catapult magazine

Wonderful responses from Alice, Bill, and Liv to my rantings against the ?organized? church. Thanks.
I don?t worry too much about people misconstruing my sex from my name. I only brought the subject up because we are trying to get to know one another, and it perhaps matters a little that we know to whom we are speaking. {I became ?Sandy? in self-defense, because my parents bestowed two last names on me – Sanford Wilbur – and Wilbur Sanford (or Wilbur Stanford, in many cases) seemed to be most people?s choice for which was the proper last name. Sandy Wilbur was harder to turn around.}
There seems to be the implication in most of the responses that, because people ?went to church? at the time the New Testament was being written, then the organized church with officers and buildings must be the God-accepted way to ?gather together.? But was it, or were people just continuing on in an old comfortable format? I think we have a tendency to view what happened in New Testament times as a record of what God really WANTED, rather than as a history of what people DID. It?s funny, because we have no trouble viewing the Old Testament as a history of both the right and wrong things that people did in response to God. No question that Peter and Paul were good men trying to do the right things, but they clearly were often more concerned with keeping order in this new ?religion? than they were with living with the freedom that Jesus had bestowed on them and us. Are we guilty of accepting the shackles of a comfortable church experience instead of really living together as a body?
I think Alice?s comments show the paradox of having known real freedom to worship and get to know one another in informal settings, yet feeling an obligation (maybe even a guilt?) to the formalized structure. For myself, I?ve found that most ?church? is pretty sterile compared to the sharing, question asking, digging, spontaneity of smaller, closer groups.
Once, when I was teaching an adult Sunday School class in southern California, I teased the class with an alternate view of tithing than what we are used to. I argued that giving 10 percent back to God was an Old Testament concept, and that the true ?Christian? posture should be that all 100 percent is God?s. That doesn?t mean that God is going to take all ?our? money away from us, so that we have to go out and live off the community, but that if we are in a 10 percent mindset, we may find ourselves missing God?s call to give more (or maybe even less, sometimes). A chintzy 10 percent tithe might be a major act of disobedience. One wonderful old saint (someone I highly respected) countered that, while I might be philosophically right, she wasn?t going to take the chance of being wrong, so she would continue to give her 10 percent ?religiously.? Maybe I was too subtle, but it seems to me that she wasn?t taking the ?safe? route at all; she was taking what had become the ?comfortable? route. Is that what we?re doing with our organized churches, too?

Sandy Wilbur
Religion for Thinkers: http://www.netcom.com/~symbios/relig.html

Although I’ve spent a lot of time in church, and played a lot of roles there (Sunday school teacher, occasional sermon giver, soloist, part of a quartet,etc.), I’ve had real trouble going to any church in recent years. Either the sermons have become too stridently political,the setting is too denominationally self-serving, or there just doesn’t seem to be (for me, anyway) much going on.
Since I doubt that “church” as we play it was ever meant by Jesus to be the way that Christians worship, I wonder if church really is “good” despite its shortcomings, or if it’s bad because it interferes with living the Christian life.

Is church bad? The answer, of course, is yes and no. Like any human undertaking, it is guaranteed to be flawed. And certainly the Church throughout the ages has been exactly that—riddle by racism, materliasm, narrow-mindedness. Having said that, I would hasten to add that the church is hugely important. The Christian life is not merely about an individual’s life in connection to a “personal” saviour. Rather, scripture makes clear from beginning to end that people are meant to live and work and worship in community. Individualism is a hallmark of American thought, not Christian thought.
I guess what I’m saying is that while the Church has always been flawed and this side of perfection always will be, it seems to me a ridiculous notion to then turn one’s back on it. Like the Church, the family I grew up in is flawed. My marriage is flawed. My parenting skills are flawed. My work in the civic operations of my town, state, and country are flawed. My skills as an educator are flawed and the institution where I teach is flawed. If I were to turn my back on areas and/or people of my life simply because flaws were present, I would be alone in the cosmos. How’s that for some rugged, American individualism?

I wholeheartedly agree with you that Christians can’t be loners; if I should happen to be one of the “legs” in the Body of Christ, it’s going to pretty hard for the Body to walk if I’m not around. Having said that, there are many ways to be together with other Christians that can be a lot more meaningful that a structured service with a canned lecture and a schedule that couldn’t be deviated if God Him/Her-self decided to drop in in person. I’m overstating this, of course, but it still leaves the question: wouldn’t our time with other Christians be better spent in REAL fellowship, where people were really being themselves, than in what most of us have to attend in denominational churches?

