Going to Church is a Good Idea, But Don't Go

We need to be the Church, not go to church. Part of being the Church is joining with other believers for relationship and worship and teaching and mission. I agree with the premise of an article in Relevant magazine that tells Millennials to go to church. They need to be grounded in a local community for relationship building over time to those who need to see the love of Christ lived out. They also need mentors and a secure place to return to after taking risks in their faith.

The systemic problem of the church is what limits the church's connection to this generation. What God-fearing Christian wants to spend their life energy, passion and resources maintaining a broken system.

Millennials, like other sane people, don't want to spend time filling positions on planning boards, redecorating the church foyer or making photocopies for Children's Church. They want to connect with people who are in need (spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially...) and pour out the love of Christ into their lives.

The Mission of the Church is as clear as the mission of most churches is muddled. The Mission is to live in community, grounded in the love of Christ, demonstrating that love to the world of people within their reach and influence. "Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (MSG)

The typical church structure hinders this. It is much more direct to walk the streets, strike up a conversation with a homeless person and invite him to lunch than to sit in a planning meeting about the next church barbecue.

Church-owned property, church-centric programs, and finance-driven decisions betray the anemic mission of most churches.

When I mention that our family has started a home church, we sometimes get asked questions that reveal a tragic misunderstanding of the nature and mission of the church.

The first question is usually: "How many people come?" I want to say, "Really? Is that your first question? How about, 'How have you seen God working in your midst?' or if we are close friends, 'Are you fulfilling your mission as a church?'" What I usually say is something like, "Not many. It's been the most rewarding and life-giving experience of our lives."

We are called to be light and salt, to bring life to those who are dying, to rescue those who stumble, to feed the hungry and preach the Gospel to everyone we meet.

Millennials should not join a church just because there are some good reasons to. They should continue to think outside of the church systems and find new ways to be the Church. They can help the rest of us figure out how to be rooted in communities, facilitate much needed mentoring relationships and maintain a strong faith community without wasting our resources on finding creative ways of inviting people into our well-maintained buildings.

I was a pastor at a traditional church for 18 years and was unable to break through the systemic problems to get back to the important role of the church to be light and salt. In a traditional church, buildings must be maintained, bills must be paid, organization and hierarchy are necessary evils.

Every moment spent on these hinders the church from fulfilling its true mission. When we ask questions like, "How do we keep people from leaving?" or "How do we attract more people?" or "Who can we get to fill this position?" we demonstrate a commitment to the structures that is stronger than our commitment to Christ and to His mission. The traditional church model is not the answer and more and more it seems to be a hindrance.

Let's find a way forward together.

My next post is in response to questions that arose from this one: The Mission, the Men, and Me

1 - Christina: A Search for Identity, Love and Acceptance

(This is the first part in a series of blog posts based on interviews I did with 7 adults ages 26-32 about their experience growing up in an American evangelical Christian church setting. All names have been changed to protect their identities.)

Christina was 30 years old. She walked into my office full of smiles. This young woman is one that I had known for over two decades. I first met her when she was a little girl and I was in high school. But, since we hadn't really talked since she was in high school, I wasn’t sure what twists or turns the interview might take.

She seemed happy and confident, more confident, more comfortable than I remembered her ever being.

Christina wanted to know about the interview process, my paper, and the research that I had done already.

She seemed so happy. It took me back a bit.

I knew enough of her story to know that she had had a rough time of it in the years since I had had her in youth group.

Why was she so happy?

I explained to her that honesty was of utmost importance, much more than telling me what she thought I wanted to hear. And then I asked her to just tell me her faith story. Whatever she wanted to tell.

She began the interview by saying, “I was born into this, a world, a Christian setting, a Christian family, a religious background.” It was not something she had chosen for herself. She was raised in a family who always attended church. She also attended a Christian school in her younger years.

When she went to her parents for help, “it was always, 'Oh, did you pray about it?' But, it didn’t really work for me, I guess. When I grew up and got older … I was still going through routines trying to make people happy, just doing the things that I felt like I was supposed to do to try to make everybody feel like I was a good person, just doing things so that people didn’t have anything bad to say about me.”

