Yesterday, January 31, was the third anniversary of my retirement from preaching.
I mentioned it to a friend, who asked why, and I gave the same answer that I have given before: I never felt qualified as a preacher, or even qualified to play one on TV. (Because, as you know, preachers are supposed to be called to preach and never retire, even on the off-chance that they can afford to.)
That’s most of the answer. And the rest of it isn’t going to be any more popular:
I’ve stopped believing in church.
Church as we know it.
I haven’t been to church in those three years, except for taking a friend (and her mom, if her mom had felt up to it) to church while they were visiting the area, since neither of them drives.
I certainly don’t have anything against the congregation I left behind; wonderful people and I had no problems the three years and three months I preached there. I love them and miss them. And of all the churches I’ve attended and/or served over the years, I have the least difficulty with the way they operate and function as a church.
My problem is with the way we believers do church; with church as we know it.
Church didn’t seem to be a high priority in the teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the gospels. He mentioned it twice, as I recall; once while declaring to Peter that He would establish it on the rock-like faith that Peter had just displayed, and the second time when foreseeing problems within it and advising on how to handle them. If you follow the links, both of those references are only in Matthew’s gospel.
Nowhere in those gospels is there an account about how Jesus wanted the church to be structured or any authority hierarchies within it, how worship within it should take place, whether it should have a building or ministry staff of its own, whether collections should be taken to support all that, what doctrines might include or exclude your place in it … and so on.
People who came after Him established all those details, and they became the norm and the details fossilized — and rarely does anyone question them if they want to continue to remain welcome in church fellowship.
What Jesus seemed to spend most of His teaching time on is how to get along with others; how to love and respect and care for others; how to do that without judging them; how to find blessing in living that kind of life even though it can be really hard — and that doing so can even make others so ticked off that they’ll want to hurt or even kill you.
And He backed up every moment of His teaching time living out everything He taught. That, of course, is really the how. The verbal teaching was just a summary of how He was showing us to live.
But it seems like our focus in church is not so much on Jesus but on church. How to get in, how important it is to get in and be in and stay in, how to protect its purity and reputation, how bad it has to get before people are asked to leave, how to get rid of them, how to defend its doctrine, how right we are and how wrong others are, why we need to financially support it, etc.
And we wonder why people aren’t just crowding the door to get to the front seats every Sunday morning.
A lot of churches have just out-and-out chosen to become The Jesus Show and invested in worship bands and lights and lasers and smoke and screens and videos — to become more attractive, more entertaining. Sermons have become messages that people attending want to hear. Flags become as important as crosses. Coffee becomes as vital as communion.
Church doesn’t help the poor and the homeless and the hungry and the sick because a few undeserving souls might take advantage of Christian generosity and waste “the Lord’s money” in the effort — the money that is needed to support an impressively-sized ministry staff and their offices and the building. Most of which is used once, twice, maybe three times a week in most cases.
This is church as we know it. We are comfortable with it. We don’t question it. Hierarchy and authority solves the problems that are caused by the querulous or defiant. — Sinners, of course, who make church look bad.
Look, I don’t begin to think that there is anything wrong with gathering somewhere to worship with some songs of praise and encouragement, gratefully praying for folks and other needs, reading and discussing scripture as a common reminder. Not at all. Church just means “assembly;” it’s a gathering of people with a commonality. But it seems to me that it’s become what people came up with as a comfortable substitute for the hard work of daily communion with/concern for others inside and outside of that fellowship.
The come-late-to-the-game Apostle Paul writes to Rome that worship is more than songs, prayers and sermons; it’s the way we live our whole lives:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” — Romans 12:1
You see, I’m not sure that Jesus’ intention was ever to create a new religion out of teachings that shape a lifestyle. And even if He did, then the epistle of James (probably His very close relative) reminds us:
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” — James 1:27
I’m just really not comfortable with the church as we know it. I’ve spent three years doing that internal analysis that church leaders dread and call “deconstruction.” I haven’t spent much time in scripture, because I wanted to get away from hearing it the way I’ve always heard it preached — with all the preconceptions and accumulated doctrines of the centuries in between — and start hearing it as it is.
I figured that if, after studying together and attending and listening and worshiping in church as we know it didn’t at least equip me to have a sense for God’s nature and Jesus’ character and the Spirit’s presence for 65 years, it would at least include a pretty good memory bank of scripture. And three years — probably the span of Jesus’ ministry here and Paul’s initial acquaintance with Him — would not erase the core knowledge of the previous 65. (I always double-checked my memory of wording and context to be sure I had recalled it correctly. Praying? I never stopped praying.)
If that makes me apostate, then I guess that puts me in the company of many in history who have lived a monastic lifestyle — some in seclusion — to meditate on the Word and left their own impressions to enrich those who followed them. Though I don’t know that I ever felt like that was something I needed to do.
Rather, I felt like I needed to be out in my little resort town, among people, helping and encouraging and being gracious to my neighbors and our visitors. Being comfortable around folks whom others aren’t comfortable being around. Offering to help people find things they were looking for. Picking up a little trash here and there. Giving rides. Giving bottles of Ozarka water to thirsty folks strolling in my neighborhood. Opening my home to those who needed a bathroom. Or sometimes, a place to sleep. Buying and sharing a meal together. Loving folks who don’t feel loved. Appreciating people who aren’t appreciated.
That, you see, is the religion that I feel like I can observe in good conscience.
And let me say I understand that church as we know it is a great comfort and boon to the spiritual lives of many folks within it who live gracious lives the rest of the time. It fills their need, and they are an encouragement to others there. I just don’t feel like I serve well there. At least, not while questioning everything about church as we know it.
I know a good part of it is me. I’m socially awkward. Crowds can make me antsy. I’ve pretty much lost my ability to sing with age. I’m not good at accepting the status quo. I have trouble believing in structures and doctrines and limitations that have their origin with people, and not explicitly with God, expressed clearly in scripture.
I can’t preach it if I don’t believe it. And in church as we know it, you’re expected to preach church as we know it.
So I’ve come to a (literally) unorthodox conclusion:
Church is more than people in a box on Sunday morning doing a liturgy. Church is all around us, all the time, everyone we know and meet and don’t — whether they have heard of Jesus; whether they believe or not — because everyone is God’s concern, and everyone ought to be our concern too.
It’s an assembly. A gathering of folks who have a commonality, and that commonality is how difficult it can be to live this life, and how it can be made easier by caring about each other and believing in others.
And every time I think about putting church back in the box, back in the us-and-them, back in the insider-and-outsider artifice, I feel like I’m in the wrong place to really, really worship.