How Low is the Bottom Shelf?

Jim is one of those people. He’s hard to spend time with because he talks and talks and talks.  He’s nice enough but his stories are spiraling exercises in tangential patience.  He talks about his noisy neighbors, the motorcycle that he’s eager to ride, the tools he bought 15 years ago, his time in military training, one story leading to another without any (apparent) connection.  He lives on his own but he has some sort of general learning disability.

He attends our worship services on Sunday mornings and prayer meetings on Sunday evenings. And, as I said, he’s a very nice guy, but…

Recently he asked me what would be required in order to become a member of our church – officially.  Usually I meet with prospective members of the church to review the doctrines and history of our denomination (The Salvation Army) to make sure that they fully realize what they’re asking.  But in Jim’s case, I’m not sure how “fully” we’re going to get.

I don’t want to be dismissive and say that he can’t understand it -  that it’s altogether beyond him– but I don’t want to burden him with the pressure  of it all if it is, in fact, beyond him.

He read through our 11 doctrinal statements and declared them to be concise and to the point, but whether or not they made sense to him, I don’t know.  When I asked if he understood them, he said “yes” and immediately proceeded to tell me about the coupons that Burger King used to send out in the mail. 

When I preach on Sundays, or lead a bible study, I try to keep in mind some advice that my homiletics instructor gave me – “keep most of it on the bottom shelf where people can reach it, but keep some of it just out of their reach so they know there’s something more to stretch for…”  I’ve always thought that to be good advice.  But determining how low that bottom shelf actually is- without insulting them and without preaching over their heads – is often difficult.

I eventually gave up on the doctrines this afternoon.  I gave Jim a copy of them so that he can read them again at his leisure.  We talked about chainsaws and seed catalogues and the Canadian band, the Guess Who, and about his brief stint in the military and, and, and, and…

And that was good enough for today.