I Miss Church

 I Miss Church     

5:30 on Monday morning. Sitting here in my living room before heading off to my morning walk.

Thinking about church, and how long it's been since I've attended and how much I miss it, and how much I am getting used to not going.

     All of these things are not good. I shouldn't ever "miss" church. I shouldn't have gotten to the point where I gave up years ago on ever finding a church I can become a part of ever again. I shouldn't have gotten to the point where I think about going this week, and the sad feeling of disappointment falls over me instantly. The feeling of "Why bother?" The feeling that the same old thing will happen...I will go, I will be excited and wistful and hopeful. And then the same horrible, formulaic service will unfold before me. 

     The same worthless music...intended to do nothing more than illicit emotions from the listeners. The "Big Show." The lights will be dimmed. The smoke will be blowing across the stage. The "Worship Band" will do every nauseating star-turn that you'd see at a pop concert. The "Worship Pastor" will come out, trying his best to be Bono from U2, only with a voice that at best sounds like a woman. Or a man trying to sound like a woman while trying to sing and not wake a baby. 
     The lights will be low...like a concert, not a church. There will be video walls and rotating colored lights and in some churches "praise dancers." It's a heck of a production!

     The songs will be the same vapid, pointless songs they have been for about 20 years now. How God is an ocean, or a hurricane, or a blue sky. or some other analogy that doesn't even come CLOSE to representing who He really is or what He is actually like. The songs about Jesus will be nothing more than songs about some high schooler's dreamy boyfriend. They'll breathily tell me how they love the way He loves them. If Jesus is ever actually mentioned by name, it will be only in passing. He is typically reduced to the great ethereal "whatever, bro!" The hip dude from the Big Lebowski who simply abides. 

     Any mention of difficulty or burden is done in code. "Stormy waters" or "The Desert" or "Darkness."  Nobody will ever talk about any real, tangible pain or trouble. They can't. They aren't allowed. It's against the code of "worship" music. 

     Then, of course, the worship pastor...skinny jeans and beard and goofy glasses (I swear Warby Parker must have an actual frame they call "Worship Pastor" because they all have them) will tell me how he can't hear me. He'll ask me how I'm doing, he'll tell me they are about to "usher us into the presence of God." And he'll quote selected portions of verses making it sound like the only way to spiritual victory is through singing these horrible songs louder. It's not about him! (He reminds us) It's about showing God how much we love Him! I guess singing louder fools Him into believing something our hearts betray most of the time.

     I will endure this for forty-five minutes. The entire time my soul will be thrashing inside me, wanting to scream out "This is NOT who God is!" But I can't, so I sit there. Or I got to the lobby and try to distract myself until the music...the performance, stops. 

     And that's what it is, really. A performance. A show. How do I know? Ask someone about their church. Listen closely to the order of importance of the things they love about it. The music will be right there at the top. Not the sermons. Not the impact on their lives. Not the changes wrought under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The music. The atmosphere. "I feel so loved there..." Loved by who? 
The people? Is that why you go there...because the people love you? Or do you sense the presence of GOD there and HIS love? There is a difference. 
     Nobody ever tells you how the church CHANGED them. Words like "conviction" or "sin" aren't even used. In fact..they're banished in a lot of these churches. "Oh you can't talk about sin...people will stop coming!' Or they'll CHANGE! Have you considered that? Have you considered that your effort to make church a "Hospital for sinners" (which I agree with whole heartedly) requires SURGERY sometimes? Or Chemo? Or rehabilitation? Have you considered that a Hospital often causes pain during the healing process? No? Then you aren't really a "Hospital for sinners." You're a methadone clinic. "Here...take this drug to help you get off that other drug."

