This is sixth post in a series. To read the entire series, click here.
So, Patrick has been relatively vague in my blog posts until now (so says Melissa), but we wish to be a bit more straightforward here. So, there are many things that we wish to question regarding the way we do Christianity, in particular, how we do “church.” There are many good aspects to the way we do church, and we don’t want to discount those, but we want to focus here on several of the things that we struggle with (each of these topics could be a book, so please excuse the brevity).
- The building – We love church building architecture. Unfortunately, we find it quite unnecessary. In the United States, there are billions upon billions of dollars’ worth of church real-estate. Do we really need this? Could we use our resources differently? Could we find a way of making church work without this? Having gatherings so consistently in one location whose main purpose is to host such gatherings really seems to imply it’s more about the location than the people.
- The service – The name alone implies that a service is being performed. Are we performing a service to God? That’s not generally how Sunday mornings are perceived. How about our language in, we “attend” service? What about participation? Why are we limited to singing a few songs? We know churches differ vastly in this regards, but we am focusing on the majority here, where generally, we can consider Sunday morning service as a performance, where we go and get entertained and educated. Aren’t all believers priests? And since when was worship always singing and preaching?
- The clergy/laity divide – We feel quite bad for pastors and priests. They have a tough life, being scrutinized for everything they say, do, or don’t say or don’t do. The divide has created a gap where one has to be “called” to live a holy life, and the laity can pawn off their spirituality on the religious professionals. Spiritual growth for the masses becomes the responsibility of the clergy. A church with a pastor follows the pastor. What if there was a church, where there was no pastor, and they followed Christ and where each believer’s access to the Holy Spirit was acknowledged?
- The focus – Churches have different focuses. Some churches focus on learning, some on ritual, some on the “moving of the Spirit,” some on fellowship, some on missions and outreach, some on evangelism, etc… Where is the balance? What if we focused on Christ and focused on the things that He was focused on? We all have our cannon within the cannon (where we pick our favorite parts and create a theology around those parts), but we would do well to recognize that and seek to create balance.
We have other things that we think that we need to question, but this post will get too long, and you probably wouldn’t read it. We’re probably already pushing our luck. Besides, we really don’t want to be about what is wrong, we really want to be about what is right. And what is right? That, friends, is for another post.