A Cup of Sadness

I went to church last week.

Not really unusual, I know. But since I haven’t attended church for nearly 2 years, it was a big deal for me.

What I found disappointed me, yet it didn’t surprise me.

Having been ‘out of the loop’ for a period of time made me accutely aware of the extent to which the church is really only for the initiated.

There is a different language–it’s cliched and exclusive to those in the know. There were so many assumptions made–assumptions that everyone would know and agree with certain key points of doctrine, assumptions that everyone would have an understanding of what ‘worship’ is, assumptions that everyone is straight, middle class, and Christian.

There is strange music-. At thgis particular service, surprisingly for a Evangelical church, no ‘pop Christian’ songs (a-la-Hillsong) were sung–or at least none I could recognise. The music was dull, uninspiring, repetitive, and, after standing for 25 minutes ‘worshipping,’ my middle-aged feet really couldn’t take a lot more. To make matters even more confusing, the ‘worship’ leader had so much intensity and so little charisma (or joy, for that matter) and her face ached with angst when she prayed.

It really wasn’t a happy place. While we knew a few people and had good interactions before and after the service, those on stage weren’t welcoming. Those in the congregation weren’t joyful. It seemed like everyone was trying a little too hard to impress. The happiest person I saw was a lady who mistook us for someone else (I think she had dementia) and, when she realised this, it didn’t seem to matter at all.

As we climbed into the car for the trip home, my wife and I exchanged disappointments and deflated looks. Tears welled up. How is it that these few hours had turned into a cup of sadness which we both felt we could not bring ourselves to drink? Could it be that we have moved past what once was a taken-for-granted weekly ritual? Are we that far removed that we can’t even entertain the idea of getting back into a Sunday morning religious routine? Has our worldview shifted so far that the thought of subjecting ourselves to an hour-and-a-half of Evangelicalism provokes such intense emotion in us?

I’ve been brought up going to church.

We raised our family in church.

We were actively involved in all aspects of church life and used our gifts to grow and nurture our local church.

We are grateful for the friends we all made and the personal growth we all experienced in that community. (At the same time, it hasn’t escaped our attention how many we have never heard from since we haven’t been frequenting our regular house of worship.)

I’ve also had it drilled into me all my life that going to church isn’t about us but about what we can bring to the community and what we can give to God.

I’m not sure we can give anything to this community and certainly have no inclination nor motivation to invest in a view of God that we find at odds with all we have come to know and experience regarding love and truth and the nature of our amazing universe.

We are not who we were two years ago. It’s beginning to dawn on me that we actually weren’t that far then from where we are now, but we denied it, white-washed it, mislabelled it for the sake of our family, our friends, and our community.

We still value these circles of relationship and long for the friendship and community. But I don’t think, at least for the time being, that we will be finding it again in a church.

What Your Church (Probably) Doesn’t Want You to Know about Giving

It’s the giving season.

If you haven’t noticed, you soon will. As Christmas approaches, we will soon be bombarded from all sides by messages urging us to buy expensive gifts for our family and friends. Charities will use this time to raise money for their programs. If you live in the northern hemisphere, Autumn is upon you and many churches and organisations use this season to run pledge drives to underwrite their budgets for the following year (This works so well with back-to-school ‘Homecoming’ or seasonal ‘Thanksgiving’ themes).

Churches rely on gifts from their membership to sustain the many programs they run and to employ staff. Today it seems we must have some sort of structure and this requires finances to maintain.

I am in no way against supporting my local church. If I align myself to a congregation in my community and receive nurturing in that context, it’s only right for me to give to keep the church doors open and support-providing programs running.

What I cannot support, however, is the growing number of pastors, evangelists, and Christian churches and ministries who keep the subject of giving in front of their congregation, constantly reminding and reprimanding them with commands from the Old Testament in order to keep giving to the church/ministry, and promising them God’s blessing if they do so.

Following are four observations I have made about this from my own experience.

Giving to your Church is not the same as giving to your community.

In most cases, over 95% of your community does not have anything to do with your church. While the argument is often made that the church facilitates ‘the work of God’ in the community, statistics fail to support this.

Then there’s the question of what actually is ‘the work of God’? Is it running programs on Sunday to benefit the children of those who attend the church? Is it facilitating a seniors’ ministry on a weekday morning for the elderly church members and their friends? Is it putting on special events to draw in the community in an effort to ‘share the gospel’ with them in exchange for entertainment, food and/or fireworks?