True, JDV. We operate in a flawed and sinful world. And Sandy, I too have been on a long stretch of disillusionment with the established church…an institution that often seems to hurt more than help, that can treat its ministers carelessly, that continues in many ways to be apparently irrelevant and ineffective in today’s world. But, it is also the place where I, along with fellow believers, kneel at the foot of the cross to confess and receive forgiveness, where the mystery of Christ’s body and blood is received, where I join with the ‘communion of saints’ in worship, where I ‘leave’ for a brief time the world and its ways, where I hear God’s Word, where I can choose to connect or not with my faith community, where I renew my commitment to live for Christ in my daily life, where I encounter God in spite of the flaws we humans bring and perpetuate. I think it pays to search our hearts, other Christians and ancient writings, the Word, and to question and dialogue with God about this! …your fellow soujourner!

One of the hardest things for me to figure out is this. What does somebody like Sandy do if she is disillusioned with the church? Should she pull up stakes and find a church that seems to her to be more alive, more connected? Or is that too much like a fickle shopper? Should she stay committed to a lackluster congregation or lackluster service in an effort to change it? As a sort of calvinist, my immediate response for myself is that a church is like a marriage committment and you stay with that church until it sinks below the surface. That doesn’t seem right though. What if she works to change things for years and years and nothing happens? I agree with JDV that all human institutions are warped and broken,. but isn’t it also true that some are more broken than others?

i think we need to seek balance. we can search for years and never find the perfect church, but we do need to seek a place that has some spark for us, whether it’s a social outreach ministry or great preaching or appealing music—something for which we can say, “Praise God—I’ve found my community of believers.” then, we should try to make that community better—but i think such a “project” to save a church cannot sustain us spiritually if there’s nothing that church is giving us. does that sound selfish?

my husband and i have been thinking a lot lately about the way we Christians typically do church. for us, it’s hard to find time to worship on sunday mornings with two services in which he usually plays bass guitar or some other instrument and i’m usually in charge of drama. we feel more spiritually nourished from a great conversation with a few people than we do by Sunday services. i don’t know how many people share this dilemma, but where we attend, it seems like a few people do most of the work. Sunday services are such a production that there’s a lot of volunteer burnout. so many resources go into an hour of worship—money, time, electricity. perhaps we’re just dreaming of a break, but we’ve started wondering what a church would look like that reversed its emphasis, placing more weight on small group Bible studies that would meet every week and less weight on services that involve the whole congregation, having the traditional service every other week or once a month. i guess at the heart of this issue is this question: what is the purpose of the church?

i don’t know the answer, but i do know that i need more from church than i’m getting now—is that unaviodable in a broken world?

Quite a few years ago, in one of my ?frustrated with church? periods, I read a really interesting book – ?A New Face for the Church? (can?t remember the author, at the moment). The author, who also was of the opinion that the average Christian church was not really being all that it could be, presented a number of (at that time) innovative ways to make church services less structured, or differently structured. I thought then that he was on to some pretty revolutionary concepts – and he was, in a way. But he was still just taking a tired old institution that, as far as I can tell, has no New Testament basis, and was trying to work it into something that wasn?t (at best) a waste of time and (at worst) a real liability to growth of the Body of Christ. I don?t think any of his innovative suggestions would really salvage ?church? as we have come to know it.
The scripture that everyone uses to continue to condone and support our current church procedures is the one that admonishes us to gather together. No question, we should gather together, because we are a ?body,? and bodies don?t function when their parts are strewn all over the place. But what do we do in this traditional gathering together that really gets to the heart of what it is to live as Christians? Many churches are now so big that we certainly can?t claim to even recognize many of our fellow Christians, let alone have any kind of personal relationship with them. Sermons and bible studies are structured so as to get the leaders? ideas across, usually not to really look in depth at what Jesus would have us do with our lives. Some denominations have become so wrapped up in ?political religion? that many Christians and would-be Christians are getting messages about life that are far, far from the teachings of Jesus. Small group meetings, perhaps the truest Christian outgrowth of the organized church, are either non-existent as a church program or are limited to an hour or two a week. Is this really ?gathering together??
What would be wrong with saving the ?small group,? and doing away with all the artificial religious trappings of the traditional church? With a core group of (say) 8, 10, or 12, you could really get to know one another. You could still sing songs, read scriptures – even have sermons, if you wanted to – or you could just sit around and chat. You could meet any day or night of the week that was convenient or desirable. You could meet more often, and get a lot more done for ?the Body? because you wouldn?t be wasting your time on all the filler ritual of Sunday services. You could be available for one another on a personal level when there was a real problem or issue to address. You could do things with other Christians, in or out of other small groups. If somebody asked a question, you could all work on the answer together. In short, you could get close enough to one another to really function together as parts of a body are supposed to. What?s wrong with all that?
I remember talking to my pastor about this some years back. He was an innovative and sensitive person, and one who really wanted the Body to grow. He acknowledged much of what I?ve written above, including that the church as we know it is a human institution, not a biblical mandate. Yet, in the end, his pastoral training brought him back to STRUCTURE – he felt uncomfortable traveling very far from the church upbringing he had received, and his bible school training. He couldn?t see how the Body could function any other way. Was he right, or does God have something more relevant for us, if we?re brave enough to step out? Sandy Wilbur (male, by the way).