She was confident that people said bad things about her at church anyway. So, she learned to fake faith, fake the routines, do church, and follow the rules when she was there.

During her high school years, she became less and less comfortable being honest about who she really was. She describes this time as living these “two worlds”.

On one hand, she would act like the “good Christian” people wanted her to be. And on the other hand, she found herself doing things that would have made her parents very unhappy. “When I was twelve years old, I got drunk.”

So, she chose to hide that part of her life from her parents and everyone at church. But, she didn’t feel like this rebellious child was her true self either. She was going between these “two worlds” without being honest with anyone. Hiding one part of her from her parents and another part from her friends.

She never could just be herself.

After graduating from a Christian college, she only attended church occasionally. Sometimes she would come to church just to see a smile on her parents’ faces.

After something bad would happen in her life, “my mom was like, ‘You should come to church’ and ‘You should hang out with these people’ and ‘You should do this’ and [her voice trailed off]. It was right away! Any time something bad happened in my life, it almost seemed like everybody was like, ‘Well, now is the time for you to go to church’ and ‘Now is the time for you to (do this and do this).’ It always had to do with religion and so, me being more a rebellious type of person, my whole life, was like, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ I’ve done that; I’ve tried that. I think the more it was—not forced—somewhat forced, but more of a persuasion, the more I wanted to say, ‘No.’”

The religious people in Christina's life, including her parents, kept thinking that if she just gave Christianity and church another chance, it would provide her the stability and security that it provided for them.

At the end of an unhealthy relationship, she came to realize, “I will never again care what people think or say about me. Because that’s all it ever was. I had to [please him]. I always felt like I had to impress everybody in his life for everybody in his life to like me.”

This was a pivotal time in her search for her identity, her search for herself. She decided not to change herself, contort herself to try to please a man or to please those in the church anymore. She would figure out who she was and just be herself.

The confident young woman I saw walk into my office that morning was the result of that journey.

Christina's mom told her not to waste time crying over losing a man who didn't love and accept her for who she was.

She said, "[Mom told] me that I was better than all of that. It helped our relationship because she learned that trying to force God on me wasn’t going to work. But her having a relationship with me was going to work. That made me learn some lessons in life that I hadn’t already learned. It made me realize who I was and what I wanted.”

Christina had begun to enjoy her relationship with her mom, and her mom really seemed to be trying to understand her and listen to her. Her mom had stopped trying to manipulate her and persuade her to be religious. This shift made all the difference.

Life was no longer about what everyone else expected her to do and to be. Her life had become about who she wanted to be.

This gave Christina the room she needed to be herself and she began attending church when she wanted to and not just to make her parents happy. This changed the way she thought about herself.

“That’s when it started to be me doing things because I wanted to do them not because I felt like I had to do them. It’s a difference, you know. Sad thing about it is it took a lot of pain to get to that point, but when you get to that point, you feel like you are a whole different person.”

She felt like she was finally able to have a relationship with God that fit into her worldview and allowed her to be herself and not try to conform to the image that others wanted her to fit.

Her relationship with her Mom started to flourish.

“It was me being able to talk to her about [Christianity] and for her to better understand who I was. And know where I was, and where my head was, where my heart was. It got to be where I would go to church on my own. Where I would do something because I wanted to do it. I would go to a small group thing. I was doing those things because I wanted to. Because I was able to have those conversations with her. Because I was able to talk to her about stuff.”

Her mother's acceptance of her as she was, for who she was, made all the difference to her. She was finally able to explore her parents' faith, Christianity, from a place of love and acceptance. She felt free to be herself, with all of her doubts and fears and questions and all of her faith and beliefs and hopes.

Tragically, her mother died unexpectedly and everything changed again.

Christina felt so much pain.

