I'm not at all sure where church as we understand it has its origins. It is possible that the "first church" that we read about, the gathering of Believers in Christ after his death and resurrection, is an archetype. Certainly they were followers of Jesus, and it is true that they gathered together to worship and encourage one another. In a sense they were very much representative of church as we experience it in 2017.
However, they didn't have a distinct building in town. There is repetitive mention of the temple in the book of Acts, and of disciples teaching there about the news of Jesus. But it's clear that the disciples aren't welcome in the temple courts; they are arrested, and the leaders of the Jews are hostile to them and their message. So they didn't have a church as we would recognize it.
They met together a lot, according to scripture, but usually in each other's houses. They also began to "plant" churches in other towns and cities, but these were typically groups that gathered in houses as well. This pattern likely continued for centuries. The first evidence of a purpose-made church is possibly a modified home near the Euphrates River from around 240 A.D. It took official government approval, by way of Constantine, before church buildings really took off in the fourth century.
There are some lessons here. The first is a lesson about holiness. Worshipping Jesus in your living room does not confer holiness, and neither does doing so in an elaborate, beautiful, expensive cathedral. Holiness is not place-specific. God doesn't avoid the humble churches or elaborate chapels, nor does He scoff at living rooms, bedrooms, or overpasses.
So God is not bound to our choice locations for worship and teaching. He could just as easily be at the park among friends as they enjoy one another's company as He might be at a communion service at the local Baptist church. Or He might not be at either place. (But really that isn't true; of course God is present at both places, just as surely as He is present everywhere; it's the peculiar closeness of His Spirit that may be missing.)
If it is possible then that God isn't especially active in our purpose-built places of worship, why then are we so dead set on believing that that's where He should be? It may have taken Christ's followers a few hundred years to set up this institution of church as we've come to understand and expect it, but it likely wasn't for a lack of desire. The earliest believers simply weren't physically able to construct churches for themselves. They were too busy dodging authorities to do so. Many of them died during this time.
What Christians really needed in order to establish the purpose-built church was the OK of the government. This is still true all over the world. The truest representations of the Kingdom of Jesus happen to be loathsome things to the Empires of Man. I don't expect for this truth to ever change in this life.
And yet the history of the church experience as we know it is representative of the opposite phenomenon. From Constantine on, the Empires of Man, particularly in the West, have allowed and in many cases encouraged the growth of the institution of the church. One might have to conclude that this institution as we've received it is maybe not the truest representation of the Kingdom of Jesus. I would go so far even as to make it a rule - if the authorities of men take no issue with your church gathering, then the Kingdom isn't very close at hand.
This is not to say that the constant threat of martyrdom is a blessing. Who among us wants to live life that way? I can assure you that the early church didn't welcome the persecution, even though they likely understood it as necessary. There is certainly something to be said for worshipping in safety.
Yet Jesus told us that we would suffer persecution, and that we should be glad when it came. Now martyrdom is certainly persecution, but death is not the only way we could be punished. How about being beaten for standing up for what is just? Or simply being ostracized because you stick to your convictions? Those sound like persecution to me. They also sound like the actions that officials have taken against Christians throughout history. Many times those officials were representatives of the state; many times representatives of the church. A lot of the time they were both.
The most damning indictment of the institution of the church as we experience it may very well be its institutional nature. On one hand we can praise God for Constantine; look what his empirical reign did for the growth of the Christian religion. On the other hand, what good did it actually do? If a false Gospel experience is spread more widely and quickly, is it a net positive or net negative? I for one believe that anything short of the Good News of Jesus is necessarily a loss.
The institutional experience of church life seems to be what we're stuck with. The average American experience is one peppered with institutional interactions. In a typical week we go to work, stop by the bank, visit some stores and restaurants, and once or twice go to church. The starkest differences among these experiences are the times of day, the mix of people at each location, and the expectation that I should be happy when I arrive.
The church is really just our modern temple, a place where the most studied believers among us stand stalwart as guardians of our faith practice. It's interesting that Jesus so often went first to the Synagogue (or temple) in each town he visited in order to preach. It would be tempting to believe that he went there because God's people were there, and God's word was being taught. It's more accurate though to assume he went there first because those were the people in town who most needed to hear his good news.
I suppose the same is true in our day; and just as in his day, Jesus isn't often welcome. You see, he's a disruptor. Whereas the Jews had a grudging peace with their Roman rulers, Jesus's very presence threatened to upend it. His teachings challenged all that was established and enforceable. His message threatened the institutional nature of the temple just as surely as it threatens the institution of the church.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Friday, September 22, 2017
No Radicals Here
Most churches in America have a flagpole. On one such flagpole I noticed the hierarchy of flags - the American flag up top, the Christian flag below, and, in some cases, a state flag third down the rung. So in case you missed it, the symbolic order of precedence on this particular flagpole is America / Christianity / Texas.
I saw this particular flagpole on my way to work and, although I have seen literally hundreds of church flagpoles before, on this day I noticed the flag order and it stirred up some thoughts. I initially wondered what would happen at that church if the Christian flag (more on that later) were flown above the American flag. Immediately I began to think of cultural norms, like those norms that dictated, at least to this church, that they fly the flag of our country above a flag that, at least symbolically, represents the Christian faith.
A couple of helpful background notes are in order. The United States Flag Code (Chapter 1 of Title 4 of the United States Code) provides advisory codes for the display and care of the flag of the United States of America. This includes how the flag should be flown in various circumstances. This code is law but penalties are not enforced. For example, burning the flag in public has been determined to be an expression of free speech and entirely legal, even though the Flag Code forbids it.
The Flag Code is a part of our cultural norms in America, so even though it isn't enforceable law, the pull of compliance on a cultural level is strong. The code says that anytime the American flag is flown with other flags on a pole, the American flag always flies at the top. The reason for this is the place of prominence that our nation holds in the social hierarchy. To fly a state flag above it would be to symbolize the greater status of that state over and above the collection of states that is the U.S.A. It would be disrespectful and socially and culturally offensive.
Many different organizations and institutions have flags. None of them is supposed to be flown above the flag of the United States of America.
