I ran across this article recently. Tell me what you think. Do you agree? Disagree? Why?
For me, my own angst with the state of the church snuck up on me, like a weird twist in a movie I didn’t expect. I was caught off guard by an indefinable sense of “all is not well”. Things began to come into focus, though, when I pulled out of all the church activities I’d been involved with. Suddenly, I was looking at church and myself from the outside in. I was startled to discover that the center of my life had been church and ministry instead of Jesus. My relationship with Him and with others had become systemized, based on programs and church-navigated activities. In short, (I had become in bondage to – awkward) the religious culture of church. Apparently, I’m not the only one.
A blogger I know here in the Pacific Northwest related to me her sense of discontentment with church. She expressed her desire for close relationships with others, to be real and that this is her hope for church, “not a place to sit and stare at the back of a stranger’s head for an hour and go home.” Like me, she’s become disenchanted with the way we do church.
I have a new friend in cyberspace who goes by the online name of Emerging Grace. EG and her husband served for years as leaders in their local church, then unexpectedly found themselves out on the curb looking in. She writes, “It wasn’t until being removed from that environment that my overall disillusionment with the American church culture began.” She says what I’m hearing many others say, “that church needs to be about what happens in our everyday lives rather than what happens on Sunday.”
There is a growing awareness that church is not about a place or a building. The perception of many believers I’ve talked with is that American Christians have mastered going to church rather than being the church. One blog I sometimes check out is hosted by a guy who grew up in a very large church. He watched his church begin operating more like a business rather than a church. He says, “It seems that many of them (churches) are pushing the American dream over the love of Jesus.”
Many discussions about the life of the church today lead back to the “C” word – culture. One friend of mine thinks that the church has become irrelevant to the culture. There are discussions and books and blogs galore that agree with her and are analyzing post-modernism and how the church can keep up with the evolving culture of society.
A friend in the blogosphere says, “There’s a bit of a trend to make church look less churchish.” She’s right; many churches are employing innovative approaches to identify with the culture we find ourselves in. I’m not a scholar, but I agree with my friend, Tracey, who says, “The only culture in a church should be the culture of Jesus”. I wonder how that would look?
This reminds me of the story about the religious leader who asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment. Jesus told him it was to Love God with everything you’ve got and to also love others (Matthew 22:36-39). Christ summed up all the mystery of religious philosophy and kingdom culture with the simple message of Love God and each another. And that is what I hear in the words of so many disillusioned Christians around me – a hunger for Jesus and community.
A woman in her sixties who has been a faithful churchgoer for years says it well, “I have no deep thoughts, or big words, but I know I do have a hunger for more of Him, that intimate relationship we all are seeking.”
My friend Suzanne came over for dinner a couple of weeks ago. We talked for hours about all these things. We didn’t figure out how to solve the woes of the modern American church in all her weaknesses, but in an email a few weeks later she told me she’s decided, “to move forward in being what I want to see…”
Maybe that’s the answer to the What-is-it-question my homegroup grappled with. Perhaps “it” is time to stop doing church and instead be the church.
So . . . what do you think?