She had developed a close friendship with her mother after years of strained relationships, "and then to have that taken away after where I was and where I was headed and the direction I was going. And then, for the simple fact that everybody in the Christian bubble says God does everything for a reason. For Him to do that! Do I blame Him? No, because I can’t. I can’t sit there and say 'Hey, God, guess what? This is all your fault.' When I don’t necess— [interrupting herself]. I’m not saying I don’t believe in God. I do. But, I am not to a point where I can say, 'Oh this is all God’s fault.' I did say that. If he really wanted me to believe in him. Well, then, what is wrong with him because he just kind of really destroyed all of that."

She struggled to describe what she was feeling toward God. She didn't know if she could feel anything toward God.

She thought that she either had to believe that God was close and personally involved in her life and was cruel or that he is distant and uninvolved. She chose the latter.

“Do I believe in God? Yes. Do I believe that God created the world? Yes.” 

But, her belief about what happens after death has changed. “I believe that when you die you die, I guess that’s supposed to mean I am not a Christian, you know. Some people will say that.” 

Previously she said that part of her wanted to believe in heaven and hell that her childhood life is still in her. She asked herself this question, “Do I have the belief that I had growing up? Yes.” 

This may be a case where she has some deep confusion about what she believes. The nostalgic feelings from her childhood, connected to the memory of her mother, may compel her to try to reclaim some part of her childhood faith.

The pain of her mother’s death and the accompanying confusion probably reminded her of all of the reasons she struggled to have faith in the past. There is something real and true there, but people keep spouting these ridiculous cliche's that are devoid of compassion and seem hollow.

So, she went to bars to drink and numb the pain.

In one bar, she built friendships. She reconnected with some people from her past and her current boyfriend. They accepted her, even with her pain. They let her talk about her mom, talk about something inconsequential or not talk at all. They walked through a very painful time with her.

They showed her love and acceptance. The same thing her mother had been able to give her.

She avoided church because she kept hearing things like, “She’s in a better place.” “She’s where she wanted to be.”

But Christina knew differently, “No, she wanted to be here with her family, watching her grandchildren grow up. Sorry! Don’t agree with you! I am glad that you guys have this peace of mind. … It brought a lot of anger back in me.”

The anger and pain have subsided over time, but it was still easy to sense it in her voice as she spoke.

Through all of this pain, Christina believes that she is happier, more confident, and more self-aware than ever. She was reluctant to say it because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings when she said, “I guess it’s hard for me to say, especially to you, cause I grew up knowing you. It is a bad thing to say because it’s not the right thing to say in a Christian world, but I’ve never been happier in my life than I am now. Is that because I stopped going to church? I don’t know.”

For Christina, church was a dangerous place to be herself. She couldn’t be honest about her feelings, her heart, her beliefs, or anything real with those in church. She felt judged whenever she opened her mouth, and often, before she even opened her mouth.

“I know that now that I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t feel like I have to go to church just to make people happy. Where I don’t care if somebody says [to her parents], ‘Wow your daughter is not a very good person because she doesn’t go to church anymore.’ I don’t care. I am who I am.”

Christina was on a search for acceptance and love, a search for her identity and did not find support in church.

So, I asked her, “What can we do different in church? What could the church do to help the next generation better than we helped you?”

Her response cuts to the core of our responsibility as a church, as the Church:

“I think it is important for kid’s not to feel like by making a mistake, the world is gonna end. I think it’s really important, really, really important to have open communication where, I can sit here and tell you, ‘Dave, listen, when I was twelve years old, I got drunk.’ I would want kids who grow up in a Christian bubble but who are also surrounded by the rest of the world to feel like it’s ok for them to be friends with these people and when they’re faced with these situations and they are like, ‘Wow, that looks like a lot of fun, but I don’t know.’ They need to have somebody that they can actually talk to that is going to [care more about the kid than about what the church expects from them]. That isn’t going to respond with [cliche's like], ‘Well pray about it’, ‘Well, ask God what you think you should do.’ I think a lot of choices in my life could have been made if I just sat down and rationalized it out. But, I didn’t have the thought power to rationalize them out at the time.”