The Christian Flag is a modern invention, first conceived in 1897 in (where else?) the United States of America. It is a standard meant for all Christendom as a symbol of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. The blue square in the upper left represent the blue sky, heaven, and faith and trust. The cross upon this blue is the symbol of Christianity and is red, representing the blood of Jesus. The rest of the flag is white, representing the purity of Jesus, the perfect sacrifice.
The Christian Flag was adopted by a collective church organization in 1942 as the official flag of Christendom. There is even a pledge of allegiance in various forms. The flag is a kind of soft symbol of Christianity mostly used in the United States, but also popular in Latin America and Africa.
It's easy to imagine why the Christian flag came to be. It is, in almost every way possible, an immodest copy of the flag of the United States of America (including the pledge). The same three colors are present - red, white, and blue. The blue square sits where the blue union sits on the US flag. The red cross replaces white stars, swapping one icon for another. Visibly it is a wonderful complement to the American flag. Incidentally it also complements the Texas flag.
There is no better symbol that I can imagine that so embodies the unholy devotion of the American Christian church to the nation of its birth. We love this nation so much that we have caricatured our devotion in a copycat cultural riff on the most powerful national symbol available.
As if this devotion isn't enough, we also follow the cultural code (and the Flag Code) in how we display this symbol of Christendom. And how do we display this symbol of the kingdom of Jesus Christ upon the earth? Why, below the American flag of course.
I love the symbolism of this display for so many reasons. First there is the very fact of the Christian flag - it betrays our need to fit in while also standing out; our inability to be truly "set apart" in our actions because the very flag is a cowardly attempt at being separate while being entirely included. There is the symbol of the Christian flag below the American one, which makes every effort to avoid controversy or offense by claiming the superiority of the American ideal to that of Jesus and his kingdom. There is finally the institutional symbol of the church itself as an important cultural building in the municipal landscape, a place prominent enough to warrant a flagpole at all, much less one with so much weighty symbolism flying from it.
As I looked at that flagpole the other day I wondered - what would happen if the Christian flag flew up top? What controversy would it stir for that congregation? By extension of this question I thought about our place in American society, us Christians. We have fit in so well for so long one begins to wonder how we would even begin to look "set apart." Certainly having our own Americanized symbol one rung below our national one isn't a bold statement of faith.
As with everything I am led back to Jesus, that radical itinerant preacher who stirred up so much trouble in his Roman province that the state saw fit to kill him. The American image of Jesus is a benign, placid, and conservative one, but the descriptions of his life and teaching in the Bible don't fit this image at all. He was a tough character who refused to bend to the cultural norms of the day. In fact he often made heretical (and treasonous?) statements about the coming Kingdom of God and it's power to tear down religious institutions and whole nations. I can't imagine Jesus designing a flag for his movement; he was too busy preaching a radical message of faith, love, and mercy.
There are radicals in America these days preaching extreme messages of inclusion, love, and mercy for the Least of These. What's telling is that so few of them are Christians by confession or cultural definition. When I look around at my fellow believers and at myself, I see no radicals here. The rabble-rousing message of Jesus has been so tamed that the idea of making waves with the Gospel is not only uncomfortable, it's possibly un-Christian by our standards. But if we lose the radical truth of the Gospel of Jesus we lose the Gospel itself.
What we need is not a familiar symbol of Jesus and his kingdom, but rather his kingdom itself. His radical, life altering kingdom that according to the King is right at hand. What we need is to be as radical as Jesus was, even if it offends our cultural norms, including the norms of the church. Especially the norms of the church.
I saw this particular flagpole on my way to work and, although I have seen literally hundreds of church flagpoles before, on this day I noticed the flag order and it stirred up some thoughts. I initially wondered what would happen at that church if the Christian flag (more on that later) were flown above the American flag. Immediately I began to think of cultural norms, like those norms that dictated, at least to this church, that they fly the flag of our country above a flag that, at least symbolically, represents the Christian faith.
A couple of helpful background notes are in order. The United States Flag Code (Chapter 1 of Title 4 of the United States Code) provides advisory codes for the display and care of the flag of the United States of America. This includes how the flag should be flown in various circumstances. This code is law but penalties are not enforced. For example, burning the flag in public has been determined to be an expression of free speech and entirely legal, even though the Flag Code forbids it.
The Flag Code is a part of our cultural norms in America, so even though it isn't enforceable law, the pull of compliance on a cultural level is strong. The code says that anytime the American flag is flown with other flags on a pole, the American flag always flies at the top. The reason for this is the place of prominence that our nation holds in the social hierarchy. To fly a state flag above it would be to symbolize the greater status of that state over and above the collection of states that is the U.S.A. It would be disrespectful and socially and culturally offensive.
Many different organizations and institutions have flags. None of them is supposed to be flown above the flag of the United States of America.
The Christian Flag is a modern invention, first conceived in 1897 in (where else?) the United States of America. It is a standard meant for all Christendom as a symbol of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. The blue square in the upper left represent the blue sky, heaven, and faith and trust. The cross upon this blue is the symbol of Christianity and is red, representing the blood of Jesus. The rest of the flag is white, representing the purity of Jesus, the perfect sacrifice.
The Christian Flag was adopted by a collective church organization in 1942 as the official flag of Christendom. There is even a pledge of allegiance in various forms. The flag is a kind of soft symbol of Christianity mostly used in the United States, but also popular in Latin America and Africa.
It's easy to imagine why the Christian flag came to be. It is, in almost every way possible, an immodest copy of the flag of the United States of America (including the pledge). The same three colors are present - red, white, and blue. The blue square sits where the blue union sits on the US flag. The red cross replaces white stars, swapping one icon for another. Visibly it is a wonderful complement to the American flag. Incidentally it also complements the Texas flag.
There is no better symbol that I can imagine that so embodies the unholy devotion of the American Christian church to the nation of its birth. We love this nation so much that we have caricatured our devotion in a copycat cultural riff on the most powerful national symbol available.
As if this devotion isn't enough, we also follow the cultural code (and the Flag Code) in how we display this symbol of Christendom. And how do we display this symbol of the kingdom of Jesus Christ upon the earth? Why, below the American flag of course.