     All of which has left me entirely uninterested in going back. It's not church anymore. Not really. It's something else. Something less. At least for me. It's wimpy men who have no idea what to do with that Y chromosome except apologize for it. It's pastors so consumed with being liked and being perceived as "loving people as they are" that they never bring them to a place where they consider they shouldn't be as they are anymore.
     It's forty-five minutes of torture to start things off. So much so that by the time the pastor starts his sermon, I am already gone. I tuned out. The concert sucked and I stopped listening. This God you sing these songs about...I can't find Him anywhere in scripture and apparently all He does is love me, so things like "circumspect living" and "wrestling in prayer" and "enduring faith" have no value to Him. 
     If I'm okay as I am...why do I need to be here? That's the question I can no longer answer. 
So I miss church. I miss it badly. I miss belonging. I miss being seen and known by people who aren't strangers to me. But I fear that church is gone.  Reduced to a chapter in a "History of Christianity" text book that my grandchildren will read in college one day, and make the comment to the professor; "My grandad told me about this era of The Church."  I hope I'm wrong, But I'm not.

   I want to go back. Make no mistake...I love God deeply. I have not "wandered off" or become "backslidden" or cold hearted. My faith is battle tested and worn on the edges and too ingrained in my life to ever betray. But I hate being treated like a child. 

     I want to offer what I have. I want to teach a Sunday school class, and serve a role in the church. I'm not looking to just go and be entertained. But I can't find any place that wants to do any more than entertain me. So I stay home. 

And nobody notices.

NOTE: There are good churches out there. I know of some. But they are few and far between. So no...I am not dismissing "The Church" just the church industry.

        

Church: Here’s REALLY why people are leaving you! ...My response

     

     A friend of mine posted this article on my Facebook TL today with the caption “Craig...you wrote this, didn’t you?” I did not, and he knew this. But he knows enough about me to recognize when something sounds like I might have written it or at least been thinking it.

I like this article. I particularly like point number 1. The production has worn thin. In many churches it is about nothing more than entertaining the masses and self aggrandizement for the worship team. Worshiping God is a distant last to giving a great performance. It shows, It’s been showing for a long time now.

     My take, as I said, is a bit different.  So here goes...

     1:  You have the absolute worst self-image in the history of mankind.

Jesus said “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you to come out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19)  Jesus told us we’d be hated and yet you keep wimping out and backing down and standing for less and less and trying to make the world NOT hate you. That accomplishes nothing. People aren’t going to church to feel good about where they are right now. Deep down they know something is wrong...they want to change. They DO want to come to a place where it is safe to admit they are screwed up and where it is safe to say “I need something!” Which brings me to...

     2: It’s about Jesus...remember Him?

Remember songs like “Jesus is the Answer” or “Tell Them?” Remember when you believed that when Jesus said “I am THE way THE truth and THE Life and nobody comes to God unless he comes through me!” (John 14:6) He meant it and wasn’t kidding?  When did you think He changed His mind? When did it become cool to be so accepting of other “paths?” Jesus never brooked that possibility. He was cut and dried. “It’s me or nobody!” As far as I know, He hasn’t issued a redaction of that text nor has he relinquished His claim to the Only Way. Stop putting words in his mouth.

     3: You DO have a weird language...try going back to the words that changed the world for about 2000 years. Remember when Jesus told Nicodemus “Listen...don’t be surprised that I tell you that you must be BORN AGAIN!” (John 3:7)  So why don’t you use those words anymore? Why aren’t people “born again” and why don’t they still “get saved?” You use words like “engage” “encounter Jesus” “have a relationship with Jesus” but Jesus said those things are not possible without a one-moment-in-time, specific, instantaneous, head-on-collision with the cross of Christ. The cross is vicious and harsh and demanding. Why have you bubble wrapped it?

     4: You play the popularity game.

Face it...a lot of you are phonies. Every move you make, every song you sing, every mission trip gets blasted on social media, a press release gets sent out, and you try to announce your humility. You act like you don’t want recognition, but you claw and scratch for it. You use the tired phrase “Make Jesus Famous” but you really do everything you can think of to make YOU famous, thinking that your fame can add to His. That’s a travesty.

     5: You are the worst age discriminators on earth.