She said that she realizes now that she probably could have talked to her parents, but she wanted someone else, another adult who would listen and love and accept her and give her good advice, someone to help her think through her choices and reason it all out.

That’s the mission of the church, isn’t it: to make disciples. To walk along side our children in deep and mutually loving relationships and guide them to become disciples of Christ.

Christina had to go to a bar to feel loved and accepted after her mom died.

Christian cliché’s, Christian "answers", Christian superficiality was killing her from the inside out. She needed real people to really love her.

Church: a place where real people can experience real love and acceptance from other real people because of Christ’s work in their lives.

Real people: people who have experienced grief and comfort, sinfulness and grace, humility and acceptance, love and hope.

This blog post is the first of seven blog posts based on interviews I did for my dissertation. I hope that Christina's story encourages you in some way to draw near to God and receive the love and acceptance and grace that He has to offer. And, then to extend that to those around you.

Everyone wants to be loved and accepted for who they are. 

The Death of Christianity

Christ's death was the most life changing, heaven and earth colliding moment of human history since the Creation of man.

Heaven and earth were close,
intermingled,
indistinguishable,
intertwined.
The fate of all humanity was transformed in an instant, in an eternity.

God, who is with us, who is for us, who is holding us, who is in us, died.

Everything changed,
for us.
God never changes,
for us.
Our reality will never be the same. A door was revealed, an open door. It had been there all the time, but we couldn't see it until God himself came and revealed it. All that happened before and everything that was to happen since made sense in a new way because of his death and resurrection and the new life that He offers to each of us every day.

There is hope for new life.
There is hope in Christ.
There is hope for us to live, really live.

There is hope for love and joy and peace and grace and mercy and forgiveness to be revealed through us, through the Holy Spirit in us reflecting the light that shone from heaven through the cross, through Christ.

There are so many barriers that hinder that light from shining. We talk about shining our light and sharing the Good News. Of all the barriers, there is one that has arguably done the most damage to the Church's ability to share Christ with those who don't know him.

Chris·tian·i·ty

noun \ˌkris-chē-ˈa-nə-tē

 

1: the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies

2: conformity to the Christian religion

3: the practice of Christianity

 

Being in the presence of the Almighty God has led some to fall on their faces, to shut up, to shine, to sing, to worship, to see, to dance, to live.

Christianity is designed by well-meaning people to draw others to God, to help people relate to God, and to give guidelines, provide a context for worshiping and serving God.

All of that sounds good and sounds helpful, but the one flaw is that it is designed by people.

Christianity is like a painting of Christ or a statue. It is a representation of Christ created by one for the benefit of another.

And, for as long as there has been a church, there have been those who have preferred enjoying the statue over knowing the Almighty God of the universe.

We tend to talk about different things. We either talk about the creators of the statue or we talk about the Creator of the Universe. "The founding pastor of our church was such a godly man. He was there when my son was sick. He was such a dynamic speaker, such a strong man."

We either talk about how the statue was carved out of a lump of stone or how our hearts were transformed from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. "We started with just a few families and then started meeting at the lodge and finally bought our own property and built this beautiful church."

We either talk about how the statue makes us feel or how God makes us feel. "When I come to church, I feel so loved, so accepted. I never feel better than when the team leads us in singing."

When times are hard, we either look to the statue or we look to God. "Why didn't someone from the church call? The sermons just don't connect with me. The music team just sounds flat. The programs don't meet our family's needs. Maybe we should visit some other statues."

Christianity must die

The statue must fall. Christianity must be undone. We cannot let anything detract from God, not even our beloved religion.

The system is broken. It doesn't work. It has never worked. It is just what we do. We create systems to replace relationships. We know that something is important and we don't want it to get messed up, so we create a system to protect it, provide it, or pass it down.

It didn't work. It doesn't work. It never works.

Christianity can't protect Christ, can't provide Christ, and can't pass down Christ to future generations.

