I Got Something You Need

Marin County is one of the most prosperous and beautiful parts of the U.S., if not the world. Most folks have plenty of disposal income and easy access to beaches, hiking trails, and redwood forests, so attending church on Sunday mornings is not a high priority. As a result, area churches like to steal a line from an old Van Halen song:

You may have all you want, baby,
But I got something you need.

According to the song title, David Lee Roth “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” and (I feel safe in saying) he ain’t talking about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ either. But at Mt. Tam Christian Community, we were.

The church was small and composed largely of seminary students, but there was a deep hunger to reach locals—convincing them that even with their BMWs and bay-front homes, we had something they needed. So it was big news when an actual Marin native wandered into the Mt. Tam’s cafeteria-turned-sanctuary on a Sunday morning. And shortly after I joined the church, an event of this nature occurred that sent electric waves of excitement through the congregation.

In keeping with our pastor’s directive to get out there and rub shoulders with non-believers, a seminarian named Mary signed up for a guitar class at the community college, where she met Alan. Alan had grown up in Marin and recently moved back home after finishing college. And like most Marinites, he possessed only the foggiest idea of what evangelical Christianity was all about. In short, Alan was the poster child for Mt. Tam’s outreach efforts, a perfect specimen of the type of godless individual we hoped to reach for Christ. So the faithful rejoiced when he accepted Mary’s invitation to church.

I was happy, too, but also a wee bit skeptical. Mary was quick to attribute Alan’s interest in Christianity to the inexorable work of God’s Spirit in the human soul, but I had a hunch that less mysterious forces were involved. The fact that Mary was a cute, guitar-playing blonde, I felt, may have played a significant role in Alan’s openness to church. Indeed, Mary could probably have lured young Alan to a basket-weaving convention—and needed no divine intervention to do it. So I figured that after 1 or 2 token visits, we would never see him again.

But I was wrong. Though it took several months and a boatload of prayers, Alan eventually became one of us. A bona fide believer. At his baptism, the excitement was palpable as Alan slipped beneath the waters of a backyard swimming pool. We were happy for him, of course, but we were probably a little happy for ourselves, too. Because if one smart, unbelieving Marinite had joined us, then others might follow.

Maybe, like Diamond Dave, we had something they needed after all.