Never Go To Church Again!
I'm going to take a brief break from the "Blue Like Jazz" inspired posts and write about something which has been weighing on me as of late... church and how we view it. Here's the average Sunday church experience for the average Christian:
Put on your Sunday best and head to the church, the building, with a group of other well-dressed and obedient protestants.
Walk past the "First Church of the Whatever" sign and glance and see what the pastor will be talking about today. Get excited to see we're going to have one of those entertaining/funny sermons. This week it's:
Q: Why didn't Cain please God?
A: Because he just wasn't Able (or Abel if you want to be extra cute)
Sit down, face front, and let the music begin. Bring the leather-bound bible and set it gently on the pew next to you along with the hymnal (only approved "worship" songs come from the hymnal... it was printed in 1968... I have no clue what they did before that, played a harp or something). Sing 3 songs (gotta beat the Baptists to lunch, after all), Lord's Prayer. Now to learn about Jesus.
Then the sharply dressed preacher takes to the pulpit and delivers a 25-minute message of comfort about how Jesus loves them regardless of what they did during the week and throw in 2 or 3 jokes just to make sure everyone feels really good about themselves when they leave.
We do this every week because of the traditions we have carried on from the time of the first church. Back when Jesus wore his 3-piece suit to teach unchallenging messages with a touch of humor and sing a few songs with his followers. Wait... that's not what the first church was like?!? But we do things this way because they've always been done this way, right?
No, the first documented gathering of the church also happens to be my very favorite part of the bible. Matthew 5:1-7:29. This is what is commonly known as "The Beatitudes" and the "Sermon on the Mount". Getting into the specifics of the sermon on the mount is a whole other blog series entirely, but here's a link which I suggest you take the time to read and really think about the depth of this sermon and this church gathering.
But, how can you have church on a hillside? There's no sound board. No overhead. No Powerpoint. No guitar. Those are the things which make a church a church!
No, that's not true. Here's what "the church" was and should be trying to restore itself to be (regardless of a building or technology):
Church was a bunch of Christ-followers and some other people who had the word taken to them coming together to follow and live with Jesus. It doesn't matter if it was Sunday morning, Tuesday afternoon, or Saturday night. The purpose of the church was for a community of believers to walk together in their faith in God and His son, Jesus Christ.
If you continue read on from the Sermon on the Mount, there's several other gatherings listed in pretty short succession. It appears Christ had his "church" with him wherever he went. The sermon could have been 20 seconds or two hours, but always with the same intent... teaching a message of faith, and loving God and your neighbor. Not just Sunday mornings. But 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
The real church is described perfectly in Colossians 2:6-7
My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.
So, I urge you, stop going to church and start being the church. That... will revolutionize the world.
God Or Pancakes?
"(God) isn't a decision. It would be like trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself your favorite food is pancakes. You don't decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me."
-Donald Miller, "Blue Like Jazz"
There was a time before I was a Christian, a Christ-follower, in which I was a churchgoer. It was really hard to tell the difference, even for me. I was in church every Sunday. I went to Sunday school. I sang loudly. I prayed along vehemently. I got linked in with a men's bible study. I participated in outreach and social events. You could've called me Mr. Church!
Only one problem. I wasn't really sure I believed in God. I really wanted to, but I couldn't force myself to do it. Like Donald Miller said, you can no more make yourself believe in God than you can force yourself to be in love with someone you don't or enjoy a food you can't really stand.
Sure, you can fake it for awhile. You can make other people believe it. Hell, you might even be so good at pretending that you can convince yourself for awhile, but eventually the truth will come out. People will begin to recognize the emptiness in the words you speak and the actions you take. There's a lot of things in this world which can be masked and hidden for a long time, or that go unrecognizable, but love of anything is not one of those. True love and geunine feelings always show their true colors.
It wasn't that I was completely opposed to believing in God or even that I felt incapable of loving God. I just didn't know how to go about it and it certainly wasn't at the top of my priority list. I thought if I sang loud enough, prayed hard enough with the right words, and did enough good deeds in His name that he would simply be there and I wouldn't need to put much effort into it. The math seemed simple enough, but my calculations were incorrect.
Here were my two major mistakes:
1) Having a greater desire to be viewed as a Christian than my desire to be one. I was doing a lot of stupid things in my life at the time, so I figured I'd go to church. After all, church-going people didn't do stupid things, right? Church-goers were all forgiven by God for their wrongdoings, weren't they? This was going to be easy... I would go to church, and if there was a God I was as good as gold beacuse I made appearances and said and did the right things while I was there. Not only that, but people in the community would see that I went to church and would therefore know that I was, in fact, a good person! As my current pastor says, I was living like hell 6 days a week and trying to get right with God on Sundays.
