I don’t know if you guys have heard the story of Susan Boyle yet but I can’t get her off my mind. My friend Harold sent me her story yesterday. On Saturday night the middle aged, never been kissed, church volunteer who still lives with her parents appeared on the TV show Britain’s Got Talent. Here’s how one newspaper reported the story…

The moment the reality show’s audience and judging panel saw the small, shy, middle-aged woman, they started to smirk. When she said she wanted a professional singing career to equal that of Elaine Paige, the camera showed audience members rolling their eyes in disbelief. They scoffed when she told Simon Cowell, one of the judges, how she’d reached her forties without managing to develop a singing career because she hadn’t had the opportunity. Another judge, Piers Morgan, later wrote on his blog that, just before she launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.

It was rude and cruel and arrogant. Susan Boyle from Blackburn, West Lothian, was presumed to be a buffoon (Click here for entire article).

But what happened next took the judges and the entire audience by surprise.

Bottom line: In our world today we think only the pretty can be succesful. We think respect and honor should be reserved for those who look and act a certain way.

Too bad this mentality is not only limited to the corporate world, the runway, and reality TV.  The problem is this attitude is prevalent in the church.

Shame on me! Shame on you! Shame on the church!

I pastor what some would call a “pretty” church. It’s full of a lot of good looking artists, sharp dressed young professionals, and young 20 somethings wearing the latest fashions. However, there is also a vast array of individuals who might be considered by worldly standards to be quite “average” sprinkled throughout the congregation every weekend.

I got nauseous watching this video wondering how many Susan Boyle’s come in and out of Cross Point each week unnoticed, unloved and undiscovered. How many of them have beautiful spiritual gifts designed for the body of Christ we’re totally missing because we think the body of Christ has a certain “look” or “image” to it? 

How many of them are just waiting to be noticed, waiting for someone to believe in them and waiting for someone to look beyond their outer image to their inner beauty?

Come on church. We can do better!

What do you learn from the story of Susan Boyle?

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