Dear Church,
We need to talk. I love you but I’m finding it really hard to like you these days. You have been such an integral part of my life - my whole life - but lately… our relationship seems, dry. I used to weep from redemption or weep for joy when I would spend time with you. I am no morning person, but Sunday mornings I would bound out of bed to be in the midst of you and I would get happy on the drive to spend just a mere hour with you on a chilly Wednesday night and afterwards my drive home was bliss. Every part of service with you was fulfilling. And it didn’t matter where it happened either. Church anywhere, I loved. I suppose that is what you would call the honeymoon period. I lived in the honeymoon period for a long time…30 years long time. And now… I am married to the pastor, my children love you, I love my husband’s preaching, it should be roses and starlight but something is missing. Most days I feel like I could get along just fine without you, and yet, I can’t quit you.
Don’t worry, my husband has not married a heretic. As I said, I love his preaching, and there are a lot of things about you I still love deeply. But I’m experiencing static. And it is forcing me to look some things right in the eye.
There has been a good chunk of time recently where I wish I was invisible, and then there have been some times when I want to stand up in front of you so I can tell you exactly how I feel. But lately, most days, I'd rather just stay home. Maybe some of it has to do with feeling like an outlier - something I never felt until I married a pastor (I’m not blaming him). One day I was just a member, happy to come and serve. Then the next day I wasn’t. I was an outsider. Somehow I became “one of them” and the connections I once shared were gone. I suppose it didn’t help that at that time the area of the body that I was a part of was eating itself alive. Some of the church I loved were hating others of the church I loved and tearing them apart.
Church, I had grown up knowing you to be loving and caring, prayerful and encouraging, supportive and accountable. Was it never really that way? Have I always been wearing rose coloured glasses? I should have pegged in sooner I guess. Spending an hour arguing the finer minutia of theology seemed like a waste of time when we could be spending an hour praying, or serving, or anything else. Looking back, that’s when it started to go downhill for you and me. All I ever saw was the same old thing.
Sadly church, this isn’t unique to the body I was a part of. Anyone could go to any part of you in North America and encounter the same thing. Time wasted on minutia. Why do we do this? Why does church spend so much energy on making sure things stay the same? Making sure that they are right while “they” are wrong. I am so tired of the in-fighting. Why is it so hard for us to be in-loving, in-serving, in-sacrifing, in-doing?
Church, we need help, you and me. I want to fix this. I want to bound out of bed on a Sunday again, I want to have joy at the thought of spending time with you again. I want to leave your presence feeling bliss again. Where do we go from here?
I feel like we need more diversity. We are not all the same. Different personalities, different gifts, different community cultures. Every building that houses weekly worship gatherings should look vastly different from the next, shouldn't it? But, we sing a few songs, we hear announcement, we sing a few more songs, we take offering, kids - if they've been in the service this whole time - are dismissed to Sunday school or children's church or whatever the new name is these days. Maybe we sing another song then the pastor preaches. We listen, or we let our phone distract us, or we fall asleep. Then we sing another song, get benedicted and we try to fellowship, usually with a coffee in one hand and a cookie in the other (makes it easier to not pray with or hug anyone, am I right?) then we go home, and forget what was taught. And these are just some of the minutia we fight for. We preach community but it mostly only happens within the walls of the building. and when we are pushed to commune outside the walls we balk at the notion. We talk about the love of Christ but it seems to be only for us - those who have already said yes to him. And then we are perceived as thinking we are perfect when we all know we are, in fact, not.
I know I am not alone in this. In the last few weeks, I have been in conversation with people that are just done with church. They love Jesus to their core but church is killing them. That feeling used to tear me up and make me so angry. It's only because I didn't understand.
We need to get away from defining church as only the place. Or even dare I say, we need to get away from defining church just as the people. What if we started defining church as a verb, an action, a doing. Because the people of church seem to be having a hard tome with the doing of church.
Now, I know I'm not perfect. Seriously, I know it. But how do we change this? How do we make people want to go to church? Because remember, it's not just about walking through some doors. It's about walking into people's lives and letting them walk into yours. And the building isn't where it's all supposed to happen.
Have we forgotten how to be friends, how to make friends? There are so few hours in the day but are there really so few that we can't say hi to our neighbour? Unless you are a hermit living in a yurt on the side of a mountain completely off the grid and self sustainable, not even ever needing supplies for anything, then you have community in your life and community is the potential for friendship. And friendship is the start of doing church.
Jesus would be a pretty hard sell for church these days. If he was here now walking among us, I think we would have a hard time convincing him of the purpose of church. I want to see more than singing on Sunday morning. Worship is more than that. I was once told that worship means "to kiss the cheek of". The greek translation for worship as verb is the same word for adore and bless. The Hebrew translation has four different words, some mean adore, admire, prostrate. But the one that catches me is the word that means work, labour, worship, toil, serve. Church, I think we have become too afraid of working out our salvation because it is too close to working for our salvation. Do not be afraid of working our salvation. Maybe we should think of it as exercising our salvation. Do not let it grow stagnant and atrophy. Let us not be afraid of the beauty of the doctrine of works. You can labour for the Lord without saying that you are abandoning His grace. There is worship in doing work for the Lord. Doing what he has called us to do. And when you respond to his call on your life with a "Yes Lord" you are kissing his cheek.
So then let us do more. Let us do more as a people, let us rely heavily on his grace, let us not leave it to “the pros” we are all worthy to share his grace and love. Let us toil and get dirty, hands and feet dirty so we leave our mark on what we touch. Let us not make blanket judgement but let us cover with blankets of grace. Let us put down our first world desires lest we ignore the basic needs of the least of these. Let us feed, clothe, heal, love, serve, sacrifice.. as our saviour did for us…
Let us live the church in the world. Let us turn church into a verb instead of a noun. Let us church.
Let us church.
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