Lately I’ve been thinking about the whole idea of church, as you can tell because the last four entries have been about that. One of the key things one needs to do in attempting to change is first deconstruct what they are coming from then work on constructing something that learns from its history. The last four entries were somewhat of a deconstruction process of my ideal of the church that I saw, but simply pointing out errors and walking away isn’t something can stop at. I can’t be content whining about the present without planning something new for the future. What you read before was my struggles over the last three or four years compressed into four entries. It obviously could be expanded on and each point could be explained but then I would be writing a book (which I intend to do one day), so what you read is an idea of where I coming from and how I got to where I am now.

The way we think of church, even in our minds is completely screwed up. Think about this concept for one second. “I am going to church.” What is wrong with that statement? Or how about this one; “church sucked today.” All these comments prove outright that church has become something that we attend on a weekly basis. Church is something that we go to. All through Scripture it is quite clear to me that church isn’t something that people went to but instead all the Christians were the church. When they all came together they didn’t come together for church, they came together as the Church.

See how the whole idea of going to church once a week completely messes up what Church was meant to be. Trust me, because the word means something different it will take a long time for us to come back to what it is supposed to mean. One might get depressed because that means that the Church hasn’t really been around for the last 1800 years, but then again I wouldn’t even go there. The Church has always existed. All believers are the Church. The Church as we know it is just tangled up in weekly services, and then they call those services the church. I’m not sure why those services inherited the name ‘church’ but I do know that it messes up a lot of our ideas of what the Church is supposed to be.

This is to encourage you in understanding that even though your ‘church’ may suck the Church doesn’t. The Church is still alive and vibrant, full of life and serving and loving people. The Church can consist in or outside of the walls of the church. The Church has never been restricted by a once a week service instead the Church is enhanced and it grows because of that service. Numbers on Sunday morning do not mean necessarily number of the Church. The only thing that kept me attending church was when I understood that church is the gather of the Church. When that can be understood then it doesn’t really matter if church is good or bad or boring what matters is that you are surrounded by the rest of the Church.

This is an old concept that many are trying to unleash and understand in their local cultures. It’s something that is being looked down upon by many and supported by many. I don’t expect things to change overnight, because that would be naïve, but I do expect things to change. It starts with us. It starts with this knowledge and then moving forward to do something about it. So when you start getting all down because your church ‘sucks.’ Remember YOU ARE THE CHURCH and that doesn’t suck.

After writing three points about what I have noticed church has become I knew that there were a bunch more I could point out. I was talking with my friends tonight (something think that is happening a lot this break about this subject) and I started to understand something that put a lot of things together for me. Obviously all these entries are very general and do not represent every church.

By the way: I responded to Nick’s comment on my last entry, thanks for that Nick, it’s always good to have disagreements because then that causes the truth to become more clear if handled in the right manner.

I’ve pointed out that church has become a number of things such as entertainment, drive through spirituality and an empty routine. There are many more things that it has become that I haven’t pointed out specifically such as its become a comfort haven, a programmed liturgy, a guilt remover, a political arena, a man made sanctuary and religion and the list goes on. A key factor of modernity is its desire to compress and speed up everything. Everything in the modern world is about speed and how much you can get done in a little bit of time. It never has anything to do with quality and always sticks with quantity. This mindset has infiltrated the church. For some reason it seems that the church service consists of a little bit of everything we need in our Christian life.

What modernity has done to the church is broken each aspect of it into little pieces, kept what was important, sped it up and then crammed everything that was left into a two hour service. Your entire Christian walk can be summed up in a two hour service, and this causes people to be lazy and accept that that is their Christian walk. So what happens is people go to church and that’s it, well the good Christians will read their bible everyday. We give people a little bit of community; just enough so you see other Christians, but not enough that you actually build meaningful, long-lasting deep relationships. We give people a bit of singing (calling it worship); just enough so that your ‘worship’ was done for the week, but not enough to leave you beaming for the rest of the week. We give you an opportunity to give money to the church, and always directly to the church. We give you a good show so that you will not be bored. We give you a place where you can bring your unsaved friends, so you don’t have to learn to witness yourself; you just have to be a good church recruiter.

Church has become a substitute for the Christian life. Show up at church on Sunday and your whole Christian life is in check for the next week. Oh how far we have strayed from the truth. When will we understand that the church is the sum of all Christians lives.

One of my favourite sermons I have ever heard is by Erwin McManus. If you are interested, you can download it here. It’s not necessarily theologically without holes, nor is it a message that will send you running to the altar with tears filling your eyes. At the time I listened to it for the first time, it was about two years ago and I was struggling with the concept of church and grace. This message just happened to bank on both ideas.

