Church at home
In the months since I quit working at an organized, formal church with staff, leadership, a budget, etc, our household has been studying, thinking about, talking with God about, and working through what it means to "do church" or "be church".
We've visited some churches on a few Sunday AM's. I've spoken at a few places as the guest preacher. We've had people in our home for spiritual conversations, both as a group and just hosting an individual or maybe a couple of people, here and there.
There's not been "a sermon" at our gatherings. We've had communion. We've talked openly about our experiences with churches, shared our understanding of scripture, God, and other topics. We've watched kids play, talked about books we've read and we've just been people together with God and life.__________
In one of the recent gatherings, we talked about how rarely, if ever there was space made in "regular" church for people to talk about frustrations, how God "doesn't work" sometimes, and how we lean way too heavily into syrupy emotional sentiment so as to end any conversations about what is hard.
That's something I missed in "regular" church. You could rarely talk about hard things without someone needing to come behind the hard thing with some kind of nice, neat, positive bow to wrap things up with. You couldn't acknowledge that, even though you didn't lose hope, you were wasting away.
It's interesting that the apostle Paul talked about hope AND suffering. And it wasn't just suffering because people disagreed with your religion, but just because of life and expectations being dashed and changing and things like that.
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I've been watching and listening to other people, families, and groups "out there" (or out here?) who are in a similar spot as me and mine and it's been very interesting. Some of them are getting some of the same questions from "church goers" as I have - usually, "Okay, when are you going to church?"
When I describe what we've been doing, they say, "Oh that sounds great! That sounds so 1st century!" and then, "So, when are you going to go to church?" And I get it. It's strange to hear someone do something different "for church". It's puzzling and mystifying to some.
I have the sense that I said if I was "planting a church" and starting it in my house, that would make more sense to some people and they'd expect that we'd have some kind of "order of worship" that developed and that they'd be able to visit and it would "feel like normal".
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I've studied it for decades. I've read the books, been to the conferences, listened to the podcasts, etc. I've been places and heard things. And with all of it, I'm still amazed how it's all just about what God has done for us in Jesus. And I'm amazed how we often try to make "church" into something different.
I've heard SO many people tell me they feel they've "not been to church if we've not" and then the list comes: sung a bunch of songs, heard a sermon that inspired or spanked them, sat for a long time, talked about the weather/sports with a variety of people, prayed, had a quiet or reflective communion time, etc.
Church is still about going somewhere and doing some things with people a building once or twice a week. And when I occasionally ask what things they learned or were encouraged about or things like that, usually they can't remember. Unless it was something that "made it go too long".
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You can read about it in 1 Corinthians 14 and you get glimpses of it in other places in the New Testament from Acts to Jude. It wasn't always neat. Some people came to gatherings for nefarious reasons and actually gained influence. For the most part, it was a new fellowship based on Jesus.
There wasn't an emcee or song leader or preacher like we'd imagine. People shared what they knew and learned and were experiencing. Some brought their previous religious experiences into this new gathering and had to spend time figuring out what "still fit" and what needed to be discarded.
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In the first century church you had people from backgrounds that didn't always mix. The Jew vs non-Jew sentiment was kind of like it is in the middle East today. The male/female dynamic was very different from what we experience. The economic disparities were immense.
And yet Paul said (to the churches in the region of Galatia) that in Christ there is no Jew or non-Jew, male or female, slave or free. The only thing that held these people together was their trust and dependence on what God did through Jesus - it wasn't that they "like church" or "worship services".
When things came up in the first century that tempted people to prefer one kind of thing over another "in church" gatherings to the degree it caused division and exclusion, Paul said to knock it off. The new community wasn't to be based on personality, gifts, or other things that eclipsed a life in God.
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Sure, I know this is an ongoing thing with God's people. We'll always need to be listening to the Spirit, we'll always be working on NOT being distracted by things that seem SO important at the time. We'll always need to be aware that God is still doing a new thing, not just updating the old.
I am sometime amazed by the pushback from people who strongly want the world to know Jesus, but equally strongly don't want to have those conversations with people without including a whole bunch of stuff that has little, if anything, to do with Jesus.
But that's human nature. Sometimes we get second things mixed up with first things. Maybe even fifth or sixth things - or further down the line. Sometimes we forget our first love and don't even remember the first things - but even then, God isn't through with us.
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I am curious to see where the Spirit leads us on this journey. We're good with God. We know we're completely forgiven and don't have to do things to earn, keep, or regain our place with God. That's a done deal. Sometimes it feels weird to know that when all you've lived before was the opposite.
We also are growing all the time in ways I didn't see coming and am very grateful for. Just amazing stuff. And, at least in my opinion, it's the kinds of things that "church" as I experienced before was squashing and prohibiting - at least for me.
Unlike stuff I hear from some about those who have "deconstructed", no - we're not delving into a life of sin and hedonism. If anything, the focus on "sin" seems almost stupid at times, both from a church point of view and life in general. God calls us to him, not just "away from sin" - HUGE difference.
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So, yes - we are still hooked in with God. Yes, we are "having church", but not in the ways that others are doing so. If that works for them and God is using that to bring them to a place where they know him more, that is great. I'll leave that between God and them. He knows, I don't.
To those "outside" of the whole church enterprise, I know how strange all this must sound. And I get why church people and church is so frightening or repulsive to some of you. It's probably for some of the same reasons they're afraid of things "outside" - things that they don't understand, yet.
Either way, know that God loves you more than you can possibly imagine and he wants nothing more than for you to know him in ways that probably don't even begin to make sense, yet. He will work with that is and you can trust that he will finish what he started with us.
Peace and goodwill.
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