Or is ‘the work of God’ that which Jesus time and time again exemplified in stories such as the Good Samaritan and the Lost Sheep and in such sayings such as found in Matthew 25:35-36–

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

It has been my experience that, whenever churches in the Evangelical tradition speak about ‘Giving,’ they are referring to giving your money to The Church to enable it to run its programs and pay its staff, or giving your time to be on any number of church ministry rosters—from music to making coffee; from cleaning the church to teaching Sunday School.

And, while this is often called ‘giving to the community,’ is more likely has absolutely  nothing to do with the wider community and everything to do with meeting budget and providing programs for the initiated ones.

Giving to your church is not a Biblical requirement.

I had a friend who visited a growing evangelical church in our area a few years ago and I asked him what he thought of it (he is Catholic). He said the service was uplifting, the people were friendly and the sermon was very helpful and practical. Then he shared how, as he entered the door, he saw tables set up and people sitting at either side of them filling in forms and exchanging money. When he asked about this, he was told it was for the purpose of tithing. On one side of the table sat the church elders who were questioning the church’s members about their income the previous week and then taking 10% as a tithe for the work of the church.

Like me, he found that very strange a practice.

But it is common—maybe not so blatantly, but still a popular notion in Christian circles that members are asked (required?) to give at least 10% (the ‘tithe’ is stated as 10% and ‘offerings’ are anything above that).

Others have written extensively about this practice on both sides of the debate. One of the most thorough treatments I have seen has been this one by L. Ray Smith.

In summary, the tithe is an Old Testament ‘tax’ on God’s people to pay for the upkeep of the temple and its priesthood. There are other tithes in Scripture as well—of produce, of stock, and a ‘poor tax.’ Some have estimated that, if we are to be ‘Biblical’ about tithing, we would be giving around 20% of our income, not just one-tenth.

That said, St Paul writes about those who ‘labour in the gospel’ (which we would understand to be those whose only job is full-time service in the Church) to be deserving of payment for their labour (1 Corinthians 9:14), yet he himself didn’t do this just in case people thought he was profiting from his preaching. How unlike many of today’s money-grabbing televangelists.

Giving to your Church is not a measure of faithfulness to Christ.

I am convinced that, many times, church ministries become the conscience-salve we use when we want to stay in a safe, protected environment. It’s the love of the familiar, for those who were raised within its doors. It’s easy because all you need to do is sign up and show up. We won’t be subject to constant swearing, the mentally ill, addicts and we won’t have to give our time to those who we may deem to be ‘unworthy.’ Apart from one morning a week and the occasional evening, we’re not really put out that much at all. And the added benefit is that we will been seen by all our fellow churchgoers to be faithful to Christ. (Should we choose not to be involved, we can still give our money and that will be enough to keep the pastor from calling us, maybe…)

I remember a funeral I attended once where a rather ordinary man in his 60s was being farewelled after a brief battle with cancer.* He wasn’t actively involved in his church, though he was respected by all who knew him. The funeral was simple—a few hymns, a eulogy from his eldest child, and a slide show. Then . . . then the testimonies started. “He regularly volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to build homes for those in need.” “He showed up every Thursday at the homeless shelter to serve lunch.” “He visited the local school and helped kids with their reading.” “His neighbours could depend on him any time to help them out.” “His work colleagues were amazed by his positive attitude and caring words.” “He was a blood donor.” “He sponsored three children in Kenya.” “He volunteered with the State Emergency Service.”

What an inspiration! He followed the example of Jesus in giving over and over again and, in his giving, influenced more people than those who sacrificed every cent and every moment of their life to church ministries. His faithfulness to the calling of God in his life was evident inside and outside of the confines of his church circles.

Giving is a lifestyle choice.

Generosity is a choice we make every day when we plan our time, our spending and our priorities. We decide to be generous when we decide to smile and give our co-workers encouragement. We follow the example of Christ when we give to those in need without being asked, begged, or solicited by a door-knocker. We contribute to our community in meaningful ways—not simply as an armchair activist or opinionist. We know the truth of the saying attributed to Jesus, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive,’ and so we cheerfully dig deep, bring a plate, buy the next round, open our home, give our time and talents to our larger community, not just to those who think the same way we do.

In doing this, we truly show ourselves not only to be people of integrity and purpose, but people who love, following in the generous path of the One who loved humanity and showed it in the generous grace of giving.

