WHAT NOT TO WEAR

I enjoy shopping nowadays. Walking into a clothes store and actually having choices is quite different from life in 3X Land that has been the way of things for most of my life up to now.

But I got frustrated this evening, hunting through one retailer after another for what I considered to be basic clothing - a pair of black dress pants. I ended up at the Tanger Outlet Mall, where if I was willing to part with the better part of $100, I could have walked home with what I was looking for.

Are they serious??? I thought outlets were meant to be cheap!

There was a limited selection or none at all everywhere I went, so I was very relieved to finally discover what I wanted in my size in TJ MAX, just when I was ready to give up.

Here's what I concluded. Stores don't stock dress pants because there is a very limited demand for them.

The mood of our culture is casual, which is why it's so good that we don't look like a convention of bank managers when we get together for worship on Sundays.

In 2007 most men wear suits for weddings and funerals. Period. They don't want to dress up on Sundays and the good news is that at our church they don't need to. I love our come-as-you-want approach - it's real, it's relevant and it's downright comfortable too.

The question is who do we want to impress?

I've lived too long for people's power dressing to impress me and since God sees right through the clothes to the heart, what you've got on your back is a total irrelevance to him.

The dress pants I bought look good. But the chances are you will never see them on a Sunday. On the other hand, my washed out jeans with holes in ....