Sandy, I always thought you were male:-) Thanks for the clarification. Must be because of Madeleine L’Engle’s Sandy, twin to Dennys (both male) of the Murry family that made me assume you were a male Sandy!
You really are asking some thoughtful and important questions about the church-Church. It made me think back to jr. high and high school when a bunch of us from all different denominations formed a group called ‘Rap’ on Wednesday nights. We read the Word and discussed it together, sang, prayed, listened to and read other people’s works, and grew close. I think we operated as the Body even though we were young. It had a long-lasting impact on me and was key in shaping my faith development and my knowing Jesus’, His Word, prayer. Of course, we explored every doctrine around at the time and discussed them inside and out. We weren’t afraid to be vulnerable, to ask questions, to be outside of the norm. College at a small Lutheran school brought much the same experience believe it or not but then marriage, and a life in professional ministry which has left me frustrated and empty. (Not marriage, the professional ministry) Many attempts to find or create the same type of ‘experience’ have ended up short of it or were discouraged by time, commitment, the church, etc. Have I given up? I know of a group just south of us here who are exclusively home churches. When they begin to grow, they purposely branch off and create another one. I have to admit to longing for the New Testament kind of experience. But all of my professional ministry-doctrinal-traditional upbringing experiences are so ingrained and have merit, I think. I left my church during college years, but came back. I stand by my earlier comments too, contradictary though they seem to this entry. Does God have something more for us? Am I brave enough to step out? I’m currently reading John Eldredge’s, The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God. I’m not sure the church knows God or can get to know God’s heart without purposeful, small group connection, teaching, intimacy. Can it take place within the current structure of the church? Why is it so hard to make happen? When are we going to drop the myriad of worldly distractions, busyness, occupations, individualism, and choose to spend time becoming intimate with one another for Jesus’ sake, the sake of the Church, the lost, our health, of love? I hear my heart and my doctrinal teaching both coming through…can they be married? Are they at odds? Need they be? Hmmm. alice

Sandy,

My most profound apologies for mistaking your gender. I’ve known excellent people of both genders by that name. Feel free in future posts to address me by any gender you like (my name is Bill, and I’m male).

The revolutionary aspect of what both Sandy and Alice talk about excites me. My cynical side sets off a couple of warnings though. The church that i belong to is run according to the presbyterian system of church governance. That means that it is a group of the member (we call them elders and deacons) who hire and oversee the minister and the other members of the church. This system is not perfect. (Our church was formed in 1966 and has lost two minsters to sexual scnadals). It is a system, though, designed to ensure that no single magnetic personality will aduse power (and the system does work to the extent that both the ministers were caught before they could do more damage.) The school system that I work in is the same way. I like the notion of small independent groups, but it seems to me that a fair chunk of the Bible is devoted toward policing those bodies (the epistles). When there are disputes in the church, we have a way of handling it that, at least in my denomination is slow and deliberate and, I think, usually well reasoned.

I should add that I am often at odds with my denomination (as is my partiular church) for not moving fast enough on issues of social justice. Yet I recognize the need for thought.

Maybe a hybrid system could work — if only there were some way to give the small groups some variety and autonomy — maybe by letting them connect across denominational lines? I belonged to a Bible study for a while with calvinists and Roman Catholics in it. We got along and learned a lot from each other.

thank you for your thoughts, Sandy, and again, my apologies, sir.

Interesting thoughts. I heard an interesting lecture recently on why we go to church – we go to worship. And what is worship? This speaker took the idea of God calling us to live worshipful lives and applied it to church. For example, a service might open with a formal “call to worship” (usually a few verses which refer to God’s people meeting together), then the congregation sings a joyful response. We read some form of the Law (Exodus 20, a psalm, some other form), and we respond to this message from God by confessing that we don’t live up to His demands. The whole service becomes a conversation between God and His people – He initiates, and we respond.

David frequently uses his psalms to express a longing for God’s word—almost as if he spent all day anticipating evening devotions. Would we have the same eager anticipation for church if it indeed kindled in us the same hunger for Good News?