On Sundays, when I write, I do so at length on some topic of religion, Christianity, Jesus stuff, or faith. Beware.
For some people, church is scary. Many a sitcom (and RomCom) has used a one liner to demonstrate this. Past behavior, childhood memories, and current sleeping patterns are used to get a laugh when a character thinks about or needs to set foot inside a rectangle with a steeple on top. And while disciplinary nuns, coifed pastors, and bustling megachurches can give lots of us hives, I think poking fun at the church like this only distracts us from one emerging reality: the church is scared.
All around the church, the world is changing. Society’s values are changing. The look and definition of the word ‘family’ is evolving. Science and reason are being themselves, forcing the notion of faith to seemingly fight harder to gain relevance in political debates and classroom curriculums. Church attendance is dwindling. Baptisms are down. The church as it was when wearing seat belts wasn’t a law will not survive in a world where airbags come standard.
The church knows this. Denominations and conferences and synods – if they haven’t already – are waking up to a world where their individual congregations and buildings are only needed when someone wants to get married or needs to die. This is the church’s chief function in the world today. It no longer shapes political agendas or even moral decisions. At least not like it used to. The church will never again gain its prominence as a third place in our lives. My daughter will not know a world where the majority of her friends regularly attend a church service.
And this is okay.
For us, not for the church.
It used to be, that if you were Christian, when you moved to a new town, you sought out the local church with your denominational name on the marquee. First Baptist Churches and Grace United Methodists and All Saints Episcopals could rely on a steady stream of new members to darken their doorways as people moved and families grew. Nowadays, when I can connect with likeminded people (spiritually speaking or not) via Meetup, or when my Facebook network can introduce me to friends of friends in a new city, the church is not needed as a tool to provide me with a support or social network.
It doesn’t help that the church is a rigid, inflexible manifestation of an ever-changing God. The fact that many churches and denominations express their beliefs exactly like the first followers of Jesus did makes them increasingly irrelevant. Like the founding fathers, early disciples could never have predicted a world of seven billion people, global air travel, or anything else that makes our world markedly different from the way things were in that first century after the crucifixion. Priests can’t marry? Yeah – that seems to be working well. No gay people allowed because being gay is against God’s decrees? Wake up.
This inability to change and empathize is what led people like Matt Cheuvront to say goodbye to the church but lets him retain a desire to connect with something bigger than himself. He cites several reasons he left the church (but did not lose his faith in the process), namely that for him, that faith isn’t exclusive. It’s not meant to be owned by any one belief system, but the church will never let go of this.
There is hope for the church, though. If it’s willing to lean into its fear, it will find a place of relevance once again. If the church can learn to stop being defensive when critiqued, learn to compromise on its archaic dogma, and be open to mystery, it can succeed and grow. Jo, another young person, is actively involved in a Quaker community. The emphasis on silence and meditation (good luck finding that in many churches) resonates with her as someone who was “tired of reconciling the minister’s agenda with my own spiritual callings.”
And this, again, is why the church is scared. Authority can no longer rest in a man (usually) who fumes and stammers and waxes religiously from a pulpit in a way that seems like he (usually) is setting God’s agenda. Ministers are reluctant to embrace ambiguity, gray areas, or mysteries for some misguided notion that doing so allows people to question everything. But this would be a good thing. A church that does not allow or embrace questions is one that is not fit to also embrace love and all of its messiness, community and all of its accidents, and growth and all of its pains.
(Answering questions with “Well, that’s what God says,” is not an answer, either. What you think God says is merely a book that some really old guys thought was what God said a long time ago. God, in my opinion, is not done talking.)
The church can stick around for another millenium if it’s willing to embrace its fear and messy community and stop its judgmental habits. Because with every fear there is hope. If there is no hope in the face of fear, then there will be no moving beyond that fear. In fact, hope is often the only thing that shows up when the night is darkest, providing a warm, thick blanket to get you through those pitch black hours of doubt, anxiety, and desperation. The church can cling to hope – and openly give it to others – in this, its scariest hour.