2) Not speaking to God from my own heart. I'd go to church and reiterate in my head the prayers the pastor would speak from the pulpit. Doing this is much like following the bouncing ball in a Disney Sing-Along video. It's okay for a time, but if want to be recognized as a real singer... you eventually need to branch out and sing your own song. It took me a long time before I reached a comfort zone where I could pray my own words, thoughts, feelings, and concerns to God.
Eventually I reached a point where I was going to church not just to go through the motions, but I really wanted to obtain a personal relationship with God. I started praying to him through my heart instead of vicariously through the words of others. When I made those changes, God happened to me, and it has been an amazing ride ever since!
To Hell With Religion
"The devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God."
-Donald Miller, "Blue Like Jazz"
re-li-gion
–noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
4. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.
I can't stand religious practices. Some of the times I've felt most disconnected from God were times I've spent in some of the churches I've attended. You get so caught up in routine and ritual that God is completely left out of the equation. There were times I'd sit there in church counting down the minutes before I could leave, and you always knew when that would be because the service lasted the exact same amount of time. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Opening song.
Greeting time. 5 minutes.
2 more songs.
Prayer.
Lord's prayer.
Call to worship.
Sermon (20-30 minutes depending on length of songs).
Prayer.
Communion.
Closing song.
Closing prayer.
1 hour and 15 minutes later... free from all this church stuff. Once, at one church, we installed a new pastor. His first couple of sermons ran a few minutes over causing people to get out 10-15 minutes later than normal and he would catch hell for it. People were more concerned about beating the Sunday afternoon crowds to lunch than worshipping God.
The religious practices were so mundane and so focused on not changing order, following established timelines, and getting to lunch... it was like falling into a trap. Which it is. One put forth by a very cunning enemy.
I was in that trap for a long time, entangled in it, and didn't even realize what had happened to me. I'd go, sing the songs, pray the prayers, time the sermon, and do it all without any emotion, joy, or reverance. I'd think more about where and with whom I'd go to lunch that day than about God sending his son to die on a cross for my sins.
Epic fail. I had to either get out of the rut or get out of the church! Unfortunately, there weren't many people who were willing to get out of the rut, so I had to get out of those churches.
I might eat a little later in the day, but spiritually I'm much fuller.
God the Father?
"At church they told us we were Children of God, but I knew God's family was better than mine, that He had a daughter who was a cheerleader and a son who played football."
-Donald Miller in "Blue Like Jazz"
I really don't know how/when/why my resistance to God started or where it came from. I wasn't raised in church, never had any significant God conversations with my mother, or any real exposure to God or who He was, but I grew up with a disdain towards this "God" concept which at times boiled over into hatred. Fairly strong emotions for someone, who when asked, would tell you he didn't believe in God.
The concept of God the Father doesn't work for me...
My father left at a very early age, did nothing to support me or my sister as we grew up. I was raised by my mother and my grandmother. My father never visited, called, sent a card, telegram, smoke signal, etc.
The first time I did ever speak to him as a teenager, the first words out of his mouth were "Hello, son!" My temperature must have shot from a normal 98.6F to 212F degrees in mere seconds as I would swear I could feel my blood boiling. Needless to say, the conversation was short. It ended with me throwing a few not-so-idle-at-the-time threats in his direction if I were to ever see him followed soon after by me hanging up on him.
I've gone on to meet my father twice in my life. There won't be a third. In fact, I couldn't tell you where he was or even if he was alive at this point in time.
If God was anything like my father, then I wouldn't want anything to do with him either.
The first time I started "experimenting" with church, I went seeking friends more than I was a relationship with God. After all, people at church HAD to like you right?!? They were Christians! I was about 14 years old and the experiment failed. I no more fit in with those kids than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would at an Amnesty International conference. The viewpoints were too different, and the reasons for being there were wrong.
Besides, these kids all had nice, "normal", complete families. They had mothers. They had fathers. They had better clothes and better shoes. They were decent. They had talents. They were, in short, everything I wasn't.
These were God's children. I wasn't.
It wasn't really until my own son was born that I truly wrapped my head around the concept of a "father". I held my son in the palm of my hand and cried. I've never felt a love quite like that before. I couldn't imagine ever doing anything to abandon him, hurt him, or leave him wanting for anything. I couldn't understand how any father could, but they do.
I was going to church at the time, but it took this gift and some very blatant messages from God for me to really understand Him, accept Him, and start to build a relationship with him.
The concept of God the Father really works for me...
