i have always had a love hate relationship with my church. i’ve had more than my fair share of criticizing my church (those that know me know this is a gross understatement): we make dumb decisions, sermons are often very… incoherent, sometimes “spirituality” feels forced, communication is pretty poor, and so on and so on. being from new york, i’ve always had many other churches to look at. i’ve seen how other churches function and i often wish my church functioned differently. the temptation to just jump ship has always been right there. my friends often jokingly–or maybe it’s really just half-jokingly–say i should probably go somewhere else. but i’ve stayed.

one reason i’ve stayed is because i think regular church hopping is bad for you. it feeds into this idea that the church is just some organization to feed one’s tastes and wants. it’s this “consumer-mentality” where we go around shopping for what we like… and if something doesn’t quite please us, that’s a sign to drop and move on to another. regularly doing that leads to a lot of me-thinking when the church is really about us and our relationship with God not just my relationship with God.

to help myself put this in perspective i sometimes think about people who live in places where the option of another church isn’t even there… people who grow up in places where there is just one church… one body of believers. if i were in such a place would the first stupid leadership decision make me leave? where would i go? where else can i share in worship or bible study or prayer? the early church brought people together that had no reason to be together. the rich and the poor were equals in the church. educated and uneducated shared in meals together. people didn’t have the option of going from church to church looking for people they would fit them better or be more like them. in such a place i think one would learn by necessity to have grace on each other… to learn to love and to live with each other despite our differences or shortcomings.

thus, another reason why i’ve stayed is because i’ve committed myself to this body. i think it’s this reason that grounds me when i start thinking about leaving or when frustrations begin to overwhelm me. what does it mean to be committed to a body? again, i think it means continuing to love your church no matter what happens. it’s often said that the christian life is not meant to be lived alone–it’s true. i think the bible instructs us more as a body of people than as an individual. it tells us to “walk in love”, to “grow up in Christ”, to “love oneanother”, to “bear each other’s burdens”… all things that you can’t do on your own. committing to a body is a way of saying “these people here, as frustrating and broken as they may be are the instrument  that God is using to make me more like himself.” through others, God shows us more of himself. he teaches us his patience, his pain, his grace, and his faithfulness. isn’t he committed to us? no matter how many times we disappoint him or frustrate him or disobey him? God shows us grace and shows us his love is still constant for us despite our weakness.

the church, whichever one you may be at, is made up of broken and messed up people. yes there are some reasons why you should leave a church… if your church is talking about the 4th person of the Godhead or “all roads lead to the same greater power and lifeforce” then it’s probably time you should get outta there. but i think many of the reasons people move to different churches is weak and shows a very self-centered view of church. as i mentioned before, i wish i had not bailed on my previous church. i have a  great admiration for those that have stayed with their churches through extremely tough and barren times. i think that takes real faith and commitment… to move forward even when things are falling apart and it seems like you’re doing it alone. christ didn’t abandon us at the cross. if God came to us when we were not just disagreeable, but straightup offensive to him… if we recognize the grace and love shown us, it gives us the power to give grace and love to the body that God has called us to grow together with.

often when i chat with people, i listen “in between the lines” of what they say and i hear, though rarely explicitly said, this weird notion that having pain and suffering makes you good or makes you a better person or something like that. some of you might be like “what?! who would think something so stupid?” it’s there. i’ve heard it. ive heard it mainly in church settings though. maybe it’s only in some christian circles… christians are sometimes crazy and have things backwards. in christian-land i’ve heard things like “you should do A instead of B because you’ll have a harder time doing A” or something like, “if you’re doing something and you’re not suffering, you’re doing something wrong.” i say NONSENSE. there’s this weird “pursuit of pain” that seems so obviously stupid but is very real. maybe i’m a bit harsh here, suffering teaches us a lot. but who in their right mind goes after it? the first thing i thought of was this quote (which i had a hard time trying to remember exactly where it came from)…

from Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis (emphasis mine):

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ.

i’ll try to use a non-c.s. lewis quote in my next post but i think he puts it very well.

–edit–

right as i published this, simon sent me this post about mr. rogers. its related… somewhat. if not related just read it anyway. mr. rogers was a good man.

something pb said prompted me to pray for the sins of our church…the main topic i think pb asked us to pray for 5 or 6 times… he just stated it in 5 or 6 different ways, but to me as i was praying it was just one topic. and what i was praying for was that we would know god. all the specifics pb brought up like “lack of faith”, “building our identity on something other than him” or “tiredness of leaders” and so on all came back to “knowing god” for me. here are some thoughts i typed onto my phone bc i couldnt find a pen around:

• we know how to LOOK LIKE we know god, but we don’t know god. i don’t think i need much explanation here.
• we don’t know that our god is a god of promises. god’s promises come through his word and we know that what god says will happen. when god says he’ll take care of us we don’t really believe that. when god tells us that he is good we know it but we don’t believe it.
• the next thing is almost cliche… i almost don’t to state it but i did write it down, but i’ll expand a bit on it: we don’t seek God, we seek his gifts. i think too often we seek to have certain gifts of the spirit more than seeking to know god more deeply. we seek the gifts of tongues or of prophesy but do not seek the knowledge of him and his love.
• not thats its totally automatic but i think knowing him makes the other specific things that we prayed for come more naturally: community, missions, freedom.

in brief that’s about it.

and by drink i don’t mean in the duh duh sense that we all drink water, OJ, etc. i mean that from time to time, i pick up beers when i grocery shop, and from time to time i meet up w/ some friends and chat over some shots. it just so happens that some of these friends serve with me on worship team at church.

i had an interesting discussion with my pastor about it last night. its such a touchy issue… in my eyes its a very unnecessary issue. one of the things that irk me is when people take cultural norms and try to make them biblical norms. as far as my biblical understanding goes, alcohol is not inherently wrong. i don’t think any thinking person could make any such claim. so i guess it bothers me that people have this presupposition that drinking is bad.

the end result of our discussion is that we both recognized the problem that people have a false perception of the whole drinking business. the difference we had was that we approached the problem differently. he would rather we abstain to avoid possibly stumbling people who thought it was bad… kinda like a “people are not ready for it” kind of thing. while my approach was more of a trying to bring the practice back into the light… redeem it in a sense. i understand how my preference might be risky but i’m thinking “when are people ever gonna be ready for it?”. so yeah… maybe in a few years i’ll look back and think the safer approach is better.

ok i think thats how i’m gonna end this post.