_______

*Details have been altered so as not to identify the man or his family.

The Church Creative

I’ve been reading John C. O’Keefe’s excellent book The Church Creative: How to be a Creative Gathering in the 21st Century. What strikes me about this book is its numerous typographical and grammatical errors (just kidding!). No, what I find striking is the pointedness at which O’Keefe identifies the problem (lethargy) and presents a solution (creativity).

I must admit that I found the first section a bit sluggish to get through. Perhaps this is because of my experience in the middle of the gigantic mud puddle that is the Church Lethargic. Whilst O’Keefe goes to great lengths to demonstrate there is this lifeless spirit killing the Christian Church (generally speaking), I can see it around me and in my history. He’s preaching to the converted.

And his remarkable solution? Creativity. Unleashing the great ideas and those gifted with bringing these things to life: art, music, drama, prayer, liturgy, architecture, and so much more.

This is more than another program, he is adamant. This is about change–real, committed, dramatic, paradigmatic change.

I’ll let the author tell it like it is:

Like me you have tried every program placed before you to make the right changes to provide missional awareness, and they never really worked. Like me, you’re listening to the world, and not what the Divine was saying. We allowed the present hard time to define us, while not embracing the coming good time.

We’ve done the 40 days of… (fill in the blank) and found nothing truly worked. We’ve tried so many different programs that at this point we’re programmed out. Some of us are at the point where we doubt who we are, our call and even those around us – we’re so beaten down that we have become lethargic.

We’ve invested so much time, money and people into all different kinds of programs, conferences and books, all the time getting nowhere – or we’ve seen a slight bump, only to decline soon after the program ended, which just brought us down further.

No matter what Christian Bookstores tell you, no matter what the Christian Publishers tell you, programs never work all the time, for all our gatherings or for all the people. Programs, it seems, are designed to suck you in, chew you up and spit you out. But, because you want the program to do for us what you’ve heard it did for others, you’re quick to get the next latest and greatest program only to fail again. You’re like Kevin Bacon’s character in Animal House, as he’s being bent over and smacked by the paddle, screaming, “Thank you sir, may I have another” every time you get smacked with a program.

What is the last thing you need right now? Think in terms of your gathering; what is the last thing you need? If you’re thinking that the last thing you need is another program, you would be right. What I’ve found is that all programs are designed to fit a new idea into your old system – and that never works.

Knowing that a program is the last thing you need is a good thing, because creativity is not another program; a program is something that costs you money, time and people; something you do for a short period of time with the expectation of the promised magic results. What I’m talking about with creativity is not a program designed for some quick fix. Creativity is a refocusing in the way you think; a way of becoming, a way of moving from where you are now, and into the idea of becoming a missional gathering.

Think of it this way, it’s a new way (actually, a very old way) of defining your life and gathering, in a redirection; shifting you from where you are now, to where you should be in the future, while bring about a core change in your thinking. It opens you to a way of embracing your gathering where you invite those who are the Creatives to move about in a fluid nature with their natural energy and envelop the entire life where service, unconditional love, grace, forgiveness and acceptance are a way of life. The best way to address a lethargic gathering of followers is to invite creativity and its natural energy to the table.

Many gatherings of followers today have lost creativity, lost the desire to even try to bring it back – so they’re in what I call Maintenance Ministry. The curse of lethargy has taken root and they’re taking care of a dying, lethargic congregation, getting them ready to close their doors. Even worse, they’re ready to simply accept their current condition and walk in the status quo.

In my view, neither is a good place. We need to move past the lethargic nature we find ourselves in and open our eyes to the Church Creative. We need to embrace the energy that Christ gives to each of us…

“He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.”

When you focus on creativity it brings something amazing, something so wonderful, once you try it you will feel the shivers of excitement run down your spine and your toes will tingle. Something so life enhancing, so entrancing, so wonderful it will cause you to look at the world in a whole new way. Once you taste what creativity has to offer, you won’t settle for anything less.

What is this amazing thing creativity brings to the table?

No, it is not a 100% fat free ice cream with zero calories that actually tastes like ice cream — though that does come in a close second.

What is it? It’s called change.

That’s right, change.

This is a necessary step the gathering must take and O’Keefe has done a brilliant job in showing the way.

How to accomplish this may not be so cut-and-dry, black-and-white. But if what this book says is even partly true, then it must be all about creativity.