You are loaded to the gills with older folks with a lifetime of knowledge and wisdom and you run them off with your pabulum-infused songs and contemporary services. These are the people who seem to know how to balance a checkbook, stay faithful to one church and one spouse for a lifetime, and raise good kids. yet you isolate them by complaining that they need to change with the times. The times SUCK. Maybe they had it right. Maybe you should listen to them a little more.

     6: You’re a pastor...stop camouflaging that. Wear a suit now and then. Shave that hideous beard. Stop wearing girl jeans and capri pants. Try drinking black coffee once in a while. Cut your own grass. And for God’s sake, maybe it wouldn’t kill you to NOT try for shock-points by talking about your favorite beer, your sex life, or your favorite KISS album. You were called to lead by example...so get WAY OUT IN FRONT and be very different...not barely different.

     7: You are here to love people. Sometimes that means putting a hard finger in their face and telling them “This is bad. STOP!” Sometimes it means shutting up and being silent because you really aren’t that smart sounding, and the person just needs a silent arm around their shoulder. ALL THE TIME it means you are kind. Kind even in your hard, immovable stance on sin. Still be kind.

     8: Lastly. You play favorites. And the world sees it. When half the staff are either related to you or your best friends or friends of your best friends...the world sees it. That’s crap. It’s crap in the secular business world and it’s an outhouse full of crap in a church. STOP IT. This is GOD’S church...not yours. You are NOT a CEO. You are a shepherd. Shepherds love sheep. Period
     9: You are a church...aren't you? Changing your name to something that sounds like a sandwich kiosk in the mall food court doesn't fool anybody, and it doesn't help. People see Church as a landmark. A touchstone. It is supposed to be definitive and clear. Why do you try renaming yourself? Because there are a few "bad Baptists" in the world? A couple of crazy Assembly of God's who went rogue?  The Catholic Church has almost gone out of it's way to shoot itself in the foot, what with priests behaving badly and all. Yet they never considered hiring a PR firm to reinvent themselves. They believed in their core foundation and they believed that it was real, and necessary, and that simply living up to it once again would eventually restore people's faith in Catholicism. 
Some people call that being resolute. It's a good thing. You should try it. People died over the course of history to give you the Theology you adhere to. What are you so ashamed of? My daughter calls me "Dad." I'm not a perfect dad, and sometimes I mess up. When I do, I place the onus on me to be a better dad, and deserve the moniker again. What I don't do is tell her she can start calling me Craig, because "Dad" has some bad connotations attached to it. You're a lighthouse...not a glow stick.

     Finally: How about an altar call? How about a specific time in EVERY service where God can specifically do business with the people you are preaching to.

Because since we are “all fallen” (as you keep reminding us when one of your favorite flockstars falls) we ALL need time to repent and do some housekeeping. And how about some hymns mixed in with the hypno-trance worship songs. And how about a few testimonies now and then,  and maybe asking some dear old saint who has been praying for 50+ years, to pray audibly so the kids can hear what a wizened old saint sounds like when he prays. You have probably a thousand years of combined "walking with Jesus" in your midst, and yet you play to the babies. In any other culture that would be written off as foolish. 
Because it it. 

     That’s my take. I’ve sat on both sides of this, and this is what my almost-51 years tells me. The church has tripped over itself apologizing for being Godly. Guess what? That’s what the ungodly actually want from you...GODLINESS! So start doing it. Stop making them so darn comfortable in their ungodliness! That's not why most of them came to your church. So you can stop going out of your way to blur the lines between what an actual Christian is and does, and the rest of the world. That line was never supposed to be blurry. It was supposed to be bold, and stark, and it allows no turning back once you cross it. 
THAT is what they want. They are leaving because, after a few weeks of being in your presence, they feel like there isn't much different between them and you, and now that they've settled the unrest in their hearts, (sadly, they settled it with the Christian codeine you sold them) they'd just as soon stay home or go fishing or golfing or to a craft beer festival. They came to you looking for a way to be different. They came away, not with the words of Life that change you and make you different and infuse that difference into every pore of their being, but with the feeling that they don't really need to be different. 
They are leaving you because they feel like they didn't really need you after all. That's your fault...not theirs.