I love the symbolism of this display for so many reasons. First there is the very fact of the Christian flag - it betrays our need to fit in while also standing out; our inability to be truly "set apart" in our actions because the very flag is a cowardly attempt at being separate while being entirely included. There is the symbol of the Christian flag below the American one, which makes every effort to avoid controversy or offense by claiming the superiority of the American ideal to that of Jesus and his kingdom. There is finally the institutional symbol of the church itself as an important cultural building in the municipal landscape, a place prominent enough to warrant a flagpole at all, much less one with so much weighty symbolism flying from it.
As I looked at that flagpole the other day I wondered - what would happen if the Christian flag flew up top? What controversy would it stir for that congregation? By extension of this question I thought about our place in American society, us Christians. We have fit in so well for so long one begins to wonder how we would even begin to look "set apart." Certainly having our own Americanized symbol one rung below our national one isn't a bold statement of faith.
As with everything I am led back to Jesus, that radical itinerant preacher who stirred up so much trouble in his Roman province that the state saw fit to kill him. The American image of Jesus is a benign, placid, and conservative one, but the descriptions of his life and teaching in the Bible don't fit this image at all. He was a tough character who refused to bend to the cultural norms of the day. In fact he often made heretical (and treasonous?) statements about the coming Kingdom of God and it's power to tear down religious institutions and whole nations. I can't imagine Jesus designing a flag for his movement; he was too busy preaching a radical message of faith, love, and mercy.
There are radicals in America these days preaching extreme messages of inclusion, love, and mercy for the Least of These. What's telling is that so few of them are Christians by confession or cultural definition. When I look around at my fellow believers and at myself, I see no radicals here. The rabble-rousing message of Jesus has been so tamed that the idea of making waves with the Gospel is not only uncomfortable, it's possibly un-Christian by our standards. But if we lose the radical truth of the Gospel of Jesus we lose the Gospel itself.
What we need is not a familiar symbol of Jesus and his kingdom, but rather his kingdom itself. His radical, life altering kingdom that according to the King is right at hand. What we need is to be as radical as Jesus was, even if it offends our cultural norms, including the norms of the church. Especially the norms of the church.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Outside Looking In
I don't go to a church anymore. This isn't a shocking statement on its face, but for me it's fairly surprising. I've gone to church the vast majority of my life. The evangelical traditions are deep in me. I can still sing the hymns as well as the contemporary praise songs, recite the scriptures as well as the theologies of my forbears.
For at least half of my life I attended church because I had to. My parents were devoted Baptists, and for most of my childhood my father was even a music minister, so we attended a variety of small Baptist churches in and around Amarillo. But mostly we spent our time at a good-sized, respectable, growing church with two services on Sunday, one on Sunday night, activities on Wednesday evenings, and myriad opportunities to serve throughout the year.
The latter half of my life was a process of being in and out of churches. During college I didn't have much interest in church. That is until I was married and my wife and I discovered a tiny tight-knit group of Believers who met at a closed coffee shop Sunday mornings. This was a new experience altogether for us. Here was a collection of Christians who were not much different from me, but whose church experience was a world away. There was no paid pastor, no children's programs, and no church building. Yet we relished our times together, often going for lunch after meeting, or meeting up for coffee or dinner later in the week. We loved being around each other.
Thus began my experience with attending a church by choice. While my experience with that group was short-lived - we moved away about a year later - it left an indelible mark and a desire to find another similar experience. The next four years were spent in pursuit of that experience, and while we met some fantastic people at various churches around the country, we didn't find the homespun community we had so loved and continued to so dearly miss.
Imagine our surprise then to discover in my hometown, shortly after moving back, a charismatic non-denominational church with a wide-ranging (I won't say "diverse," because that wouldn't exactly hold true) body of Jesus loving fools. We began to experience strange, surprising, and powerful spiritual truths among this church congregation. We discovered that we were broken hearted and in need of healing, and we received it over and over. My spiritual life grew and I learned that I was powerful. I also learned that God is powerful and that Jesus is powerful and that the Holy Spirit is powerful, and that all three of them are near at hand. The revelations I received over the course of several years with this church were the most significant of my Christian experience.
Suffice to say that we were "plugged in." My wife and I led a small group for over a year. We attended just about every special event, monthly meeting, prayer group, or conference the church held. We loved our church and recommended it to others. And things were going great at our church right up until the point that they weren't.
Here is where you might expect to hear about scandal or betrayal or personal pain, but you won't get it from my story. What happened was decidedly more banal and drawn out than that. The fact is we saw it coming for a good year before we left, but it took a while to realize how dissatisfied we were. We sat through some ridiculous things during this time, perhaps hoping that what we were witnessing wasn't really happening. But as our church became less and less passionate about the mysteries of God, replacing that passion with the legitimizing trappings of every other respectable congregation in the city, it became apparent that this too must pass.
In a sense we didn't leave our church, but rather our church - it's pure-hearted pursuit of Jesus and the Gospel, our collective love for one another, our foolhardy pursuit of revelations from God - left us.
But of course we actually did leave. It's been over a year and the experience of being outside of that church, which is incidentally the same thing as being outside of all church period, is very much fresh. We have learned a lot by being outside and looking in.
The most important thing I think that I've learned is just how exclusive church is. Maybe to some of you this sounds obvious, but to me it's still a jarring revelation. When I think about the Gospel of Jesus, the Good News he tells us to preach to all the world, the last adjective that comes to mind is "exclusive." And yet that's exactly how most churches are. I don't think that it's exactly intentional, and I certainly don't think that at my old church it was anything as malicious as it sounds, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.
So many aspects of the church experience are insular and exclusive, from the rhythm of the service to the order of the songs. But above all is the language of church. Like every other organization, the church has a vocabulary all its own that we learn to understand and repeat almost without intent. The language of the church becomes its most powerful means of exclusivity. This is the most damning indictment I think I can make. Church vocabulary is probably the first thing you adopt if you want to fit in, usually without analyzing the words being used. This is a shame, not only because language is such an effective means of exclusion, but also because words are so powerful when used conscientiously, with purpose.
Right now you may be clamoring for examples, and I would like to give them except for the fact that, even though I'm outside looking in now, the church experience is still so familiar that it isn't yet foreign. It's not so much that the experience of church attendance is strange to me now, but rather that our continual devotion to this mode of worship is so widely accepted without question. To gather together in the name of Jesus is natural; the pull of corporate worship and shared experience is strong and deeply spiritual. What's not natural, what isn't so apparently spiritual, is the exclusive and choreographed means by which we attempt to fulfill these natural impulses.
