crowds and the church

Thinking some more about this stuff on the bike today.

We like to go to watch ice-hockey. We join in with the shouts and choruses, celebrate when we win and get moody when we don't.

But the difference between ice hockey and the church is that church isn't supposed to be a spectator sport. There are not supposed to be people who sit in the stands and enjoy the ride. We're all supposed to be in the team.

Maybe that is an unfair analogue. What do you think?

hard talk

I have been increasingly uncomfortable in church over the last years, and particularly in the last few months. My discomfort is generally that church seems to have become an exercise in spiritual-sounding personal development, whereby the primary motivation is to know God because he will make me feel better. Like a drug, we continue to be addicted to what we like about church because it meets our needs for a spiritual rush. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth.

A couple of bloggers I know are also struggling with this, including John Smulo, who concludes that the problem is that church is all about Sundays and Mark Berry who suggests it is because of an emphasis on Worship over Mission. Both are worth looking at if you want to think about this issue further.

Personally, I think the issue (tangentially linked to both John and Mark's blogs) is that we are all engaged in Me Worship rather than the Worship of Christ as Saviour. Because if we actually loved the Christ in the way we profess in a thousand soppy songs in church, we would follow his commands with at least the passion we belt these things out. Worship of Christ is not primarily about standing in church and saying (and/or doing) the right things. It is in following his commands. Like visiting the prisoner and selling our house and giving the money to the poor. How many people do you know who actually do that?

Yes, we often do need to know that God loves us. Yes, we often do have self-image problems and no these things are not bad in themselves. But we have screw the message big time. Christianity is emphatically not about what we normally talk about in church. Church is not about feeling great and thinking of ever more elaborate ways to get other people to have the same feelings. If you don't believe me, try reading a gospel and noting the words of Christ as if he is actually talking to you.

In our particular church, we have a very old building and a major financial issue. Which is not a great mixture when your focus is almost entirely around services (we have 10 a week with 10 distinct congregations). Without going into great detail, the financial issue is not going to go away and is exacerbated by the fact that most people do not want to throw their own money to the bottomless pit which is the building fund. Perfectly understandably. I don't either.

I am attempting to spread the idea that this is actually an opportunity to be more engaged in our community. If we believed that we had to raise significant sums, we would be forced to consider how we might (ethically and sensibly) attempt to raise money by offering worthwhile services to our community. Or we might just prove to ourselves that we cannot afford to pay for our building and take steps to leave it in trust to the national heritage (or something else which doesn't involve us throwing significant sums of money at it).

The reaction is generally positive, so I am encouraged that things will change.

church

Yesterday was the best church experience I've had for years.

On Saturday I met up with a group from Servants to hear about their plans for work in Southwark, London. It was a good day, I really appreciated having the opportunity to meet up with them. In the process, I met our friends' son. He is having a difficult time at the moment. Anyway, I found out that he enjoyed juggling, so on Sunday I brought my clubs to church thinking that maybe we could do some practising together.

Anyway, as we arrived, it turned out that there had been some conflict in our friend's house that morning so the son wasn't coming to church. So I asked if I could go and juggle with him at home.

Which I did. I avoided church altogether, spent half an hour juggling and half an hour walking through the Coventry suburbs in silence. And the world felt good for a few minutes.

On Saturday I attended a conference entitled 'New Habits for a New Era? Exploring New Monasticism", run jointly by the Anabaptist Network and the Northumbria Community.

The Anabaptist Network is about the nearest we get to Mennonites in the UK (there is only one Mennonite congregation I think) and sees its role to promote anabaptist thinking throughout the church in the UK, enthusing Christians where they are rather than creating new churches.

The Northumbria Community is a dispersed religious community based on Lindesfarne in the far north of England. To cut a long story very short, it is a liturgical community with a lot of celtic influences.

Although I have been interested in the anabaptists for a while and have known about the Northumbria community through their liturgy (which we used daily for over a year), it is fair to say that I would not have attended if the conference had not taken place in Coventry.

Anyway, there were various seminars to attend - and I went to one about anabaptist history and practice and another about new monastic groups, how they differ from 'traditional' monastic groups and what they can offer the rest of the church.

I appreciate it is hard to give a full day conference justice in a few words, but generally I was frustrated. The attendees were all white, mostly middle aged, middle class and well educated. The style was all-talk. Speakers were often asked questions from the floor, but these were often convoluted and concerned very specific points of theology or practice.

Both the anabaptists and the new-monastics seemed to be labouring the same point - that they were offering the wider church a better/richer way to 'do' church (utilising certain groovy music or liturgy, meeting at different times, using multimedia, sporting funny haircuts [WHAT IS IT ABOUT RELIGIOUS PEOPLE AND HAIRCUTS/HATS?], living together or apart, following in the way of Saint Somoneoneorother and so on) yet there seemed to be a monumental lack of discussion about what the point of it all was.

The point that unless these things assist us in our sacrificial service of our neighbour, they are of no more or less worth than any other form of church.

On Sunday I spent had a long searching conversation with someone at the church we attended. In some ways it was helpful, although it was somewhat tempered by the fact that it was H's (indirect) boss at the University. I'm not sure how comfortable I am attending church with two Statistics Professors that are so well acquainted with my wife's career. Anyway, it was very apparent how her perception of her role was influencing her advice and how I should look at my life.

