I recently read a statement that bears repeating.  The writer, Terry York, was commenting on how to structure worship services.  He was emphasizing that one size doesn’t fit all, when he said,

    “Not everyone shows up with a party hat on.  Some come leaping and some come limping.”

    I wish I had said that.  It succinctly states a problem which I see all too often in our churches.  It is the idea that everyone is on the same page.  Sometimes we structure our church worship services with the notion that all the people who will participate need the same thing.  But that is never true.  “Some come leaping and some come limping.”  We need to be aware of, and make provision for, varied needs.  If the sermon is on faith, and all the songs, including the special, are on faith, the person who came looking for comfort may go away empty.

    Sometimes in a worship service we try to force the limpers to leap.  We have our party hats on, and we want everyone to rejoice the way we do.  But when you are limping, it’s hard to leap.  And even if we do leap, it may hurt more than help us.  We don’t all have the same needs at any given time.

    I see this problem in more than just the worship services.  I see it in our basic approach to others.  We tend to think everyone is where we are in our journey.  We forget that others may have been Christians for a much shorter time than we have, or that they came out of very different backgrounds than ours.  They certainly haven’t had the same experiences we have had, because each of us is unique.

    God never forgets who we are or where we came from.  He always deals with us on an individual basis.  I have often been amazed that He is able to minister to people through us in spite of our tendency to lump everyone together.  We lay the same expectations on everyone, usually expecting them to be at our level of Christian maturity.  If we like it, so should they.  If we can do it, so can they.  We try to force them to leap, when they can barely limp.  It would be so much better if we would come alongside the ones who are limping and help them to walk.  Maybe later they can leap.

    But if they don’t, our job is to love them as they are, because that’s the way God loves us.