People are leaving in droves. Families are being raised outside of church walls. Pastors and priests no longer have the community relevance or prominence they once did. And while the church will not (and should not) reclaim the previous stature it enjoyed during the good times, it can still be useful and purposeful during these bad times.
Shanley Knox is writing some of the most thoughtful and beautiful things on the Internet right now, including a post about turning 23. She describes in detail her transformation over the past year of her life, from traveling to Africa to starting a business to chasing love to failing in a few areas. And throughout, I’m drawn to the fact that in the face of her own fear, she found hope while sitting on a pew at a church:
Alone in Portland, I started sitting in the back of a church off Burnside in NE Portland. I doodled quotes on bulletins – things like: “Just when others look and think you’re a person to be pitied is when you – as a person God loves – can know that He is beginning to move for you.”
…
I became the prophet of all things Jesus, because I was pretty sure most people hadn’t met Him like I did. The Jesus I was told about didn’t like cigarettes, and He didn’t talk about sex. He didn’t like stilettos, and it was for damn sure that He didn’t like me. But, in my corner of Portland, He did. Suddenly, He had saved me from an oppressive situation I couldn’t even see myself. Suddenly, it mattered to Him that a mother in law didn’t take over my life, that the whims of an emotionally abusive partner didn’t throw me off course – and it mattered to Him that I went back to Africa. This time, not running.
I started an anthem – “God sees me. And, He hears me.” Over beers, halfway through a cigarette, on the porch in my sweats trying to sift through my broken pieces – “I know this is crazy. But I think God sees me. And, I think He likes me. I have this feeling that there’s something bigger going on than everything falling apart.”
…
I hung on through months of silence from someone who I thought I’d make a life with. I hung on through having no idea what it was I was doing. I brought home the gospel of God’s love for the hot mess because I believed it. I figure Jesus loves a good porter just as much as I do, and that He doesn’t so much mind if I smoke while I’m sitting beside Him on my parent’s porch steps.
I figure if He loved me that day, sneaking out of an apartment, barefoot, on the way to discuss my birthday disaster, surely He loves me now. But, I don’t even think it works that way – I think He felt the same way about me then as He does now because it was then, just when I was about to become the train wreck of the century, that God gave me Nakate.
Dear church, I know you are scared. Do not mask this fear with shouting and fake pity. Rather, embrace your uncertainly and offer the hope your founder provided to so many who were never allowed participation in the religious habits of his day. Instead, face your fears of being irrelevant by opening yourself to change in the biggest way, emerging from this dark cloak different than you were in order to find a place in a world that is always different than it was.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I always enjoying reading your posts, Sam. I respectfully disagree with this one. What you describe above is not THE church. It’s the failure of some (or many) churches to be the church. The church is about love, mercy, grace, acceptance. It’s loving your neighbors – even when they’re very different from you, feeding the hungry and helping those in need. It’s a place where you can work on your own character, without judgment for where you’re starting from, so that it models that of Christ.
Not all churches get this. Many fall into the categories you list above, and unfortunately those are the ones that get the most attention. But our challenge is not to abandon the church because sometimes it falls short. It’s to find those churches who ARE getting it right – or the ones that are at least striving to – and to become a part of them. To invest our time and yes, our money so that maybe those churches getting it right can cast a brighter light and take away the megaphone from those getting it so very wrong.
Jon and I go to church regularly because we found one that we think is at least striving to get it right – to truly be THE church. And that’s something we want to be a part of. Yes, sometimes it’s a little stuffy and the pews are uncomfortable. But the people are wonderful, and they’re doing good work … and more often than not, you get a glimpse of Jesus before you leave that place each week. We’d be glad to have you join us one Sunday.
Hi Jennifer:
Thanks for weighing in; and thanks for being nice about it. I’m glad you and Jon found a place that suits you while giving you exactly what you need and providing you with a glimpse of Jesus each week. I think that’s rare, but I agree with you that it does happen for millions of people each Sunday.
It happened for Shanley, too. She found Jesus in lots of ways and was able to experience him in a new light within a church setting. Thankfully, that church setting was one that was open enough to draw the lines of acceptance widely.