He talked about our modern perception of church and how we look at church as our place to get ‘fed.’ How often do we hear (and did I say) “I just want to get fed,” “I need a place to feed me spiritually.” Erwin simply says, “YOU’RE FAT.” Our churches are full of fat Christians. He says that church isn’t there to feed us, but to make us hungry. Church should be the place you go to get hungry so for the rest of the week you are looking everywhere for God, you are searching your Scriptures, and seeking God in everything. If we settle for just eating out all the time, that means we are starving ourselves the rest of the week.

It was then that my mind started moving. How often do we create church into the fast-food restaurant (spiritual food)? We show up at church once a week, get our fill up and then run off that for the rest of the week. Imagine if you did that physically, one McDonald’s meal a week, you wouldn’t be very healthy would you? Your week needs to be full of nourishment, so that when you go to church its simply an overflow of everything that you have been struggling through and learning throughout the week.

My favourite article I have ever read in Relevant is called Starving our Worship. He makes the most interesting parallel to the Lord ’s Supper. In 1 Cor 11 when Paul talks about the Lord’s Supper he points out that people are getting drunk, there were divisions and people were going ahead of one another and leaving others hungry. There was a lot of crap going on in the church (you’ll find that a lot with the Corinthian church). Here is what Paul points out:
“Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in?”
Everyone was coming to the table for the wrong reasons. They were coming to get their fill, and coming to replenish themselves. Why does this ring so closely to our church today? Paul is telling us the same thing. Don’t we have homes to spiritually eat and drink in?

These two messages run alongside of each other and give us the same idea. Church is not meant to be our fill-up fast [spiritual] food joint. When did it happen that the only place we can be spiritually nourished is at church? We’re lazy; we don’t want to do any work. It’s easy to hear a preacher speak to us and do all the interpretation and exegetical work and apply it to our lives for us. Church should be more like the family dinner table. Every day, you are presented with a number of great choices from all the food groups (to be honest, this is nothing like my dinner table, but you get my point). So that when you do go to the church service then you are not so focused on filling up but rather you can focus on what you are there for. Which I will continue on about soon…

Tonight was great and it will be one of those nights that I will never forget. Kind of the opposite side of the spectrum from a few nights ago with the accident, but either way so far this week is going to be an unforgettable week. I went out to a local bar with Joe and Darryl and over some beer and nachos we just talked. Then we drove around downtown Sarnia for another hour and talked some more. For those of you that don’t know, Darryl is my roommate and one of my best friends that I’ve grow up with for the last eight years. Joe is my friend who is a youth director out in Calgary. He originally came as our youth pastor in Sarnia and through that our friendship grew. We get to see each other two or three times a year. So it’s always enjoyable to spend time with him seeing as he is one of the most influential people in my life.

It is the most encouraging thing in the entire world to know that there are other people in the world with the same dreams, passions and feelings as you. It is awesome to know that you are not alone with how you feel and that there are others that are willing to go to the lengths as you are for that belief. To be able to talk and see people nod in agreement and hear people say ‘yes’ can be quite exciting. While we were talking, and there are a million things I could write about that will eventually come out, we strayed into the topic of preaching and the modern entertainment industry we call church.

Church has turned into a once a week event that we attend instead of being the community of believers Christ called it. Think about it. When I ask you how was church you will say something about the worship, and the message and the special guest artists singer. When did church become a service? When did church become something we attend or watch? When did church cease being a community of believers and a body of children of God? When was church compressed down to a once a week event that we go to?

Worship has become hype and the quality of music defines the performance. A ‘good’ worship service can be viewed by (at least in the Pentecostal circle) how many people were ‘into it’ (which usually consists of raising hands, kneeling, jumping and closing eyes). The message is defined by how good it made you feel when you walk away and how exciting and passionate the preacher was. Church is rated between boring and entertaining. Most people don’t go to church because it’s boring. The church has become the entertainment of the Christian and ceased to be a helping hand to the world. Church was tonight. When Joe, Darryl and I sat around a bar over drinks and nachos a little piece of the church had come together. The whole concept of church is completely destroyed, and we need to bring it back.

Why do you go to church? Think about it. Write down the reasons on a piece of paper and look them over. Maybe post them on a comment on this entry. Then write down why we should go to church, or should we even at all? Is church, the way it is today, something that God commands us to go to? Or did he have something else in mind. As time moves forward I’m going to expand on these ideas of church, and my interpretation of what the church should be and how it should come together. I’m interested on all your comments though and together we can come and try to come to grips with what Christ had in mind when he started all of this.