Wade, what are you deconstructing?

A good follow up to previously discussed questions has been - "So what exactly are you taking apart? What did you think before that you don't think now? And what do you think or believe now?"

You really don't know what you're taking apart until you start taking it apart. 

You might think you're deconstructing (see the first two blog posts on this thread for a rough definition of deconstructing) one thing, but you get into it and realize that one thing was built on top of several other things and that to get to those things, you're gonna have to take out a load bearing wall and put in something to replace it's function for the time being, etc.  

In other words, it can be complicated.  It's not a matter of "Did you just get tired of church?".  If it were that simple, it would nice.

So I'll try to simplify it for myself and for others. It's gonna be in stages. Occasionally I'll do a before and after quick picture, but I'd rather start with a big "before".

Here's a general layout of some of the raw, uncut, abstract, unmodified mass of things I grew up with. It's not all bad. Just because it's in this layout below doesn't mean it's all been tossed out, just that it's where I started off in life and what I picked up along the way as normative. Some of it IS cartoonish because I want to surface the often unspoken ideals that I learned. Here we go:

Family, life, & education: Church is God's plan for all people. The ideal life would be for someone to grow up in the church and never really know life outside the church.  

It would include being raised by good, upwardly mobile, middle-class, hard working, intelligent parents who helped their children grow up with all the good things that will help them to succeed in their future.

Hopefully, if they're intelligent and driven, these kids will graduate and go off to a *good* Christian college, get married to a good Christian while there, graduate and then go into a successful professional career where their Christian character will bring them influence and more success.

Faith sharing/evangelism: These people raised in such a good background and off to a great start in life will result in people who aren't Christians coming to know Jesus because they, the lost, want to know why this good and successful person IS so good and successful. 

They'll be able to share that Jesus and their good Christian upbringing made it all possible and THEY TOO (the lost, unsuccessful, non-believer) can get on that road to a better life if they can start now and at least do some of the things they do, etc.

They will invite their lost, success-craving co-worker to church with them.  Their lost friend will love everything about church, be convicted of their need to be a part of this church out of fear of God sending them to hell for not being a part of the church.  The successful Christian will study with them and they'll be baptized and begin the road to being like the other church people.

Church leadership: This successful Christian who is bringing others to Jesus through their influence is made into a leader at church - beyond just serving communion or being an usher, they're moved into teaching, made a deacon, and eventually an elder.

Why make people like that into leaders?  Because we want good, safe people (usually always men) to be in charge of things so they can help make more people like them and ensure that the church is the factory that makes it happen.  

No weirdos and no potential liabilities are intentionally welcomed into church leadership. No one with any kind of different idea or way of doing things should get a voice.  Keep the main things you want to do as a church the main things and nothing else.

The leaders of the church will give everyone something to do - even those who aren't as successful as our ideal person who eventually becomes an elder.  Everybody can do something - they can teach a children's class, prepare communion, bring cookies or host a game at some children's event - we got something for everybody!

Keep people busy because idle hands are the devil's workshop and if they aren't moving forward, they are backsliding.  

During any kind of church gathering, make sure you highlight examples of the kinds of people that you really want/need as a part of your church.  Do this regularly to boost morale of your target market that will ensure their participation and/or buy-in to what ever it is you're doing at church.

Lift up examples of people who are always busy and serving as the ideal people to follow. Cover up and keep quiet about the rest unless it's helpful to use them as a PR opportunity for a class or a sermon illustration.

Everyone needs to *feel* included - so make sure to create good feelings in anything you do and if you can't create good feelings, create some kind of guilt or wrong attitude that people must have if they're not happy about the things you're doing as a church.

The importance of church: Also, everyone needs to be "at church" every time the doors are opened.  If you have a job that makes you work during church, you'd make God happier if you found a new job that didn't do that.  God will bless you for making that move.

You need to give to God/the church and the starting point for your giving is 10% of your gross income. If you get a bonus or sell something, God get's 10% of that too. You should increase your giving regularly.  It's probably the case that if you increase your giving, God will give you more of something - maybe not money, but something. It could even be the case that God will make you successful enough that you could live on 10% of your income and you could give away the other 90%.

If there are small groups and you're young enough and/or have enough free time to be in one, you should be in one.  If they don't fit your schedule or flow of life in some way, you better have a really good excuse that we hear about pretty regularly or we will judge you.

You want people to be serious about church attendance and participation.  But if someone gets "really into" some specific topic, know they might be a good teacher, but keep an eye on them just in case they are a flake or a problem waiting to happen.

God's attitude toward you: God loves you if you are good. His default setting is to be mad at you because he knows you're gonna mess up again and that you're really not "all in" at church still. Don't believe anyone who says otherwise.

Yes, the Bible says that "God so loved the world.." but that was that one time and now you owe him big for all your sin.  He wants you to feel guilty all the time and uses his resources, especially his church people, to keep laying on the pressure and guilt.

God will love you more if you go to a Christian college and then go to a church where other Christian college graduates are living and you all rejoin forces and kind of sort of create your own version of heaven here.  God really likes that.

Also, God loves it if you and other church people reach out to people who are very different from you and do service projects with them/on them.  Poor people.  People whose race is different from yours.  Do good things for good optics.  That's very important.

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OKAY...that's a very cartoonish looking start of what I began with on this faith journey.  

It's nauseating to admit some of these things were guiding ideas back in the day.

I will move into some other pre-deconstruction beliefs next time and also include what they look like now. 

Grace and peace.