At best it can protect an idea, provide a doctrine and pass down a beautiful building. But, it isn't worth the sacrifice. We lose more than we gain.

The system robs us of relationships. The system replaces relationships with programs. The system replaces intimacy with bureaucracy.

The best hope for the message of Christ to move forward is for Christians, those who know and love God, to know and love those around them.

Christ describes it this way, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

 

Christianity must die, so that people are not distracted from Christ. The statue must be torn down, so that when people reject the model, they don't think that they are rejecting God.

We must trust. Trust Christ to not let the church die. Trust ourselves to keep loving God without having a structure to protect us. Trust our children to not lose faith and forget the God who loves them.

Let the Bible be our structure, not a building. Let the relationships that we have provide for us not the programs that we design. Let the presence of God in our lives pass on our faith to our children.

God died, but He is not dead.

Now it is time for Christianity to die. Death is not the end. It will be a new beginning.

Who Am I Apart from the Church that Misled Me?: My Search for Identity

I wasn’t brought up to believe anything in particular. My parents dropped me off at Sunday School. My guess is that they wanted me to be nice, to share, not steal things, and generally be a good kid, but they didn’t like any of the churches we visited, so they stayed home.

I remember having this old King James Bible with a wooden cover that was carved with an ornate cross. It had cool pictures in it that I perused at times, but I don't remember ever reading it.

I don’t remember my parents ever talking about their faith with us. But, I remember one time I said, “Jesus Christ!” as a curse word and my Dad got upset. I was shocked and really confused. 

"What did he care?"

I loved my family and always knew my role. I belonged. I was the cute one, the pest, the energetic one, the one who always wanted to play something, climb something, go somewhere. I wanted to be around people who were enjoying themselves.

After I started a relationship with Christ, I felt confused. I felt that I shouldn’t really fit in with my family any more. I was different.

Now I was a part of this group of Christians. I was one of them. I belonged there.

My Dad used to crack jokes and be sarcastic about my faith. So, I often felt on the defensive.

The church I was going to was evangelistic and I felt pressure to get my family saved. I was on a mission to introduce them to Jesus.

So I tried hard to change them, to fix them. I tried to bring up salvation whenever I could.

It became a weird dance between my Dad and me. I would try to steer the conversations toward Christ and Christianity and he would make wise cracks about not becoming a brainwashed Jesus freak. I don't think he ever said that, but that's what I heard. He was skeptical.

This went on from when I was 16 until I was in my second year of college.

I struggled with my identity. I knew that I didn’t fit in with my family, but they were my family.

And, I knew I fit in at church, so I poured myself more and more into being a part of that group. I prayed during prayer meetings, I played during youth group, I sang during worship services, and I listened when speakers spoke. I went to retreats. I hung out with my new friends. I read my Bible. I made commitments to do more, be more, and say more.

The Talk

Then, I had this talk with my Dad that changed everything.

I wanted to get him “saved” really bad. I had been going to these Evangelism Explosion classes. I knew all the tricks. I knew what to say and when. I had learned how to steer the conversation to spiritual things. I was ready.

But, I was still my Dad’s son. I still wanted his approval. I still loved him.

As I remember it, I came home from college and stayed up until he got home from work at about 1:30am or so.

Every nerve in my body was on edge. I had prayed and prayed that I would say the right thing, that it would go well. But there looking at my Dad, it became so hard to speak at all.

Tears welled up in my eyes. I told him that I loved him and that I knew he loved me. I told him that I wanted to share my faith with him and not have it be a point of contention between us.

He agreed. He told me that he wanted to help guide my faith but didn't really know how. We cried and we made a decision. We would meet every Monday night during the summer to discuss our faith. We would read Matthew together just to get things rolling but just let the conversation go wherever it would.

I don’t remember much from those talks, but I remember how they changed me.

After that summer, I was different.

My Dad and I did share our faith. And, we had a relationship built on mutual love and acceptance. We trusted one another.

And, I lost trust in my churches.

