Unchurched

Okay, so here I am at home on another Sunday morning. The weather is cold but not snowy or icy. My family and I are home for other reasons. We have had numerous unpleasant experiences with churches. We have been chastised because our sons wore shorts to church one hot, July morning. We have seen churches split with bad feelings on both sides. We have seen people openly gossiping, in loud voices, during main church services. Other churches were so wrapped up in their rapture over the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues that they practically ignored every other facet of Christian life. Then there are the churches I like to call Sunday Clubs. These are the churches where the parishioners come together once a week and never see each other at any other time, except maybe during Easter or Christmas.

You may think I am someone who does not believe in the spirit of Christian togetherness, or koinonia as the Greeks called it. This is not true. I just think that we modern Christians have lost the ability to live together peaceably. The book of Acts tells us that the First Century church lived in one community holding all things in common. For the past 30 years news reports have surfaced sporadically about modern groups that have tried to emulate the First Century model, failing miserably and sometimes tragically.

Is it that the times have changed or that we have? I think we have changed more than the times have and, if it is true that the times have changed, then we were the ones who changed them. We, as humans, shape our cultures and are shaped by them. We cannot blame the culture since we are partly responsible for its creation.

I believe we still have it within ourselves to live in community as the early Christians did, but we need to leave our modern culture and its acquisitive ways behind. I would like to ask you to think about something.

Whether you call yourself a Christian, a Buddhist or anything else, how many of your neighbors do you know? Start with the basics. How many of them do you know by name? Now, do you know what they do for a living, where they come from or anything else about them?

I think the modern church is failing in its mission also because of our modern penchant for quick fixes. Because of this, we pick and choose which scriptures we find most important and elevate them until nothing else seems to have any importance at all. This can manifest in numerous ways. There are churches that focus on nothing besides salvation and evangelism, to the complete exclusion of teaching any Christian life principles or spiritual growth. Other churches, like the Sunday Clubs, concentrate on "doing church". They preach a gospel of benevolence and pie in the sky. They may make sporadic overtures toward evangelism or spiritual growth, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.

There are also churches who preach a gospel of prosperity. To them the keys to the Christian life are church attendance, tithing and giving as much as you can in order get as much as God can give you. These churches do a little better in evangelism, spiritual growth and koinonia. Still, there seems to always be one more sermon series on DVD, one more book or one more figurine to acquire, for a nominal donation, of course. Also, these are the types of churches that tend to grow enormous congregations until a scandal surfaces. Pastors or officials of these churches end up accused of sexual or fiscal improprieties and thus thousands of parishioners wonder how they can personally have a chance to live a Christian life if this highly-revered spiritual leader everyone quoted was unable to stay the course.

I think you can understand by now why experiencing all of these deficient churches has soured myself and my family on the entire modern church experience. But what is the alternative? There doesn't seem to be one. At least not one that we have found, so far. Have we completely given up looking? I don't know. I think we may have one or two more attempts left in us, but no more than that.

I have given thought to beginning a church online. I'm still thinking and praying over this one. I somehow feel that I misread what I thought was a calling in my previous foray into ministry. But then I get the opportunity to preach and I can feel the anointing upon me. This is more noticeable when I am preaching extemporaneously. The Scriptures say that if we will speak, the Holy Spirit will give us the words to say. I have to say that I have found this to be true. I prefer preaching off the cuff rather than from a prepared script. I think one of the biggest mistakes I made when I was in a formal ministry position was in using too many scripted sermons.

Anyway, I wonder sometimes if there is any viable alternative to the difficulties in our modern churches. I would love to do ministry again but it's a very painful process. I know that sounds like whining considering what Jesus, John the Baptist and the Old Testament prophets went through, and maybe it is. I'm just wondering if I'm up to the task. Only time will tell if we will remain unchurched as we are now, but one thing is certain; we cannot remain as we are.