Choice of Purpose

Okay, I admit it, I thought I was done with this subject a couple weeks ago, like most blog posts that make the rounds with my friends the various "Let/Don't Let Your Kids Choose To Not Go To Church" posts came in a bunch and then we'd move on to whatever else someone thought was killing the church.  But NO, another round of "Get your kids into Sunday worship" posts are showing up. 

So, I've made my points on choice previously, but my issue with these are that they tie into everything I'm struggling with regarding this whole "church survival" culture. There are lots of points where this culture goes astray, but this recent series of articles hits two main ones.  1) Church = Sunday Morning Worship (or at least that large corporate worship is central to the idea of Church).  2) The objective of Church is to survive, and that means indoctrinating kids into the culture so that (maybe, hopefully) they'll find it essential to their adult lives. 

So let's talk about this: The church built around a large corporate worship as the only, best, or even "right" way to do church is dying.  Not for every congregation or context, but as a whole it is.  This is NOT what church is or what church needs to be in the new paradigm.  Worship will happen, but it's quite probable that it will happen in smaller groups, or at special times of the year, or both, or connected to mission and other parts of "Church," or who knows exactly, it should based on the new paradigm be contextual, organic, and relational.  And to be quite honest, for most churches, large corporate worship is not, and quite probably can not be that sustainably. 

So why then is this the drum that so many beat when it comes to the ideal of "helping our children be Godly?"  Probably in large part because it's what they know.  For many, Sundays at church was the norm, but it also was rarely (and most of the posts I've seen state this) the only way faith, religion, and/or spirituality interacted with their life.  The problem is that having spent most of our life in the Postmodern Transition, we create a false duality and over emphasize the roles of institutions which support our "truth."  This is not where we are today, and certainly for kids who have spent most of their life in the new paradigm is actually completely illogical.  Not saying that all kids who go to a Sunday large service of worship will turn against it, but coming to that will NOT keep anyone involved in the church or with their faith by itself.

If anything, for those who have spent most their lives in this relational paradigm of convergence, the separation of the world at the "worship hour" is going to present large issues with finding purpose unless it is supported by a connection to the rest of the world around us.  At some time in the near future there will be a tipping point where this struggle to maintain and survive will be the very thing that brings about an inevitable ending.

It is though the fear of this ending that I think causes us to write so many of the posts, to spend so much time reflecting on how to survive. Yet, it seems too often rather than being willing to risk letting things that we've always known and make us feel safe and connected to our ideas of "God," we think that we just need to focus on making others think the same way we do.  This is especially risky (in my opinion, as if everything we right isn't based on our opinions) when it comes to our children.  I struggle a lot with parenting, the ideas we ask our children to accept just because we hold them close to ourselves aren't always ones we should impose on our kids.  I started struggling with this with sports.  So often I see babies dressed in school or team colours, told to cheer on "our team" just because it's "mom's team" or "dad's team."

The thing is we don't stop with sports (and even if we did, I'd have lots to say, but that's a different post), we basically tell our children for years who God is, what God thinks, and sometimes go as far as to turn God into the global boogie man without meaning to.  We want our kids to think like we do, and we do it to the point of indoctrination.  That's a problem, I see it time and again at confirmation age.  There are kids who have never asked questions, they come to church because they're told to, they answer questions with certainty because they've been told what the right answer is, but when faced with realities that conflict with these answers, they don't know how to doubt, they don't know HOW to make a CHOICE! 

We've created a world filled with anxiety because these children have never existed within a world where there was a "right" path to a "single" truth.  Their world is relational and every thing that happens adds to the book they are doodling in (see previous blog posts for more on this) creating new understandings.  But we want faith not to be in THAT book, we want faith to be already written.  We want them to memorize the text book and never deviate from or question it. 

Have you looked at a GOOD children's educational book recently?  Many have more questions than answers.  Most new one's I've seen aim to put kids into the world their studying and then leave them room to go find more about the questions that matter to them.  We just finished our first youth literary circle here, they read the BFG by Dahl and they had so many different thoughts on the BIG stuff (Fear, Hope, Pain, Life, Ethics) that came from the reading it was hard to keep track of who asked what and who answered what and what all that lead to. 

We cannot indoctrinate our kids and expect them to survive in a world where the constant stream of information means that their reality is ALWAYS changing.  They need room to figure it out.  The things church provides are useful and important in that formation, but the idea that the other things of life are somehow less important, or even unequivocally less Godly than that Sunday morning thing is very misplaced.

