Bill was sitting up in bed when I visited him before surgery. He was dressed in the stereotypical hospital gown. He had a big smile on his face, like he was keeping a secret that he couldn't wait to let out. He shook my hand and said hello. "So, what d'you think?"

"Nice place," I said. It was nice, but not unlike other hospitals I had been in before, at least not on the surface. Pale walls, white sheets, lots of paraphernalia, a TV on a little swing stand.

"Have a seat," Bill said, still smiling.

As I sat down it struck me that I had never seen someone quite so happy about surgery. Bill acted excited and ready and joyful. While we talked, the room was bustling with activity — nurses coming and going, attendants and personnel coming in to get information. Everyone seemed very pleasant and helpful.

As soon as I sat in the chair I could tell something was different, but had trouble putting my finger on it. What was it about this room, about this place, about the chair? Bill saw my brain at work. ...

"Like that chair?" he asked.

"Well, yeah!" I responded. I don't usually get excited about chairs. Honest. I looked over the chair for a moment to see what it was that made me like it. It came to me: this chair was ... accommodating.

"It's a 'big-boy chair,'" Bill said with a grin. "It's made for big people like me!"
Bill was right. It was big. It was wide and easy and big. I am pretty big myself, and sometimes I have to squeeze myself into chairs with arms. But this chair, even with arms, let me in without effort. It was comfortable, and it felt good not to be constrained.

Bill was big too. At the time Bill weighed in around 450 pounds. His massive frame was intimidating to me from the first time I met him, even though I qualify for "big-boy" status too. As he admitted to me, he had struggled with a weight problem his whole life, trying different diets, pills, programs and fads. Nothing had worked, and now that he was over 50, his health was at risk. So Bill did a very brave thing. He got himself to a hospital for bariatric surgery in which portions of the stomach are removed from functional activity.

Bill was tickled about the chair. "This whole place is just like that," he said. "All they do here is bariatric surgery. Every patient in every bed every day is in for the same thing. That's why the chair is big; this bed is big; the wheelchairs are big — everything. It's all for people like me."

Bill told me that the doctors who founded the treatment center had a vision for helping the morbidly obese find freedom and help for their problem. Bill had discovered that nearly all of the nurses and many other people who worked at the center had already undergone the surgery themselves. They knew what it was like to be obese; they knew the pain and the struggle. And they believed enough in this drastic remedy that they had decided to become a part of helping others.

The result? "Nobody makes fat jokes around here!" Bill said. It was like Bill had come home. He could be himself here. He could be honest here. Others could be honest with him. He need not fear reprisals or rude comments or judgment. Not that they condoned or encouraged obesity; if they did that, there would be no reason for the hospital. In fact, the hospital organized post-operation groups all over the city that gave support to patients dealing with their condition. Bill felt good to be in a place where people understood. This was a community of the formerly obese, providing a place of care for those facing the same issues. It was a safe place.

The chair, the room, the nurses, the hospital: all of it made me think, This is the way church is supposed to be.

We have all suffered from the same malady. Due to the nature we have inherited from Adam and our own sinful choices, we are sick and in need of spiritual surgery. We come to Jesus in bad shape to get our hearts worked on. A transplant is performed — radical spiritual surgery. Ours should be a community of the formerly lost, providing a place of care for those facing the same issues.

Like the hospital that cared enough to provide large chairs for their obese patients, what kind of a community would the church be if we wanted to make a place that fits the real needs of people?

Accommodation
We would be a community of accommodation. The chair in Bill's room was a voice of understanding. That's why Bill was so excited about it. That chair said, "We know who you are and how you struggle. We know that you didn't come in here already fixed. We know why you're here."

The New Testament admonition to bear one another's weaknesses implies understanding who we were and who we are. It suggests that we understand our common betrayed ancestry as humans. It refers to the process of faith, not to the finished product at the end of the assembly line. We are not done, not finished, not all better. It also points to the role we must assume as nurses and helpers as the Healer does His work. A nurse who has been through bariatric surgery has a critical empathy with the patient who faces it.

In our church there are many families in crisis. One in particular I can barely call a family. There's no structure, none of the visible scaffolding that typically speaks of family life. A young grandmother is raising her imprisoned daughter's illegitimate children, who all have different fathers. These four kids are usually out of control, hard to handle, off-the-charts hyperactive. I hear about them from children's workers. Parents of other children, "church kids," see how it is; they see that these little bounders are taking up a lot of time and energy. It's rough, and we've struggled about what to do, including the option of asking this woman not to bring her grandchildren to church. If we did that, though, we'd be closing the door on dealing with the problem. We would be saying, "Don't come back until these kids are under control." That would be like saying to Bill, "Don't think of coming to this hospital until you've lost 100 pounds."