I could point to a myriad of means, but I'll limit myself to the most confounding ones. For instance, why a church building? I have heard a lot of preachers boast of how their humble home gatherings grew beyond the capacities of those home and wound up filling hundreds if not thousands of seats in a building set aside for that purpose. But what I have yet to hear is why this is so valuable, why this is an enviable or unavoidable result of that initial homegrown passion. The assumption seems to be that growth is an indicator of favor, therefore size is a measure of blessing. This isn't often the stated goal of a growing church, but more often than not it's a problem worth having.
When your inside the church and all of your friends are also there, this isn't a pressing question. Churchgoers tend to overlook the exclusive aspects of church, and asking why you attend church in a building set aside for that purpose is like asking why you sleep in a bedroom. You sleep in a bedroom because that's where the bed is. You worship God at a church because that's where His people are.
The church experience is, at this point in history, so common that it isn't productive to challenge it. Church is as much an institution in our culture as school is, and we aren't all of us questioning the value of operating that institution outside of the home. But when you are outside of the church looking in, and all of your old friends are still there (inside looking out?), you do question it, along with the obvious related question, "Why aren't my church friends my friends anymore?"
The exclusive nature of churchgoing is bound up in going to church. When you're there you're family; when you're not there, you're to be pitied. Like the wayward nephew who can't get his act together and hold down a job, those of us who aren't participating in churchgoing activity have to come to terms with being pitiful and, dare I say, lonely. The phone stops ringing when you aren't around on Sundays to remind your friends that you are still someone worth calling.
Another burning question of mine about church is, why a paid staff? Usually the answer to this question comes back in the form of scripture - I Timothy 5:17 comes to mind. But even as much as we value Scripture in such dealings, I think we lean on tradition even more. This would at least explain why pastors of large churches, or of churches in well organized (read: well funded) denominations are paid more.
The most fundamental element of my question though has more to do with what a church should be. Should it be an enterprise? I have known pastors in various denominations, and at the end of the day they are like CEOs of their respective churches, administering budgets and planning programs, measuring progress and developing strategies for growth. And why not? I can't think of anything more American than a smart, efficient, business-minded leader overseeing a well-functioning enterprise, especially if that enterprise is aimed at the highest pursuit of man - the saving of The Lost.
Except that there is something deeply convoluted about this mode of ministry. First off, the Gospel is not a widget to be sold by the savviest purveyor. Now I don't expect anyone reading this to necessarily claim that as a motive, but enterprises (or "businesses" if you prefer) are always in the business of selling something; call it crass, but building an enterprise around the efficient delivery of a message is the definition of a marketing company. Yet we have an industry of Gospel Delivery Organizations that, while hit upon hard times of late, are more than up to the task of adapting to the current market trends.
I continue to see striking examples of entrepreneurship in Christian churches these days. From snappy logos and taglines to downright enigmatic church names meant to conjure contemporary hipness, there is a move afoot to maintain the widespread appeal of the church experience. And strangely all this window dressing is applied to organizations that, at the end of the day, are pretty exclusive places to spend your time. Save your "everyone is welcome" and "judgment-free zone" slogans for the marketing agencies; people know what they're going to get behind the doors of a church regardless of its makeover, and what they're all too likely to get are fickle friends and tepid theology.
Maybe I'm being too tough on churches, but from the outside looking in I can tell you that we're not offering a product that's in high demand. That is unless what we're offering is the real, true, free Gospel of Jesus Christ. That message of love and mercy shared openly among the rejects of religion is the only thing that anybody really wants or needs, yet it seems secondary to the slogans and stages that the church too often embodies. Jesus spent his ministry in the streets and on the hillsides challenging the established religious practices every step of the way. And what do we do in his name? We reestablish those "holy places," taking God's presence out of the street and placing it back inside the temple where we seem to think it belongs.
From the outside looking in I can tell you that God hasn't left the streets. The God of Jesus Christ, merciful and slow to anger, anxious for a real relationship, is everywhere, even inside the spaces set up purely as a means of containing that presence. You can't put God in a box or inside a purpose-built facility, and neither can you keep him out. You can't keep Jesus out of the bars and brothels and coffee shops and hardware stores. The risen savior wanders the grocery store aisles and sits at the dining room table. And the Spirit of God most certainly inhabits the homes of those who are looking for a life-changing experience alongside their friends and family. Maybe we should join him.
For at least half of my life I attended church because I had to. My parents were devoted Baptists, and for most of my childhood my father was even a music minister, so we attended a variety of small Baptist churches in and around Amarillo. But mostly we spent our time at a good-sized, respectable, growing church with two services on Sunday, one on Sunday night, activities on Wednesday evenings, and myriad opportunities to serve throughout the year.
The latter half of my life was a process of being in and out of churches. During college I didn't have much interest in church. That is until I was married and my wife and I discovered a tiny tight-knit group of Believers who met at a closed coffee shop Sunday mornings. This was a new experience altogether for us. Here was a collection of Christians who were not much different from me, but whose church experience was a world away. There was no paid pastor, no children's programs, and no church building. Yet we relished our times together, often going for lunch after meeting, or meeting up for coffee or dinner later in the week. We loved being around each other.
Thus began my experience with attending a church by choice. While my experience with that group was short-lived - we moved away about a year later - it left an indelible mark and a desire to find another similar experience. The next four years were spent in pursuit of that experience, and while we met some fantastic people at various churches around the country, we didn't find the homespun community we had so loved and continued to so dearly miss.
Imagine our surprise then to discover in my hometown, shortly after moving back, a charismatic non-denominational church with a wide-ranging (I won't say "diverse," because that wouldn't exactly hold true) body of Jesus loving fools. We began to experience strange, surprising, and powerful spiritual truths among this church congregation. We discovered that we were broken hearted and in need of healing, and we received it over and over. My spiritual life grew and I learned that I was powerful. I also learned that God is powerful and that Jesus is powerful and that the Holy Spirit is powerful, and that all three of them are near at hand. The revelations I received over the course of several years with this church were the most significant of my Christian experience.
Suffice to say that we were "plugged in." My wife and I led a small group for over a year. We attended just about every special event, monthly meeting, prayer group, or conference the church held. We loved our church and recommended it to others. And things were going great at our church right up until the point that they weren't.