So let's sum this up before the few people who have made it this far move on:
Going to church as a kid WILL NOT mean that they'll come to church as an adult.  This NEVER should have been our intent. I've seen in a number of posts the idea that when we have kids, people come back to church.  There were once statistics to support this, but that was mostly part of a modern way of thinking that became paramount in the postmodern transition to the idea that our truth was a truth based on a singular path.  The fact though is: if we're not going to be the kind of place that an individual thinks is important to THEIR OWN LIFE at any certain time, there was never anywhere to go but down, because as we are more able to see the complexities of the world, we look for places to engage our passions, and those places and people become most important.  The church CAN be that place, but we have to make it that place.  We have to let go of the idea that getting people in the door is our purpose, we have to let go of the things that make us comfortable, we have to stop trying to survive and become whatever it is our context needs most.  If we allow ourselves to be moved by the Spirit that envelops all things, WE will find our passions, our children can find their passions, and God's reign will move ever closer. 

<End Rant>

Some thoughts on the Church Going Forward (Are we the primary home of spiritual nourishment?)

The Church is a bit like the family farm that is now surrounded by subdivisions. We may still serve the "family" well, but we're now disconnected from the community around us. Those outside see value in what we have, but more often they just pass by wondering about the old family that seems out of place, or maybe complaining about the old broken down tractors (programs) that they see in our front yard. We keep going along living life the way we do because it seems to work “for us” but with a call to the world as well as each other, we have to realize that our neighbors, who we used to chase cows with or who provided the fire wood that we now have to cut ourselves in exchange for veggies aren't there anymore. The community of the world we are part of has changed and we have to change as well.

Think if you will of when your neighbors move, the new neighbors still fill the same “position” but they most likely serve in different roles within the community. As such, the community changes, if the person who mowed the lawns moves away and the new neighbor doesn't own a lawnmower, someone steps into that role, or everyone has to figure out a way to accomplish what the need. You don't have to be the person to mow lawns, but at minimum you have to now mow your own or hire someone else.

So how does this apply back to the church? Well let's go back to the farm analogy: If we as the church began as a place that supplied the local community with a needed service, but have as time has changed become disconnected from the changing needs of our community, we need to consider what the community currently sees us as. If we are the now “family farm” taking care of itself mainly and seen a place filled with things from a time gone by, we're no longer doing what we originally aimed to do. We have stopped being part of the community, so how can we take what we have and better be what our communities now need?

I think of farms in the area where I grew up, some fenced themselves off more in order to avoid having people complain about escaping cows and will live as long as the family does and then certainly die out (if not before). They aim to maintain for themselves. This is certainly not our call as the church. Some others have sold off much of their land, using profits to try to become something new, or just living out their lives still separate from the community that has grown around them. Also, does not line up with the churches call. But there is one other way I've seen that seems to maybe have lessons we as the church can learn from.

Some of these farms have found themselves just like the one I started this article with: A family farm with rusted tractors and old barns surrounded by subdivisions and planned communities. They heard the mumbling of the neighbors, they saw that they weren't connected, and they looked for ways to be part of the world surrounding them. This meant getting rid of some tractors, cleaning up some barns, and repurposing themselves to continue to serve the community that they were now part of. Some became homes to farmer markets and auction houses. Some found their space to be in great demand for community carnivals, concerts, and other entertainment and slowly repurposed buildings and land to be more and more formal entertainment space. In both these cases there's still some working family farm land attached, but the family is also connected to the community through the other things it does, and in doing so the community for the family has increased. We as the church have many things a community needs, but we must first take the time to look and hear what our specific context needs and try to fill in that void IF we can. Regardless, the process of being neighbor begins by our willingness to go out, be aware of need, and offer help.

We are not just here to take care of ourselves or those who come to us, and we are not a business selling God. We are a neighbor helping here to help and serve. A neighbor who needs to get back out and see that needs have changed and stand in those places of need just like we each were created to do from the beginning. The world sees us as behind, but we don't have to catch up, we just have to reconnect.

The Missed and What's Missing

A few times in the past day I have been part of discussions about "better terms for 'unchurched.'"  There have been attempts to explain/differentiate: "those who've not connected yet," "those who have disconnected," or "those who may never connect" and snarky responses: "Hell-goers," "heathens," "target population," "opportunities," or "lucky."  Mixed in all these "typical" responses there were also a few more honest attempts (from varied backgrounds, and all with issues admittedly) "Lost," "Missed/Missing," and "Seeking."  "Lost" and "Seeking" come from the same argument.  People out there are looking for something they can't or haven't found yet, and WE have it, so how do we let them know they can find it HERE.  They are cheap advertising words, not words that should be used when talking about real people or a real community (church).  "Missed/Missing" is an interesting idea: We miss these people in theory and want them in community, and God likewise misses these beloved treasures that are not in a relationship supposedly.  Of course again there is a major issue here: We're assuming a lot about what is going on inside of these actual people and trying to put a label on them.  Same problem that comes with the attempts to differentiate sub groups of this "group" that we so often talk about in the church and in relation to evangelism.

