the title of this post came from something I read about how it's so trendy to be angsty about church life now. cheers to feeling on the cutting edge and yet being incredibly common! :)
To carry over a couple of slightly paraphrased thoughts from the last post about churches....
"I'm interested in dialoguing more about what we expect our churches to be, what we're allowed to expect from them, and where 'church' may not be required to meet us..."
and:
"How do churches of today navigate and plan for the mobile, fluid lives of today's people while simultaneously calling for community, help, and service? How do the different sorts of lives church members lead today change what our churches do? Or how they do them?"
One thing I took from the comments is the idea that maybe church isn't intended to revolve around a building, that church can focus on people and thus make itself more malleable for a membership who may be away from home 2-3 times a month for days at a time, or may have multiple communities they serve in and less time to devote primarily to their church (as traditional church volunteering may go). I do think this idea appeals to many in our current generation, and is exemplified in the movement of many toward more house churches, church plants, internet faith communities and the like. There's definitely a feeling sometimes that we focus too much on trying to get people to come to where we are - within our walls - than a push to get us to go out and just BE the church to the world wherever and however we interact with it.
On the flipside, I think it's safe to say that the existence of our buildings, staff, etc. does introduce added elements of business and expectation... who runs the church? How do we support it, and what do we want it to do? If we have a building, shouldn't we be using it as much as possible and encouraging our people to come and gather as often as we can to, you know, worship and accomplish stuff together? Since monies are corporately collected by the membership, shouldn't many great things for God spring out of and be mobilized by that central community?
I find myself somewhere in the middle, predictably. I do feel that the local church affords us opportunities to organize ourselves and combine our talents and resources for good, and I'd like to be a part of doing a lot of good. I believe that being involved in a local church - like any entity, really - offers tremendous room for personal growth, as working alongside others over the long haul is never an easy road, is it? Beth Moore recently talked about our propensity to encounter conflict in our churches/communities and back off, tune out, disengage, go elsewhere... I love that she challenged us to consider that God has a call on the lives of people who rub us the wrong way, to bring out the parts of us He's trying to work on.
I've also become a person who would like my church to meet needs I didn't consider before I had children, not just because I think it's a nice thing but because I want to feel that kind of support and consideration as a person who's chosen to commit time to our congregation, and that's the season I'm in. I know a criticism of some churches is that they cater too much to families and kids, but we belong to a small congregation whose children's ministry has fluctuated a lot over the years and since I've had a little one (and one on the way) suddenly it's all quite personal. I know many nearby churches offer all sorts of great programs for parents and their kids and I don't expect our church to be Super Church by any means, but I'd like the incentive for myself and my kids to be primarily woven into our own church community in whatever ways we can be.
A note of confession-- I sometimes emotionally struggle with creating the things I want for myself. I am honestly happy to use my gifts to be able to help create space, services, events, etc that I think will help myself and other families to come together to worship and support each other and encounter the community around us, but in the past year I've sometimes felt resentful that it's not being done for me, or us, to an extent. I know how selfish and ugly that sounds, but it's true. I'm not an island by any means and there are other creator/initiator/servants around me that I'm constantly buoyed and inspired by, but I have (probably unrealistic) desires of having some of my needs intuited and met by my church without my having to expend my own energy to make them a reality around my job and my family. This is but one area where I'm fuzzy with regard to what the church should and isn't required to do, and I waffle around trying to land on an answer. And how would my answer and expectations change if we didn't meet in a big church building with dedicated ministries and staff and such?? Even as I write that, I also proclaim that it's not the staff of a church's job to do all the work of the church, and we members should all be prepared to take our positions as working parts in the body. I will say this - the experience of having children has helped me understand why people with kids might choose to just stay home, though, or migrate to larger churches who have all sorts of opportunities and volunteers already in place. I'd be interested to hear how these types of issues affect folks of varying life situations and seasons...
On the side of less church-centric church, I empathize with the plight of churches who're trying to operate traditional schedules and such with a membership that can't commit to being there every time. I'm sure this is why many have streamlined by cutting Sunday evening services, emphasizing flexible small group involvement in lieu of extra corporate meetings outside of Sunday morning, adding services on Saturday nights, whatever might fit best into the lives of people. I'm honestly not opposed to this - I'd rather a church choose it's offerings intentionally, pray for and expend energy on them, and strongly encourage participation at those times than have a lot of grandfathered-in activities that are sorta-kinda attended. Of course, I'm sure a lot of these 'grandfathered-in' things are dearly loved by those who frequent them, so I'm not saying church leaders have an easy job...
A parting thought strung together after a couple of conversations - we react against using guilt as a motivator for church service/involvement, and many might say this current generation has moved past guilt or obligation as previous generations might have known it. Which is good, overall, right? What happens if 'guilt' motivation isn't replaced with a compelling desire to participate (we might call this the Spirit in us, maybe? or not?)? What if we all take the opportunity to live in that freedom and minimize the priority of whatever our church is doing, thinking 'I'll be there when I can, if it works out around everything else'? What's a church leader to do then? I don't want to be emotionally manipulated, which I think guilt can tend toward, but I can also understand church leaders wanting to say something like, 'um, we need some more help. could you show up a little more in some way, and not be mad at us for asking or think we're trying to put you out?' Is this where members say, 'I get you, but this is all I can do right now... YOU need to change what YOU'RE doing'... do we meet somewhere in the middle? I also wonder how these sorts of dynamics play out in less corporately 'organized' church life... what do house churches/church plants expect of 'church life'? Is it less organized events during the week or month, and more community/daily/Bonhoeffer-esque living?
just a few more thoughts to continue the discussion... would love to hear your viewpoint. also, when I touted that RHE blog post about leaving the church, there were only 300 or so comments... I think there might be over 800 now, and they rapidly fell into a bunch of reactive name-calling and the usual rude internet behavior. which is too bad, but I think if you sort by first to last you might be able to see the sort of interesting dialogue and sharing of experience that I was referring to.
-m.y.
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