Here is where you might expect to hear about scandal or betrayal or personal pain, but you won't get it from my story. What happened was decidedly more banal and drawn out than that. The fact is we saw it coming for a good year before we left, but it took a while to realize how dissatisfied we were. We sat through some ridiculous things during this time, perhaps hoping that what we were witnessing wasn't really happening. But as our church became less and less passionate about the mysteries of God, replacing that passion with the legitimizing trappings of every other respectable congregation in the city, it became apparent that this too must pass.
In a sense we didn't leave our church, but rather our church - it's pure-hearted pursuit of Jesus and the Gospel, our collective love for one another, our foolhardy pursuit of revelations from God - left us.
But of course we actually did leave. It's been over a year and the experience of being outside of that church, which is incidentally the same thing as being outside of all church period, is very much fresh. We have learned a lot by being outside and looking in.
The most important thing I think that I've learned is just how exclusive church is. Maybe to some of you this sounds obvious, but to me it's still a jarring revelation. When I think about the Gospel of Jesus, the Good News he tells us to preach to all the world, the last adjective that comes to mind is "exclusive." And yet that's exactly how most churches are. I don't think that it's exactly intentional, and I certainly don't think that at my old church it was anything as malicious as it sounds, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.
So many aspects of the church experience are insular and exclusive, from the rhythm of the service to the order of the songs. But above all is the language of church. Like every other organization, the church has a vocabulary all its own that we learn to understand and repeat almost without intent. The language of the church becomes its most powerful means of exclusivity. This is the most damning indictment I think I can make. Church vocabulary is probably the first thing you adopt if you want to fit in, usually without analyzing the words being used. This is a shame, not only because language is such an effective means of exclusion, but also because words are so powerful when used conscientiously, with purpose.
Right now you may be clamoring for examples, and I would like to give them except for the fact that, even though I'm outside looking in now, the church experience is still so familiar that it isn't yet foreign. It's not so much that the experience of church attendance is strange to me now, but rather that our continual devotion to this mode of worship is so widely accepted without question. To gather together in the name of Jesus is natural; the pull of corporate worship and shared experience is strong and deeply spiritual. What's not natural, what isn't so apparently spiritual, is the exclusive and choreographed means by which we attempt to fulfill these natural impulses.
I could point to a myriad of means, but I'll limit myself to the most confounding ones. For instance, why a church building? I have heard a lot of preachers boast of how their humble home gatherings grew beyond the capacities of those home and wound up filling hundreds if not thousands of seats in a building set aside for that purpose. But what I have yet to hear is why this is so valuable, why this is an enviable or unavoidable result of that initial homegrown passion. The assumption seems to be that growth is an indicator of favor, therefore size is a measure of blessing. This isn't often the stated goal of a growing church, but more often than not it's a problem worth having.
When your inside the church and all of your friends are also there, this isn't a pressing question. Churchgoers tend to overlook the exclusive aspects of church, and asking why you attend church in a building set aside for that purpose is like asking why you sleep in a bedroom. You sleep in a bedroom because that's where the bed is. You worship God at a church because that's where His people are.
The church experience is, at this point in history, so common that it isn't productive to challenge it. Church is as much an institution in our culture as school is, and we aren't all of us questioning the value of operating that institution outside of the home. But when you are outside of the church looking in, and all of your old friends are still there (inside looking out?), you do question it, along with the obvious related question, "Why aren't my church friends my friends anymore?"
The exclusive nature of churchgoing is bound up in going to church. When you're there you're family; when you're not there, you're to be pitied. Like the wayward nephew who can't get his act together and hold down a job, those of us who aren't participating in churchgoing activity have to come to terms with being pitiful and, dare I say, lonely. The phone stops ringing when you aren't around on Sundays to remind your friends that you are still someone worth calling.
Another burning question of mine about church is, why a paid staff? Usually the answer to this question comes back in the form of scripture - I Timothy 5:17 comes to mind. But even as much as we value Scripture in such dealings, I think we lean on tradition even more. This would at least explain why pastors of large churches, or of churches in well organized (read: well funded) denominations are paid more.
The most fundamental element of my question though has more to do with what a church should be. Should it be an enterprise? I have known pastors in various denominations, and at the end of the day they are like CEOs of their respective churches, administering budgets and planning programs, measuring progress and developing strategies for growth. And why not? I can't think of anything more American than a smart, efficient, business-minded leader overseeing a well-functioning enterprise, especially if that enterprise is aimed at the highest pursuit of man - the saving of The Lost.
Except that there is something deeply convoluted about this mode of ministry. First off, the Gospel is not a widget to be sold by the savviest purveyor. Now I don't expect anyone reading this to necessarily claim that as a motive, but enterprises (or "businesses" if you prefer) are always in the business of selling something; call it crass, but building an enterprise around the efficient delivery of a message is the definition of a marketing company. Yet we have an industry of Gospel Delivery Organizations that, while hit upon hard times of late, are more than up to the task of adapting to the current market trends.
I continue to see striking examples of entrepreneurship in Christian churches these days. From snappy logos and taglines to downright enigmatic church names meant to conjure contemporary hipness, there is a move afoot to maintain the widespread appeal of the church experience. And strangely all this window dressing is applied to organizations that, at the end of the day, are pretty exclusive places to spend your time. Save your "everyone is welcome" and "judgment-free zone" slogans for the marketing agencies; people know what they're going to get behind the doors of a church regardless of its makeover, and what they're all too likely to get are fickle friends and tepid theology.
Maybe I'm being too tough on churches, but from the outside looking in I can tell you that we're not offering a product that's in high demand. That is unless what we're offering is the real, true, free Gospel of Jesus Christ. That message of love and mercy shared openly among the rejects of religion is the only thing that anybody really wants or needs, yet it seems secondary to the slogans and stages that the church too often embodies. Jesus spent his ministry in the streets and on the hillsides challenging the established religious practices every step of the way. And what do we do in his name? We reestablish those "holy places," taking God's presence out of the street and placing it back inside the temple where we seem to think it belongs.