Wonderful post, Sam. I had so much to say about how I agreed, but then I started basically writing my own post as a comment to yours. So I’ll leave it at “wonderful post.” : )
Ha – thanks!
Like Jennifer, I disagree, because you are not talking about “the church”. The church is a group of followers of Jesus that meet in any number of settings. The church as described in the Bible is more alive, vibrant, and growing today than it ever has been. (Although maybe not in the United States; I am referring more to countries like China or India.)
I think you would have been better off saying, “The traditional church establishment is scared”. All the “Firsts” (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, whatever) might be losing members/attenders, but more people are being baptized informally (in rivers, lakes, bathtubs) than ever before.
Lastly, God is not ever-changing; the world he created might be. But the more I read the Bible, the more similarities I find between the world and people 2000 years ago to the world and people today.
Thanks for weighing in here, Alan.
You present a very interesting perspective (that of looking at how the church is growing outside of the US). In many places you mention, Christians are in the minority (and in some places, oppressively so). I wonder if this makes it more conducive to growth in that the church serves a very real and crucial role in their lives and Christianity can’t as easily be used to gain power over others.
Of course, you’re all right that I didn’t mean every single individual church is scared. I did mean to single out the establishment, which has something (usually) to protect and defend. Again, this may be why the “church” looks and acts very differently where it is not as rooted in property and history like it is in the Western world.
I have to respectfully disagree with the entire premise here. This is the kind of thing liberal and mainline denominations have been saying for years and their churches are dying out in droves. Pharisees and Saducees are always a problem in each generation. The Pharisees are the legalistic jerks you are talking about in this post. We should rail against their ilk. However, the answer is not to become a Saducee and just say, “screw it, let’s see how much we can compromise our belifs to get the World to like us.” The answer is Jesus Christ and His Gospel as revealed in the Scriptures. Full of compassion and mercy and blood and justice. Yes, and repentance. And grey areas, but also some pretty clear areas of black and white.
God, keep us from removing our backbones, even if it means the world won’t like us and the fundies think we’re not conservative enough, Amen.
Hi Caleb: Thanks for reading and leaving a comment.
I appreciate your perspective. I agree that the mainline/liberal approach isn’t working; they’re numbers are declining for sure. I hope to address this in a future Sunday post.
What is the whole Bible about? “Jesus, Yes. The Church, No.” The church is there, but it’s not the central message of the Bible.
Sam,
I’m not sure how the internet brought me to this post, and I rarely (maybe 2 or 3 times) ever post anything, but just feel compelled. I’m not a believer in a higher power. I just can’t get over the insignificance of all of us. It’s too much to comprehend given how much we’ve discovered about our world and universe, and how much we don’t know. To me, it’s not incomprehensible to think that in 1,000 years, people will mock us, just like we mock Zeus or people that thought the world was flat.
What’s important to me is to see the passion religion plays in peoples lives. My grandparents are two of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. Religion is the thread that binds them, but to me, they are my religion. We may be insignificant when compared to our world/galaxy and beyond; but to the people we love and let into our lives, we’re very significant. I live by a saying my grandmother told me when I was a young boy, treat other people the way you want to be treated, and work hard. I’ve heard it many times since, but it hit like a hammer when she said it. She never forced me to go to church, never told me to read scripture, never asked me to believe in God. She choose those words instead, and stuck by them.
I do agree with your post. It pains me to see how religion is abused and portrayed in our society. My grandparents have left many churches over the shortcomings you mentioned, and unfortunately happen all too often. I just know the world needs more people like my grandparents, and the church will thrive again.
Hi Jeremy:
I’m glad you found your way here. Your second paragraph above – about your grandparents – is pure gold. You wrote, “Religion is the thread that binds them, but to me, they are my religion.” That’s wonderful to hear.
Love and sacrifice (to me) are two of the greatest and best qualities any religion or belief system can have. It sounds like you’ve found that in your grandmother.
WE WILL KEEP LINDLEY IN OUR PRAYERS THAT SHE WILL KNOW THE TRUTH . WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOUR FAITH/ and lynette no return comment required.
Hi Freddie:
Thanks for commenting. I appreciate you taking the time to read. Thank you for keeping my daughter in your prayers.
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