This is a really long post, and yet, I feel
that there is so much more that I should say.
But this will have to suffice.
It’s Sunday morning, and it’s a little
overcast. For the vast majority of my
life, Sundays at this time would find me sitting in a pew in a church
somewhere. But today, like most Sunday
mornings over the past couple of years, I am not in a church. I am not having a crisis of faith; I hold to
the tenets of faith that I believe define Christianity; I just don’t see those
tenets being reflected in “worship” and “church.” I guess you could say that I am having a bit
of an existential church crisis.
I think about church and faith a lot
lately. My dad was a Baptist minister,
and I was born and raised in a tradition of church and faith. If you know much about me, you know that my
faith is a significant part of who I want to be, how I want to act, and how I
want to live, even if most times, I fail spectacularly at living and acting the
way that I want to (I'm in good company there: even the apostle Paul complained that he was not always
able to do what is right and that he kept on doing the things that he knew were
wrong!). I was brought up believing that
church – going to church and being part of a church community – was an important
part of faith. I am proud of my
traditional Baptist beliefs (even if denominational theology and practice have
veered away from what I believe), and my peace-making Mennonite heritage.
Until recently, I would not have been able to
imagine my life without church. My
relationship with the church and the people in it has shaped me
unimaginably. I have had innumerable
life-affirming and life-changing experiences through the church. I have also faced the downside of Christian
community, through betrayals and small-mindedness. All of these experiences are a part of who I
am today, warts and all.
My positive memories of “church” growing up
are a mash-up of music, food, families, community. Church choirs since I was about 10. Professional and amateur musicians in churches
sharing their gifts of music.
Invitations to share in family meals and events, both happy and sad,
ordinary and extraordinary, with individual church families, and the collective
church family. An instant sense of
“belonging” to a community, even if we had never been in that particular church
before, based on a set of common traditions.
Camping, in a variety of settings, from lavish Keats to primitive
Shänti, and everything in between (literally: as a kid, I spent time at almost
every Baptist camp between BC and Manitoba).
And always, food. So much
food. Breaking bread together, a
biblical act of living as community that breaks down barriers and fosters
intimacy. Potluck suppers, so much a
part of church life growing up, especially in Baptist circles, and always wonderful,
but probably more so in Kitimat Baptist Church, largely populated by German
immigrants, with some Portuguese families thrown in for good measure (I wrote
about Kitimat here).
I attended a Baptist college for a
year. We had classes in faith, Baptist
principles, church history and basic theology, and learned about leadership and
faith. It was a lived experience in
community-building, getting along with others, growing and learning together. We shared intense grief when we lost a
classmate in a car accident. And most of
us rebelled and questioned.
I also had bitter experiences in
church. One instance that affected me deeply
occurred when I was an adolescent. The church where my dad ministered voted to
fire him after a congregational meeting, apparently because some people (who
didn’t even attend the church) demanded that he preach fire, brimstone and damnation
sermons; he refused. Ironically, this
meeting took place while I was innocently babysitting some of their children in
the basement of the church. My parents
hardly ever talked about this incident, so I had to piece it together
myself. It gave me a deep (and I mean
deep) distrust of church leadership – deacons, search committees, and so on –
which continues today. Subsequent
interactions with other search committees and deacons, now that I am married to
a minister, have done little to heal me. Years later, the congregation asked for my parents’ forgiveness, but
they never sought forgiveness from me or my brother.
As
an adult, I experienced rejection from a congregation because I supposedly had
“serious spiritual issues,” after I openly shared that I often question and I
don’t believe in easy answers. At
another church I attended, the congregation changed its governance structure to
eliminate formal committees because apparently no one wanted to commit to
serving for a set period of time. One
committee, which actively led the congregation and the community through issues
of social justice, decided to remain a traditional committee. Instead of celebrating the dedication of
these committee members, church leadership labelled this committee
“resistant.”
I have survived discussions about whether
Christians should wear charm bracelets, whether Hallowe’en is evil, the Rapture
and the Second Coming, the acceptance (or not) of LGBTQ/homeless/divorced/and
other marginalized people within the walls of church buildings. I have been a
part of congregations who have worked very hard to ensure that nothing would
change (in one congregation, a deacon in his 40s often bragged that his
hairstyle had not changed since he was in high school... very symbolic of his
leadership). And I have been part of
congregations who are always seeking to remain relevant and meaningful in their
larger communities.
Church has changed a lot over my
lifetime. When I was a kid, no one would
have dreamt of welcoming openly gay people sitting in the pews, let alone
preaching or otherwise leading a congregation.
Women deacons were rare, women ministers even rarer (although Canadian
Baptists were a relatively early denomination to support the ordination of
women, apparently they did not do a fantastic job of following through with
actions; even today, in my informal survey of Maritime Baptist churches, most
ordained women ministers are associates, not senior ministers). Ecumenicism, although historically a strong
Christian tradition in Canada, was not overly common anywhere I lived, and I do
not recall much active interfaith
cooperation.