From the outside looking in I can tell you that God hasn't left the streets. The God of Jesus Christ, merciful and slow to anger, anxious for a real relationship, is everywhere, even inside the spaces set up purely as a means of containing that presence. You can't put God in a box or inside a purpose-built facility, and neither can you keep him out. You can't keep Jesus out of the bars and brothels and coffee shops and hardware stores. The risen savior wanders the grocery store aisles and sits at the dining room table. And the Spirit of God most certainly inhabits the homes of those who are looking for a life-changing experience alongside their friends and family. Maybe we should join him.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Redeeming God's Voice
I wonder what comes to mind when you hear the word Judgment? If your like most people, not pleasant things. Judgment is one of those words that carries a heavy yoke of connotation. It implies imperiousness and piety in its practitioner and shame in the object of this practice. While we would like for the implications of Judgment to be Justice, it doesn't work that way in practice, in how we actually think about the term. Judgment, which should be a term of objectivity - as in an impartial judge rendering a verdict - instead has become a term of partiality and subjectiveness whereby the executor of judgment seems to mete it out at will, often unfairly.
In the scriptures though, Judgment is a key characteristic of God's nature. He is just, therefore he judges righteously, therefore his Judgment is good. the Bible supports this over and over again. The Judgment of God is a good thing in scripture, even a desirable thing because His Judgment is the execution of His just nature. Psalm 1:5 even promises evil people that they will not receive the Judgment of God. Imagine that, a lack of judgment as a threat!
Judgment is a tool of righteousness for God, but here's the catch. God is perfect, and he has perfect judgment, so the Judgment that He delivers is perfect. Since this is the case, His judgment is not something to be feared but rather something to be embraced. This concept of Judgment holds the world together; it makes social life possible, makes law and order in human communities possible, makes relationships fair, and so on. All of this is possible from a perfect source.
Something happens, though, when Judgment falls into our hands. We quickly learn to be proud of ourselves. As we recognize the justice of our actions - that is, as we align our activity with the precepts of God - we have a tendency to feel pretty good about what we're doing. In the process we give ourselves liberty to mete out the Judgment of God on everyone else, and a cycle can take hold whereby we seek perfection in our actions in order to leverage Judgment over everyone else. This is the very foundation of Religion in the most negative sense of that word. A sense of self-righteousness born out of the perversion of something good which we set up as the framework for judging everyone around us - that is the definition of religion.
Once you have self-centered religion, any Judgment you practice is tainted. It's tainted by pettiness and arrogance and a lack of mercy. It's tainted by rules and guidelines that become the arbiters of righteousness rather than God. And as people sense that they're being judged unfairly, that Religion is afoot and mercy and grace have retreated, the very word Judgment becomes tainted by an unrighteous practice of its application.
I've been talking about the word Judgment, but there are any number of other words that Religion has stolen and debased. Let's start with that word, Religion. This word is tainted mostly owing to its connection to Judgment. Etymologically religion comes from practices of study and devotion to gods, very concrete concepts that one would expect. But modern Religion implies Puritanical elements of unattainable piety and exclusivity.
Fellowship is a word I've grown to hate. It seems code for religious socializing, often forced or otherwise decidedly not fun. Then there's Church, a word which in the New Testament almost never refers to a building, but which in our time almost never does not. The writers of the New Testament constantly refer to the church as belonging to God; in Acts we're told that God purchased the church "with his own blood." Surely he didn't want to buy an assortment of ugly buildings in Amarillo, TX? Surely if we received a letter from a missionary to "The Church of God in Amarillo" we wouldn't post a picture of it online and claim it was meant only for our little congregation?
If any word is ready for redemption it is surely the word Church. The 2,000 plus years that have passed since Jesus was on the earth have been plagued with abuses by the church. In the name of "the church" people have been maimed, killed, and enslaved; forced to leave homes, families, and entire cultures; taught to hate other religions and ethnicities and nations; forced to support unjust governments and modes of life; and generally made to believe that someone besides Jesus himself is head of this thing called the Church which, by all accounts in scripture, should include anyone who has the slightest interest in a good, just, and holy God who does everything possible to bring grace and mercy and love to all humanity.
The very voice of God needs redemption. We live in the most literate time in human history, which by most Christian standards should mean that the Bible is being read in almost every possible corner of the globe. By the standards of most of the Christians I know, this should translate to a global revival. Imagine several billion people with access to God's words! And yet something unsettling is happening instead. It seems that instead of more freedom and healing and joy spreading around the world along with the written word, there's a strangling of the language of God. The more we put Bibles into peoples hands, the more we want to include our own interpretations (and connotations) of the language in those bibles. It's not enough for many of us that the Word of God is out there for the reading if someone who "knows what they're doing" is not also there to explain Judgment, Church, Fellowship, Grace, and even Salvation to the ignorant masses.
The voice of God needs to be redeemed because many of us Christians decided years ago that He doesn't (or can't) really speak anymore anyway. We ignored the fact that the Bible says "the Word became Flesh" and instead spread the lie that the Flesh became Word - that Jesus is summed up in the Holy Bible, so reading is all that's required. Our fixation on the printed scriptures ignores the fact that in order to encounter Jesus, you have to, you know, encounter Jesus! The word became flesh because not only can some people not read, but some people who can never will. God didn't write Moses a letter, he spoke to the man from a burning bush.
Redeeming God's voice is about redeeming the language of God. It's about giving life and power to words like Just and Good, Judgment and Love. Jesus came to earth to show us the character of God through the medium of our own skin, our own condition. Jesus embodied Judgment when he laid bare the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and repeatedly said, "I demand mercy and not sacrifice." Jesus showed us that Church is a community of the God-fearing rather than a temple of exclusion. And Jesus taught us that Religion is about self-sacrifice and care for the weakest among us - for the widows and orphans, the powerless and marginalized. Redeeming God's voice is an act of redeeming His character in our world. We need the language of God to represent His character and connote His love and grace, or else the only answers we'll have for the questions of the world will be empty promises.
In the scriptures though, Judgment is a key characteristic of God's nature. He is just, therefore he judges righteously, therefore his Judgment is good. the Bible supports this over and over again. The Judgment of God is a good thing in scripture, even a desirable thing because His Judgment is the execution of His just nature. Psalm 1:5 even promises evil people that they will not receive the Judgment of God. Imagine that, a lack of judgment as a threat!
