Well, my friend Brad has a hankering for depth and seriousness, so I hope this will help to satiate his hunger for a while. This post has been brewing in my life and mind for months now and I just haven’t made the time to put it all into words. I’m sure this post won’t come near to explaining the frustration, desperation, and angst that I’ve been going through for the past few months, but hopefully it will at least give you a window into the swirling storm that has comprised my thoughts and life concerning the church.
Those of you that know me even a little know that my naturally cynical mind is continually questioning my own thoughts and actions as well as the things I am a part of. There isn’t an area of my life that is safe from the all seeing eye eminating from my consciousness. So having grown up in the church, going to bible college, and now living as a pastor, it’s only natural that I’m constantly thinking through and questioning the Church – where it’s come from, where it is and where it’s heading to.
Lately I’ve really been starting to think that as a pastor I may be my own worst enemy. This isn’t just a veiled reference to the 90’s party song by Lit. I really don’t feel comfortable with where the church has found itself – as essentially the world’s largest corporation – and I’m wondering if by staying on as a pastor within the institution I’m really just feeding and sustaining a construction that I’m not sure should really exist anymore. I’m not questioning whether the church should exist – as in the “body of Christ” or the whole of believers – but I really question whether the Church as an institution with large buildings, utility expenses, budgets, annual meetings, membership rosters, and more red tape than most government bureaus even vaguely resembles what Jesus was thinking of when he talked about the church.
A lot of people have advised me that you can’t really ever hope to change the church is you’re not a part of it, so you should take leadership positions where you can and slowly hope to change things. As one of my serminary professors put it years ago, “Changing the church is like dripping on a stone. Change is extremely slow and it only happens with extreme persistance.” I’ve been told that you just need to be patient and make little changes so that people will still feel comfortable in their church and not just leave because of too much change. I don’t buy it anymore.
I’ve come to the conclusion that “dripping on a stone” is pointless. As people have been trying to make slow gradual changes the vast majority of the institutional church has become stale, apathetic and outdated with little understanding of the world it exists in and having even less effect in it. “Dripping on a stone” is great if all you need to make are small changes and if you believe that the foundations of what you are trying to change are solid leaving only a need for cosmetic changes. Honestly though, I don’t think the church as an institution has solid foundations and is in need only of small gradual changes. I think this “dripping on a stone” strategy has really only been adopted out of a fear that drastic change that would actually cause the church to conform to God’s standards or the values of the kingdom of God would possibly cause the vast majority of apathetic Sunday Morning Christians to leave the instituional church, thus pulling their funding and possibly bringing about the fall of the institutional church. I’ve really wondered recently though if that would be such a bad thing.
Just think of all the things that Christians could do as the church if they didn’t have to worry about a lot of their money going to pay tens of thousands of dollars of utility bills each year and multi-million dollar mortgages for building projects for a larger office space when there are homeless living within blocks of the church building. How do we sleep at night, or feel like we’re actually doing God’s work through these things when the poor, sick, helpless and needy are right in our midst? Jesus didn’t say whatever church building and youth budget you financially support in my name you have done unto me. He said whatever you have done for the least of these you have done unto me. How did we let it get like this? How did we convince ourselves that this is the way it is supposed to be? How did we get what we have from what Jesus talked about?
In discussing this subject with some other Christians whom I really respect the most concern I’ve heard is, “What about all the good that happens in churches?” I don’t deny that there are some churches that have a few effective programs and have some good things that happen within their buildings, but I’m still left asking, “What happens there with quarter-million dollar annual budgets that couldn’t happen through a house church, or in a need for more space through the rental of a community hall?” Little to no overhead costs involved and financial freedom to actual use resources for God’s work as opposed to just propping up the institution. Imagine what could be accomplished in a community if even one church got rid of the institution and had that same quarter-million dollars to actually use for helping those in need.
What people are really looking for is meaningful relationships with others and with God and I’d argue that a house church setting is far more conducive to that than a large auditorium full of 300 hundred virtual strangers on a Sunday morning. Meeting in a smaller setting actually allows you to share your life with other people that large gathering cannot. I know that the small group movement over the past twenty years has tried to compensate for that, but it’s just a tag on program to the institution often with another budget line of its own. If you have a need for a large gathering of believers than a few small house churches could just pool funds once a month and rent a community hall for a couple hours for a whole lot less cost than what it takes to build, maintain and fund a church building.
This may sound convenient, but I don’t have a problem with the idea of a paid pastor. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary, but if a small group of people decided that they wanted to help support a person financially so that they could devote some time directly to Christian ministry that’s great. There’s a fairly strong message in the NT that it’s totally legitimate for teachers and preachers to make their living from ministry, but that’s not to say there needs to be a paid pastor for a church to be legitimate.
I closing (for now), I’m far from settled on exactly what direction I think the church needs to take, but suffice it to say I feel terribly uncomfortable with where it is right now and I’m not sure how much longer I can really stick with it if it carries on in the same old directions with little real appetite for real change. The original creation of the Christian church was a drastic departure from Jewish tradition, the reformation of Martin Luther was a drastic departure from Catholic tradition, and I’m thinking that it might be about time for change again.
And now for the traditional obligatory disclaimer: No I’m not losing my faith. If anything I think I’m just starting to find it.
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