EVEN SINCERE CHRISTIANS ATTEND CHURCH LESS OFTEN

Even sincere Christians are attending church less often in our North American culture? This is a statement of fact rather than approval.

As we entered church yesterday I said to Christine, "it feels like we've been gone for six months." Really, it's been a few weeks when we have had commitments, preferences and holiday elsewhere. We are not the only absentees. This compelled me to read and to think about why good Christians are attending church less frequently than before. (Here is what I thought.)

Susan Mattinson, 2012-2016. Reproduction permitted with permission of creator

CHURCH, WHAT IT IS & WHERE IT CAME FROM

Our challenges to understand the church are reduced when we realize that there are at least seven different meanings or uses of the term 'church' in our North American context. Church can refer to a building, an event, a policy body, a relational group, and institutionalized denomination, an organizational style, and the practice of affirming correct confessional criteria. [i] Yet church is always more than any one of these.  The true definition for church or its foundational definition begins with God himself, living among humans. God by his Spirit lives in his people, creating unique spiritual community.

Wherever these Spirit lived-in people gather to worship God and to study what He has said, they naturally develop an identity, typically give themselves a name, implement activities and structures and in that process produce distinct and varied local churches. This is church in a elementary shape. It could be enough. It might have been enough even without a name and a distinctive delivery.

The Bible does not require that churches gather into denominations or associations but it has happened. That has been an expediency and convenience for immigrant congregations and like-minded congregations to share life and support and mission. Such associations at their best have been purposeful and missional, servicing member churches. However, when member churches are not permitted to remain autonomous cooperative congregations, denominations have become questionably bureaucratic and legislative requiring compliance of member churches.

Over time it has been recognized that local congregations and even denominations have limited capacities and occasionally organizations have arisen to conduct specialized ministries to students, youth, men, women, families, marginalized people, ethnic groups. All of these will also be staffed by Spirit indwelt persons. It is the church at work.

2015 is a complex time for the church. In spite of all that is positive about these forms, the church now must learn or redefine its raison d’être (reason to be) in this evolving postmodern culture. So much of the reshaping of church in recent decades has focused upon management and organizational practices and effectiveness but the profounder realities of church may have been missed. So we have witnessed a re-emphasis on evangelism with seeker sensitive churches; underscored discipleship with the purpose driven church; demonstrated community in cell or small group life; attracted people through user-friendly approaches; filled the week with weekday ministries offering scores of entry points and even tried a strong mother ship church with niche markets to various people groups.

So much about churches today is about what they do and how they do it. The primary interest must be how we think about church, what the church is, namely, an exceptional socio-spiritual community of God's people, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, to display and to explain God's redemptive presence to the world around it.

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[i] Seven meanings of 'church' and ideas for the article suggested by Craig Van Gelder, Rediscovering the Church n the Twenty-First Century;

IF WE STARTED A CHURCH

I am continuing my food and nutrition metaphor with a church application.

I hypothesized that I was starting a church. Let me revise that. I need more than me. I need we. That's church. So let's assume that a few of us have agreed on fundamentals and we believe that with God's help, we can establish group life that honours God, nurtures us and invites others. Our aim is to rediscover New Testament church and practice that in our day. It sounds idealistic, disrespectful, overconfident and presumptuous. Please for this moment, let's assume that the motivation is pure and without guile.

Suppose that this pursuit emerges from discussions about the mission, purpose and practices of churches today and how these are affecting our own hearts and minds and spiritual experiences. Suppose that our hearts have become disillusioned, our minds cynical and our spiritual lives sluggish as we relate to church. And let's suppose that the easy response is not valid - that is, "well then, get your spiritual act together and get with the church program." Suppose with me that this small group of us are keeners spiritually, love the LORD, study scripture, believe and obey and share our faith with others, lean hard on the direction of God as we perceive it to be.

So here we are thinking again about similarities between foods and nutrition and what we should do about church. One hundred years ago, organic farming was the norm. Today, because of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, soil quality has been depleted and produce contains far fewer vitamins and minerals than they did fifty years ago. As recently as 60 years ago people enjoyed dairy products from their own animals or from dairies nearby. People ate the healthiest and tastiest kinds of grass fed, outdoor raised meat and poultry products that they either raised themselves or purchased from a local butcher who may have raised the animals.

The earliest living definition of church were the people who had seen Jesus and who became empowered with the Holy Spirit of God. They became vibrant. They were often compelled to meet in secrecy. Their gathering times essentially strengthened them for living with faith in hostile circles. They became courageous. Their confession of faith was modest, almost naïve. With limited resources they relied on one another's recollections of what Jesus had taught them and how his teaching related to Old Testament instruction. They became reservoirs of truth. They had learned the necessity and value of prayer from Jesus and they soon witnessed answers to prayer that motivated them to stay at that task. They became intercessors. It was through them that good news spread by routine conversation. They became heralds. That, we identify is what we want our gathering to be like.

GOING BACK, FAR BACK, FOR THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH

I believe that Christians need to be provoked to re-examine our practice of faith in the context of church as we have either invented it, inherited it or as we perpetuate it.