Judgment is a tool of righteousness for God, but here's the catch. God is perfect, and he has perfect judgment, so the Judgment that He delivers is perfect. Since this is the case, His judgment is not something to be feared but rather something to be embraced. This concept of Judgment holds the world together; it makes social life possible, makes law and order in human communities possible, makes relationships fair, and so on. All of this is possible from a perfect source.
Something happens, though, when Judgment falls into our hands. We quickly learn to be proud of ourselves. As we recognize the justice of our actions - that is, as we align our activity with the precepts of God - we have a tendency to feel pretty good about what we're doing. In the process we give ourselves liberty to mete out the Judgment of God on everyone else, and a cycle can take hold whereby we seek perfection in our actions in order to leverage Judgment over everyone else. This is the very foundation of Religion in the most negative sense of that word. A sense of self-righteousness born out of the perversion of something good which we set up as the framework for judging everyone around us - that is the definition of religion.
Once you have self-centered religion, any Judgment you practice is tainted. It's tainted by pettiness and arrogance and a lack of mercy. It's tainted by rules and guidelines that become the arbiters of righteousness rather than God. And as people sense that they're being judged unfairly, that Religion is afoot and mercy and grace have retreated, the very word Judgment becomes tainted by an unrighteous practice of its application.
I've been talking about the word Judgment, but there are any number of other words that Religion has stolen and debased. Let's start with that word, Religion. This word is tainted mostly owing to its connection to Judgment. Etymologically religion comes from practices of study and devotion to gods, very concrete concepts that one would expect. But modern Religion implies Puritanical elements of unattainable piety and exclusivity.
Fellowship is a word I've grown to hate. It seems code for religious socializing, often forced or otherwise decidedly not fun. Then there's Church, a word which in the New Testament almost never refers to a building, but which in our time almost never does not. The writers of the New Testament constantly refer to the church as belonging to God; in Acts we're told that God purchased the church "with his own blood." Surely he didn't want to buy an assortment of ugly buildings in Amarillo, TX? Surely if we received a letter from a missionary to "The Church of God in Amarillo" we wouldn't post a picture of it online and claim it was meant only for our little congregation?
If any word is ready for redemption it is surely the word Church. The 2,000 plus years that have passed since Jesus was on the earth have been plagued with abuses by the church. In the name of "the church" people have been maimed, killed, and enslaved; forced to leave homes, families, and entire cultures; taught to hate other religions and ethnicities and nations; forced to support unjust governments and modes of life; and generally made to believe that someone besides Jesus himself is head of this thing called the Church which, by all accounts in scripture, should include anyone who has the slightest interest in a good, just, and holy God who does everything possible to bring grace and mercy and love to all humanity.
The very voice of God needs redemption. We live in the most literate time in human history, which by most Christian standards should mean that the Bible is being read in almost every possible corner of the globe. By the standards of most of the Christians I know, this should translate to a global revival. Imagine several billion people with access to God's words! And yet something unsettling is happening instead. It seems that instead of more freedom and healing and joy spreading around the world along with the written word, there's a strangling of the language of God. The more we put Bibles into peoples hands, the more we want to include our own interpretations (and connotations) of the language in those bibles. It's not enough for many of us that the Word of God is out there for the reading if someone who "knows what they're doing" is not also there to explain Judgment, Church, Fellowship, Grace, and even Salvation to the ignorant masses.
The voice of God needs to be redeemed because many of us Christians decided years ago that He doesn't (or can't) really speak anymore anyway. We ignored the fact that the Bible says "the Word became Flesh" and instead spread the lie that the Flesh became Word - that Jesus is summed up in the Holy Bible, so reading is all that's required. Our fixation on the printed scriptures ignores the fact that in order to encounter Jesus, you have to, you know, encounter Jesus! The word became flesh because not only can some people not read, but some people who can never will. God didn't write Moses a letter, he spoke to the man from a burning bush.
Redeeming God's voice is about redeeming the language of God. It's about giving life and power to words like Just and Good, Judgment and Love. Jesus came to earth to show us the character of God through the medium of our own skin, our own condition. Jesus embodied Judgment when he laid bare the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and repeatedly said, "I demand mercy and not sacrifice." Jesus showed us that Church is a community of the God-fearing rather than a temple of exclusion. And Jesus taught us that Religion is about self-sacrifice and care for the weakest among us - for the widows and orphans, the powerless and marginalized. Redeeming God's voice is an act of redeeming His character in our world. We need the language of God to represent His character and connote His love and grace, or else the only answers we'll have for the questions of the world will be empty promises.
Monday, January 2, 2017
What is Church?
The first time I heard the term "The Dones" was probably around the time that Joshua Packard published this short column on Christianity Today. I heard it (of course) on social media, and my initial reaction was one of disgust, but not with the concept. I hated that the institution - media, researchers, leaders, the church itself - felt the need to come up with a label for a group of people just so it could try to explain who they were.
Nevertheless, here I sit about 18 months later reading about how faithful Christians are leaving churches all across the country and all I can think is how it's about time. I myself have attended church the vast majority of my life, with two large periods of non-attendance. The first was during college, right around the ages of 20 to 23. At that time I was outside of my parents' control and I just didn't want to go to a Baptist church. The second period was during the early years of my marriage when my wife and I were moving every few months (it seemed) and couldn't - or didn't really want to - find a stable place to attend.
What is church anyway? The ready answer to that is exactly what comes to mind for me. For about 32 of my 36 years on this earth I have spent Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings (and many, many more days and nights) in a building set aside for the practices of Christian worship. My early years were spent in Southern Baptist churches in Amarillo, TX. My latter years in various non-denominational churches. I spent almost eight years at Messiah's House in Amarillo until, for a variety of reasons, I didn't see the point in going anymore.
But surely church is not simply what we've come to expect it to be here in America? A social gathering mid-morning on Sundays - or if your particularly hip, Saturday night - where about 20 minutes is spent in song and another 40 listening to a single person (probably a man) preach a prepared sermon with lots of Bible references. On Wednesday night there is probably a small group or a Bible study, activities for the children, and a lot of friendly Hellos and How-are-yous as you rush about gathering up your kids so you can hustle home and get them in bed.
