just pass a tissue to the lady with tear-streaked face and a heart washed clean.

It wasn’t until my childhood games were far behind me that I began hearing the word platform again. This platform is an audience you’re given. An audience you build through website traffic, views, likes and reviews. Some of the same elements are there. Sharing a message with a group who wants to hear it (and a few apathetic ones). If you have any message worth sharing, no music label or book publisher will look at you until you have a platform.

From my view here in the stands (pews long gone), it feels like a rude caricature of the platforms I’ve known. True, there are some worthy messages coming from a few places in this online world. Yes, there are good songs still being written. And there are even a few books that still proclaim a message worth hearing. But something’s missing. The platform is full of qualified people. It’s full of entertainers, academics, data. It’s full of viral content, and the latest sensation in the most recent field of thinking.

When I get a bit closer, I realize that a lot of people are playing on the platform. They’re testing ideas and basking in praise and slamming back retorts to those who dare to leave the wrong kind of review. There are games of Hide-and-Seek and even all-out Tag going on.

Drawing even nearer, I realize there are not really any qualifications for entry. But there’s also no carefulness. No preparation beyond riding on the shoulders of popular opinion.

I glance down and see the biggest factor missing between that platforms we held sacred and today’s scattered, virtual ones. There’s no dividing line of an altar. No place to stop and transform first. No place to get down in the nitty-gritty of people’s lives and offer them a kind word, a prayer and maybe a tissue.

An altar is a place of sacrifice. Of surrender. Of letting go and holding on in a paradoxical way. It’s the place where those called to serve meet those who are calling to be served. It’s not just a piece of wood but a peace of mind. Not an archaic symbol, but a very real state of heart. It’s not blocking the way to the platform; it is the reason for the platform.

In the midst of all the messages coming from the page (web or print), I want to stop. I want to kneel. To stay there. Not until I’m qualified. No, I don’t want to enter any platform until I’m transformed and ready to serve. I’m not here to play, to entertain. Because to get up from the altar and step to the platform? In this time, in this place in history: it’s holy, serious business.