What makes a church lose this accommodation to the process of faith? In too many churches the sense of community warps to become an uninviting culture of outwardly repaired and healthy people who have lost their spiritual memory.

Honesty
If the church were a community of recovery, we would be honest. Pretending we don't have problems, even if we're "good church people," doesn't help anyone.

We pretend because we are embarrassed to admit we once were sinners. We pretend that we never were. We conveniently forget the years without Christ, when we too were "dead in our trespasses and sins."

"What about 'forgetting what lies behind'?" you ask. The Apostle Paul did encourage moving on in our spiritual walk, but even Paul was clear that the dramatic past he left behind was his own past. The fact that it shows up in his correspondence to churches says that it was something important for him to remember and recall to others. He knew it, he spoke of it, he was humbled by it. Maybe that's the challenge. It's humbling to admit that we've been there.

It's not just the past that we hide. We also hide the present. "Confess your sins to each other" makes a clear point: we have them. We sin. To deny it means "the truth is not in us." Pastors especially can get caught in this deceitful trap. Harold Frey suggests, "The basic dishonesty of Christian ministry today is that many of us have been programmed into pretending that we are different than ordinary mortals." That action-figure persona can trickle down through the church, leading to a community that looks more like an upscale spiritual gym where we all go to show off our spiritual progress, rather than a hospital for sick people.

Imagine going in to the Bariatric Treatment Center, desperate enough about your condition to undergo serious cutting, only to discover that all the employees are workout fanatics with slim, trim, aerobically sculpted bodies. They don't have a clue what being overweight is like. They whisper, laugh behind your back, and go home telling stories about all the freakish fatties they've had to wrestle today. Bill felt at ease about what he was going through because he was surrounded by people who knew. They had been through it. They had no reason to hide. They could empathize with Bill's situation. They knew where to find help.

A community of pretenders, in denial about their frail humanity, offers little compassion for those who are searching desperately for an environment of healing. Contrast that with a church of sincere people in honest confession about sin, past and present. A seeker feels at home, not like an alien in a foreign country.

Support
If the church is going to help people recover, we need to recognize the need for ongoing support. Bill had radical surgery that changed the way he lived his life from that day on. His stomach was reduced from the size of a football to the size of an egg. His digestive system had been radically altered. His dietary patterns had to change. It was all new territory, so the treatment center provided Bill with someone he could call if he had any questions or concerns. He had a group to help him when he fell back into old habits and patterns of addiction. The members of the group were not shocked or surprised or judgmental when it happened. They knew it would; they expected it. And they were there to love him anyway.

The act of salvation is a one-time deal, much like a surgical procedure. Your heart is replaced with a new one. You are no longer the same. When you walk away from that divine encounter, you walk away new. But you don't walk away fixed. There's a new way of living to learn.

We need a support system of people who know and understand so that when we slip and fall into the mud of sin, someone will be there to pull us out and clean us up. If we can't find that kind of community in the church, where will we go? Where is our safe place?

Many people find that safe place in 12-step programs. There is a place of grace. People who are there belong. They wear the same scars, and they've taken the same falls. They've made the same broken promises and resolves. They finally found help, and they offer the same. They don't assume they are done; they assume that they are on the way.

Philip Yancey writes of an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group meeting in the lower levels of his church: "If only the church could realize, that in some of the most important lessons of spirituality, members of the basement group were our masters. They began with radical honesty and ended with radical dependence. Athirst, they came as 'jolly beggars' every week because AA was the one place that offered grace on tap" (What's So Amazing About Grace?). AA offers what the church should provide, a community of recovery where grace is the context for realistic support.

Walking out of the hospital after visiting Bill, I passed the waiting room. I couldn't believe my eyes. I had never seen a gathering like this: immense, obese people, some with concerned families and friends, all sitting in wide chairs, all waiting for a dramatic procedure that offered hope. Surgery offered a way out of the prison in which they had come to reside. And here they were, being tended by caring people who didn't flinch when they heard, "I weigh 500 pounds."

As I walked to the door, I wondered, seriously, Why can't the church be like this?