If that is what church is then it's no wonder people are done with it. When I read the Acts of the Apostles and the exciting work of the First Church, I'm dumbfounded at how what I've been doing most of my life comes anywhere close to the activity of Paul and Peter and all those new converts. When I hear a pastor brag about how a gathering of Believers in a living room swelled to the auditorium he's preaching in now, I can't help but wonder what exactly has been achieved. Why was the living room such a lowly location for the fervent pursuit of God? What makes an auditorium, replete with fog machines and jumbo screens, a holier location for the preaching of the Good News?
The irony is that what a new generation of Believers is searching for is exactly what so many pastors gave up to get into a building down the street. The authenticity of Jesus' love and redemption is far more at home in someone's house than in an American Suburban Temple. The stories of Jesus's miracles, of his healing and deliverance and grace, make such greater impact when we share them in the intimacy of small groups and real relationships. For some reason the church continues to pursue the caprice of newer buildings, better sound, and full-time salaried staff as if the formula of Church-Done-Right will be a better guarantee of salvation for the World. The reality is that Jesus Christ is personal. If we want to do his work on the earth, we're going to have to get personal, too.
Maybe that's what Church is - the Gospel of Jesus Christ delivered in a personal way. At one time I thought my most recent church experience was personal. Ours was a small church (about 200 people), and we saw the most impactful ministry occur in small groups on Wednesday nights. For a while it was a heady spiritual experience. There was freedom in ways I hadn't known there could be at church. And there was power - real spriritual power that was revealed in prophecies and healing and breakthrough for heartbroken people. But for some reason the specter of Church-Done-Right began to creep in. Before I knew it all of the most spiritually minded elders were gone, replaced by administrators with more disposable income. The mood shifted and so did the focus - from deliverance and relationships to programs and "involvement." The mantra became "getting plugged in" as if each of us was a spiritual appliance looking for juice from the ever-charged church. After a while it was too much. Without intimacy and the pure pursuit of God and the Spirit, it seemed like we were wasting our time. The worst part was that no one seemed to really care when we stopped showing up.
I don't know exactly what church is supposed to look like, and thank God and Jesus I don't have to. I'm not called to be the head of the Church; no man is. If I know my Bible right, the head of the Church is Jesus Christ himself, so I can't figure out why so many men (and sometimes women) are trying so damn hard to take control of this thing we call church. I would rather give over the larger vision to the Creator of the World and the Perfecter of my Faith and instead spend my time making friendships and bringing bits of heaven into this world. There are better ways to accomplish that then sitting in a pew on Sunday. Surely there are. Please God, please tell me there are.
Nevertheless, here I sit about 18 months later reading about how faithful Christians are leaving churches all across the country and all I can think is how it's about time. I myself have attended church the vast majority of my life, with two large periods of non-attendance. The first was during college, right around the ages of 20 to 23. At that time I was outside of my parents' control and I just didn't want to go to a Baptist church. The second period was during the early years of my marriage when my wife and I were moving every few months (it seemed) and couldn't - or didn't really want to - find a stable place to attend.
What is church anyway? The ready answer to that is exactly what comes to mind for me. For about 32 of my 36 years on this earth I have spent Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings (and many, many more days and nights) in a building set aside for the practices of Christian worship. My early years were spent in Southern Baptist churches in Amarillo, TX. My latter years in various non-denominational churches. I spent almost eight years at Messiah's House in Amarillo until, for a variety of reasons, I didn't see the point in going anymore.
But surely church is not simply what we've come to expect it to be here in America? A social gathering mid-morning on Sundays - or if your particularly hip, Saturday night - where about 20 minutes is spent in song and another 40 listening to a single person (probably a man) preach a prepared sermon with lots of Bible references. On Wednesday night there is probably a small group or a Bible study, activities for the children, and a lot of friendly Hellos and How-are-yous as you rush about gathering up your kids so you can hustle home and get them in bed.
If that is what church is then it's no wonder people are done with it. When I read the Acts of the Apostles and the exciting work of the First Church, I'm dumbfounded at how what I've been doing most of my life comes anywhere close to the activity of Paul and Peter and all those new converts. When I hear a pastor brag about how a gathering of Believers in a living room swelled to the auditorium he's preaching in now, I can't help but wonder what exactly has been achieved. Why was the living room such a lowly location for the fervent pursuit of God? What makes an auditorium, replete with fog machines and jumbo screens, a holier location for the preaching of the Good News?
The irony is that what a new generation of Believers is searching for is exactly what so many pastors gave up to get into a building down the street. The authenticity of Jesus' love and redemption is far more at home in someone's house than in an American Suburban Temple. The stories of Jesus's miracles, of his healing and deliverance and grace, make such greater impact when we share them in the intimacy of small groups and real relationships. For some reason the church continues to pursue the caprice of newer buildings, better sound, and full-time salaried staff as if the formula of Church-Done-Right will be a better guarantee of salvation for the World. The reality is that Jesus Christ is personal. If we want to do his work on the earth, we're going to have to get personal, too.
Maybe that's what Church is - the Gospel of Jesus Christ delivered in a personal way. At one time I thought my most recent church experience was personal. Ours was a small church (about 200 people), and we saw the most impactful ministry occur in small groups on Wednesday nights. For a while it was a heady spiritual experience. There was freedom in ways I hadn't known there could be at church. And there was power - real spriritual power that was revealed in prophecies and healing and breakthrough for heartbroken people. But for some reason the specter of Church-Done-Right began to creep in. Before I knew it all of the most spiritually minded elders were gone, replaced by administrators with more disposable income. The mood shifted and so did the focus - from deliverance and relationships to programs and "involvement." The mantra became "getting plugged in" as if each of us was a spiritual appliance looking for juice from the ever-charged church. After a while it was too much. Without intimacy and the pure pursuit of God and the Spirit, it seemed like we were wasting our time. The worst part was that no one seemed to really care when we stopped showing up.
I don't know exactly what church is supposed to look like, and thank God and Jesus I don't have to. I'm not called to be the head of the Church; no man is. If I know my Bible right, the head of the Church is Jesus Christ himself, so I can't figure out why so many men (and sometimes women) are trying so damn hard to take control of this thing we call church. I would rather give over the larger vision to the Creator of the World and the Perfecter of my Faith and instead spend my time making friendships and bringing bits of heaven into this world. There are better ways to accomplish that then sitting in a pew on Sunday. Surely there are. Please God, please tell me there are.
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