When I was a boy and throughout the early years of my own pastoral ministry career, Sunday church consisted of Sunday School classes for all ages, followed by a one hour conventional church worship service containing three hymns, beginning, middle and end, a prayer, an offering, a sermon. The sermon and the spoken Word were paramount in evangelical churches. That was it. Within evangelicalism, this model was a departure from liturgical ceremonial worship in mainline churches. Why did we do it that way?

Twenty-five years ago a contemporary worship wave began in charismatic circles and swept most evangelical churches. A team of worship leaders with guitars and drums occupied platforms and led standing congregations of worshippers in singing praise choruses for 20-30 minutes. This gave the congregation greater expressive involvement modelled by music forms they listened to every day. Why do we do it that way, still?

Some believers ask this question because for them, personally, some aspect of worship is absent, reverence, solemnity, awe, or earnestness. They must name it. Their souls long for something perhaps approximate and unmet. Finally they leave church.

They begin to think that maybe they should go back to the future.

Going back far enough takes us into the presence of Christ sitting with his disciples. He spoke about church to them. Examination reveals that church as he envisioned it was enormous and in practice it was modest, simple. Church would be an applicable term to embrace countless disciples throughout the world in every generation until the end of time. Church would meet in homes, caves, forests, prisons, refugee camps, schools, and buildings constructed by Christians specifically for their gatherings. Wherever they met they invoked the presence of God, were filled with the Spirit of God, praised the Lord Jesus Christ with muted or exuberant voices depending on circumstances, and then went forth to live by faith and to give a reason for their belief to everyone who asked them.

Maybe we should go back to the future. The trip back could become our future. Maybe it should be the future that we seek. Maybe the Church needs nothing more than to be filled with the Spirit and satisfied with Christ.

SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE SOUNDS LIBERATING

Here is a person who has conscientiously chosen to disassociate with a local congregation of Christians and prescribed, institutional, organized church. The choice is made with a desire and determination to find and to follow a personal path to Christian spirituality. This requires courage. One hopes it will contain joy.

I wonder whether 'spiritually independent' is an apropos designation for this person. Yet the term 'independent' requires some containment because a fulfilling and complete Christian spirituality requires other people. This person must then find his or her own support and companionship for the continuation of a spiritual journey. Can this person find other 'independents' out there who are passionate about God, communicating with him consistently, hearing his voice, obedient to his commissions? Certainly, this person can find injured, religious rebels, and doctrinally muddled people who have given up on church.

I'm not happy with the term 'spiritually independent' as liberating as it sounds. The term derives for me from reading web and blog sites by a former Canadian Presbyterian pastor who now is ambitious to undress religion and who calls himself the Naked Pastor. He is David Hayward. David Hayward's bio and timeline. He is an author, blogger, cartoonist.

He has pastored churches and experienced peaks and valleys and walked away from the church. Hayward is passionate about people who like himself have divested themselves of institutional church to find their own way, and he now provides resources, networking and community via his postings and podcasts and give and take forums online at The Lasting Supper. Online community is one way of finding affinity with people who listen and learn and share.  After looking at his material I know that he cannot assist the individuals I know who have stepped away from church or are still considering doing so. He may have already gone too far away. 

One of his cartoons describes the outcome that concerns me about a withdrawal from church and Christian fellowship and spiritual independence. Surely the person who quits church, needs a game plan to make forward spiritual progress. Spiritually independence sounds liberating but is it healthy?

DO BELIEVERS OUTGROW THEIR NEED FOR CHURCH?

Maybe there are times or intervals at which churches are no longer able to nourish some peoples' faith.

Why say something like that?

We know that people leave church for assorted reasons. Some leave church A to go to church B. That's not the theme of this piece. I know people who have stopped going to a church in a building, anywhere. They are people who have been in church for years and for whom the traditions have been important. Yes we can talk about solidarity and church being a family and small groups being where the growth truly happens. The people I refer to must not be faulted, because their reasons for departure are not chiefly because the preaching or the music or the programs have changed or because of church politics or petty squabbles as well as escalated rows. Those factors may have influenced their choices, but primarily they have a deep longing for more of God or more with God.

Do you think that some believers outgrow their need for church?

GENERATIONAL DISCIPLESHIP

Do you want to pass faith and values to the next generation? Then consider that the family should be the primary vehicle for discipleship. I am talking about generational discipleship. Churches must catch on to the concept that they must equip parents and grandparents. They must also gather in spiritual orphans.

DEHISTORIZING THE OLD TESTAMENT

Don’t bother reading this unless you have the time and the interest. The theme is, ‘Why would you Ignore the Old Testament?’ Some Christians disparage the Old Testament.

Christians have generally regarded the Old Testament as God’s Word and have often found pleasure in Proverbs and spiritual inspiration in Psalms. Christian preachers worthy of the calling have confirmed their proficiencies by drawing profound applications from Old Testament historical narratives.

Many Christians today are dismissing the Old Testament because they find parts of it morally offensive or quite bluntly, irrelevant.

CHURCH AS BUSINESS

Church today is increasingly business–like. Scripture makes no case for the gathering of Christians being a business. We call these gatherings churches, and collectively they are ‘The Church.’ That collective is described in scripture by terms like body, bride, family, and spiritual house. It is understood in the Bible as a living organism of which Jesus Christ is the head. But church today is increasingly business–like.