The First Lie

And, I was really shaken. I would say shaken in my faith, but it was deeper than that. I was shaken to my core. I didn't know who I was.

So much of what I had believed from what I had been taught at church was wrong. I had been told that Christians believe that the Bible was all true. I was told that Christians believe that Creation happened in seven days. I was told that Christians have a conservative political and social agenda. I was told a lot of things that just weren't true.

Evangelism Explosion helped me. It taught me that being a Christian, getting “saved”, was about Jesus dying on the cross for us, not about our views on abortion, the Pope, or politics.

After our summer together, I was sure about two things. I knew that my Dad was a Christian and I knew that I was a Christian.

I also knew that I had been believing lots of lies. I wasn’t sure what to do about that. I wasn’t sure how to move forward. I wasn't sure if I should stop believing, stop going to church, stop it all.

I have a vivid memory from my first days back at college.

It was late August, and I remember walking around the “brain” (the main drive on the Binghamton University campus which was appropriately shaped like a brain) desperately searching for God, for answers, for something that could make sense of my new reality.

What I really wanted to know, was...

“Who am I?”

I started singing a song that I had learned in youth group years earlier. It wasn’t my favorite song. And I am certainly not a good singer, but it was the only one I could think of and it brought me comfort. So, I kept singing the only line of that song that I could remember. It was the cry of my heart.

“Oh, Lord, You’re beautiful. Your face is all I seek.” (Here’s the full song if you are interested.)

I only remembered that one line, so I sang it over and over again.

I longed for some kind of settling in my soul.

Then, I began to feel it. I knew that Christ was real and that I was really His child. And, I knew that He would lead me and guide me.

I  knew that He was near and had not forgotten about me. I was not lost. I was just following a new road, so I had no way of knowing where it would lead. I would have to trust.

So, I stripped down (spiritually speaking, of course) and I walked back to my dorm. I left all those extra things that I had believed in a pile on the ground. I abandoned them. I left those and decided to build a new faith. The foundation of my faith shrunk considerably.

Here is the bottom line of what I realized:

I am a follower of Christ, a Christian, a child of God. I am not a follower of my church. I can disagree with them on any number of things and still decide to live together with them and grow spiritually with them.

I went back to the same churches that I felt had misled me.

I engaged with them more fully because I knew that they were doing their best to describe what they believed. And, I was responsible to do the same. I later became a pastor at one of those churches for 18 years.

The Second Lie

After 18 years of being a part of one church community, as their pastor, it has been strange, to say the least, to be apart from them.

For years, I was reminded what it meant to be a Christian. I was told about forgiveness and grace. I was told about walking with people through difficult times. I was told by numerous people how much they loved me and my family.

When my family was the one that needed support, I felt abandoned.

I felt lied to, again.

Half truths were told, gossip spread, and I was shunned. I was given no opportunity to speak to the church. No explanation was offered as to why, but my voice was silenced.

Again I asked myself, "Who am I? Am I defined by my weakness and sin or am I something more? Who am I?"

I struggled to find my bearings.

I went back to where it all started. Not the brain in Binghamton but to God. I went back to that place where I knew I belonged. I went to Christ.

Rachel and I went there together, day after day. Some days, it was all we could do. We sat at the feet of Jesus and asked him what was real. What lies had we believed this time?

Stripped again, spiritually speaking, I set aside the empty words of friendship and love. I set aside the meaningless promises and commitments. I set aside my own anger and frustration at not being heard. I left those false beliefs in a pile on the ground and began to walk home unburdened.

The first lie, I could chalk up to ignorance. The second lie, I realized was much darker. At times, people can choose ignorance. They can choose to reject truth. They can choose to believe what they want.

I chose forgiveness.

My identity has not changed.

The foundation of my faith hasn't even changed.

My identity is in Christ. I am His and He is mine.

(This time we didn't go back to the same church that lied to us. We started a new church, one that is defined by relationships rather than structures or programs or finances. It only exists as an extension of the relationships between those who attend. There is no building, no committees, no programs. We are the church.)