We also attended an evening service at the church - which was later than we can normally manage due to B needing to get to bed on time the night before a school day. This was the first time I can remember being properly engaged in a service in a very long time. It seems that my engagement with church is inversely proportional to the polish, so the more rubbish it is the more chance there is of spiritual engagement.

the bibleless church

I wonder what a community would be like which only read the gospels, with the other books in the bible relegated to 'interesting but flawed' misunderstandings about the nature of God.

I wonder if we would actually take Jesus' words seriously instead of sanctimoniously papering over the flaws in our lives they expose with other nonsense theology - which actually amounts to doing the opposite of what he taught.

I wonder what church would be like. I was sitting in church yesterday, and I was wondering how many of the songs we were singing actually match up to the words he said. I can't think of many which talk about loving enemies, spending yourself on behalf of the poor or carrying your cross and quite a number of the 'Jesus is my boyfriend', 'I really really really just want to praise you', 'Oooo isn't it great knowing Jesus?' mold. I think I am going to take a note of every song we sing for a while and try comparing them with the Jesus we see in the gospels and his priorities.

Would we have an institution called church? Jesus seemed to be encouraging people to pray alone (oh how many times have I had to listen to people praying to other people rather than God?) and to avoid having special leaders. That is not to say that clergy are unimportant or do not fulfill an important role, but church is not supposed to be like that. People are not supposed to be wearing special clothing and demanding special positions.

I am not looking to join a 'New Testament' church - as it seems to me that the New Testament Church was in a royal mess and had very little worth imitating. But I am saying that we are meant to be imitating Christ - and church really isn't doing that.

church structure

I've been thinking about church structures recently, and so was rather disturbed to see Tom's posts about burn-out amongst Anglican priests.

Partly, I think this is due to the Anglican structure - where the Priest is considered to be Top-Dog rather than someone with a particular ministry and particular role within the church, both locally and nationally.

[Of course, there are other problems with other forms of church structures, which I have experienced before. I'm focussing on Anglicanism because that is where I am at the moment.]

Mostly, however, this is due to the widespread acceptance of dodgy theology within the laity. As I have indicated elsewhere on this blog, I do not accept that church is the be-all-and-end-all. Counter to the generally accepted street-theology, we are here to serve the world and all its hurts, not for it to bolster and prop-up our crumbling church structures. We can be the most fantastic church, with the most lively and inspiring service BUT unless we have love for our neighbour, we are nothing. And often we don't give a monkeys about our neighbour unless they are paying for a wedding or buying a cake at the church fete.

Meanwhile the clergy run around propping up everyone else's faith, doing all the jobs that nobody else wants to take on (not to mention attending far too many meetings) being the professional christians because we cannot actually be bothered to take up our own cross and carry it. I don't believe there are a lot of meglomaniacs in the Anglican church (although they may well exist). I don't believe that the structures are designed to hinder the spiritual development of everyone under it, but unfortunately that is the result. But everyone is far too busy talking about sex to notice that the concrete is cracking beneath our feet.

We have to make a choice - do we want to be salt and light in this dark world, or do we want to spend all our time and effort on and in our churches? Because frankly, I'm not sure we can do both.

A tale of two churches

In a particular part of Coventry, there are two churches along a short section of road in an area with a high percentage of ethnic minorities.

Church A decided a few years ago that it wanted to buy a new building. Somewhere along the line a difficult decision was taken. This was that in order to build money would need to be obtained from various development grants.

The result is that the church has a shared building. In the lobby is a cafe. There is a community nursery, two classrooms for teaching English to people who need to improve. A computer classroom. The body of the church is regularly hired out to community groups for various events, classes, talks, social activities and the like.

On the wall is a quote from Shawshank Redemption. Yes, you heard me correctly. A quote from Mr S King - the famous horror writer - sits comfortably alongside similarly painted bible verses.

The church, of which the congregation amounts to around 100 people, is closely involved in the organisation which runs the building - and members regularly volunteer and run low key outreach events in the community in different ways. A staggering 38 people work for this organisation. An organisation that would never have existed if a church had not decided to stick its' neck out and force itself to be involved in the community and face the consequences.

As if to underline the difficulties, I was told that there is some conflict between the church and other groups who want to use the building.

But the main impression is of light and hope. The building projects the idea that church is in community, is involved, is open and ready to serve.

Church B has a large privet hedge around 75% of the circumference of the building, shielding the windows from prying eyes. A 6 foot gate barrs the entrance with an obvious coil of barbed wire around the top of it. The overall impression is of a community under siege.

Church and AA

On Sunday, we had a guest preacher at church.

It was a guy called Mike from a local alcoholism recovery centre in Coventry called Open Hands. Mike told us about the shambles his life had become due to alcohol, then in time his path towards recovery via the Alcoholics Anonymous. Eventually, via this 'unchristian' organisation, Mike was led to a Christian faith. He is now one of the Trustees of this tiny charity which is running a small residential 'dry' house for local alcoholics that the rest of society had decided were hopeless cases.

Mike came to believe that he was unable to function without relying on God on a daily basis - one day at a time.

Not for the first time I marvelled at the power of the 12-steps and the other mantras of AA. Not for the first time I wondered how it was that this organisation that functions at the very bottom of the social pile had managed to get so much about life right when those further up had it so wrong. Not for the first time I saw God moving outwith of the confines of church as we know it.

There are essentially three reasons why AA is often better at being church than church is. First, there is no position of glory in AA. All are alcoholics and none are allowed to forget. Second there is an attitude of complete surrender - nobody arrives at AA unless they have already worn through all the alternatives. Third there is a culture of mutual service.

Thank the good Lord in heaven for AA. If only we were more like them.