So if it's not about "The Missed" then what is it about?  I want to argue it's about "What's Missing."  We shouldn't be worried about "who" is out there and how to describe "them."  We should be doing our job as the Body of Christ.  Jesus doesn't go around asking who is going to come to him, people just do.  The sense something they want there, they sense a spirit of love and healing, they see someone who comes to them without question, without judging, without requirements.  We don't do that, we rarely even get out and do good in a lot of cases.  We may do a little here, and a little there, but Jesus says that The Son of Man has no where to lay his head.  And well if we're Christ's body, that means we also shouldn't be looking for a home, but going, doing, acting as Christ to this world.  Yes, God wants people to come to know Christ and through him Godself, but people will come to know God because God is active in their lives, not because we bring them to church. 

I do believe people want community, I believe God made our deepest desire one of escaping our aloneness, to feel part of something greater, to understand love in it's truest form, to build relationships. As the story goes, after Adam and Even had eaten of the tree of knowledge, after they have become aware of themselves, the world, and each other, they are aware of their separateness. The awareness of separation is the source of anxiety and the deepest need of human beings is our need to overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our aloneness.  This is an internal pull, we can do nothing to change to what extent someone feels it, nor are we able to really understand how it manifests itself in another.  Thus I argue that we need to get beyond a desire to know who we're "evangelizing" to, and just "evangelize" the world through action, actions of love, of justice, of care and concern for others regardless of who they are or where they are in life.  We are all seeking, we all are a bit lost, we all have parts of church we love, hate, and are ambivalent about, we all are unique but connected in that we all are made in God's image.  May we treat all people as such. 

Growing or Transforming

I will not forget the words of my late seminary professor Cecil, he would always say: "Your job as pastor is to take care of the church, and taking care of the church is assuring it's health and long life.  You do this by bringing in young families.  Those are the most important people to a church."  I thought then it was a bunch of bull, and I still do.  Yes, that is now, has been, and will probably continue to be the way to assure that the church goes on functioning for yet another generation, but it misses the importance of actually being church. 

The congregation I work with is undergoing a revisioning process, and it has been hard to stop the talk of "how do we grow the church" within that conversation.  I agree we shouldn't just focus on what our church is but on a picture of what it could become in this process, but really transforming the church is different than just growing the church.  Cecil is right, if you want to grow a church get focused on your youth, children, and families, but if you want to transform a church, then everyone is involved. 

I was talking with one of the children at the church recently and asked the question "What is church here for?"  Her answer: "To take care of those who can't take care of themselves."  Do to the nature of the conversation we didn't get much deeper than that, but it is true, we are here to be community, to carry one another in a way that is healing and creative.  We're not just here to bring other people in, we're here to be part of what goes out and changes the world.  We must then focus not on those who can help us, but on helping those who can't help themselves.  We are transformed by interacting, and I would hope that we're trying to be transformed into people with a larger vision.  That means discovering new things about God, the world around us, and ourselves through relational experiences. 

I took a group of youth this summer on their first mission trip.  I watched them put together thoughts about inequality, human rights, and God's plan for all creation in ways that I'd never heard before.  They connected with people, and then made bigger connections.  We so often miss this in our normal church lives.  We disconnect what we're up to in a building or through our programs from the bigger picture.  Yet I truly believe that the reason it is essential for us to gather together is so that we can be transformed by one another. 

This then extends to the church as a whole.  If the church is going to be transformed it has to truly interact with the world around it.  It can't be just a bubble with programs to draw in, it has to be a living moving creation that goes out and interacts with the world around it.  It has to take care of those who are part of it that can't take care of themselves in order to be able to take care of all.  It has to visit, it has to love, it has to be with the world,  walking with the world and hearing the issues, and then working to help those who hurt, who are unable to help themselves, just as Jesus did. 

We are the hands and feet of Christ.  If we believe this, believe ourselves to be God's body, we need to be about God's work.  Jesus did not worry about washing himself, he served and washed others.  It was not about how many people were following him, but about what he could do for those who did.  Jesus transformed the world by doing the work of God.  The children came to him not because he created an environment that was child friendly, but because children recognize true friendliness and are attracted to it naturally.  If we want our churches to be transformed, to continue to be relevant in generations to come, we must act as friends to the world.  We must go and do God's work, and trust that God's love and grace is truly as irresistible as we claim it to be.