These changes are good and healthy.
However, I have issues with other changes
in North American churches.
I recently took a university course called
“Religion in Canada.” It was an
interesting reminder that “church” has always suffered from fragmentation and
differences of opinions, and that faith has never been a totally effective way
of dealing with schism or disagreement.
Churches have been struggling to remain relevant since the beginning of
church history. One of the things we
discussed was the conflict between native spirituality and Christianity in the
early days of post-contact North America.
To vastly oversimplify, native spirituality assumes that all beings are
intrinsically good; the European Christian concept of “original sin” assumes
that humans are naturally evil. If you
think about it, you can see how there were bound to be conflicts based on the
lack of understanding of each other’s basic beliefs about humans. I am not a church historian or a theologian,
but I am quite sure that Jesus’ ideas about how humans should interact with
each other have been vastly corrupted over the centuries by those who were more
interested in power and authority than they were about their faith. I do not think that it is too late for us to
learn from some of the precepts of native spirituality about how we should
treat each other and what our faith should look like.
Right now, churches represent a diversely
wide spectrum. At one end, there are
churches and denominations whose liturgies and worships services have not
changed for decades or even centuries.
(There’s that old joke about how many Presbyterians (or whatever) it
takes to change a lightbulb. Answer:
CHANGE?!!!???). At the other end, there
are denominations that are trying so hard to be everything to everyone that
they end up being nothing to anyone.
They have no theology; some of them even welcome and celebrate avowed
atheists as their “ministers.” “Worship
services” now involve guest speakers, who might or might not be Christian, who come
and talk about “issues” in our society with small group discussions following
their talks. Evangelical churches sing
“worship songs” that are really just nonsense words repeated ad nauseum about
how much I love you God over and over and over again that make us feel really
good about ourselves and our intimate (in some cases, even creepy) relationship
with Jesus, while their worship bands perform on the stage at the front of the
auditorium. Our attempts to be
“relevant” have made us ridiculous; Disney themes as choir anthems, and pizza
and beer instead of bread and wine make a joke of our faith and our
commitment.
Frankly, at this point in my life, I get
nothing out of attending worship services.
I almost always leave feeling frustrated and alienated and sometimes
even angry. I have spent a fair bit of
energy asking myself if I am just whining because church and worship no longer
fulfill me. Maybe I just need to be less
traditional and more open to new ways of doing things. But the drastically dropping attendance rates
in North American churches, along with the rise of people who say they are not
Christian make it abundantly clear that I am not the only person who feels
alienated from the church community.
Millennials are to blame for falling church
attendance, according to much that I have read. Their parents were already
beginning to have a lackadaisical attitude towards church, and now millennials
are too busy, too lazy, too self-centred, and too focused on things like social
media and self-care to attend church.
Much energy is being put into trying to bring millennials back to
church, which is maybe part of the reason that some churches are becoming much
less church-like and less Christian, and more like social clubs.
Except that it isn’t working.
Churches are, by and large, failing in their weak attempts at being
relevant.
Rachel Held Evans was a millennial, evangelical
rebel, a popular cultural icon among young Christians, who died suddenly several
months ago. In the introduction to her
book Searching for Sunday, she outlined issues that millennials have
with church. She wrote:
“We’re tired of the culture wars, tired of
Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re
for... not just for what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science
and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe
places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s
uncomfortable. We want to talk about the
tough stuff – biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial
reconciliation, and social justice – but without predetermined conclusions or
simplistic answers....
… when our gay,
lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered friends aren’t welcome at the table, then we
don’t feel welcome either, and... not every young adult gets married or has
children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start
building them around people.... [C]ontrary to popular belief, we can’t be
won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear
skinny jeans....
… Millennials
aren’t looking for a hipper Christianity... we’re looking for a truer
Christianity, and more authentic Christianity.” (xiii-xiv – emphasis is mine)
I’m not a millennial, but that sounds like
the kind of church community that I want to be part of. A church that is authentically and
unapologetically Christian, with space to explore the deeper questions of
life.
We need to re-evaluate what “church” and
“worship” should mean. Worship is the
very heart of our understanding and practice of our Christian beliefs. We need to rediscover the sacred, the mystery
and the value of worship. We can and
should learn from other faiths and spiritual practices, and in fact, Christians
throughout history have adopted and adapted many practices from other
faiths. We should work together with
other faith groups to create a world of respect and love and acceptance. But I am Christian, and I want to worship
regularly in a Christian church that upholds Christian faith traditions. I want a church that teaches what it means to
live authentically. I want a church that
takes its worship seriously and expects its congregation to take it
seriously. I want a church where the
leaders are unapologetically Christians, not atheists or wishy washy
spiritualists, who are dedicated to helping other Christians learn about the
faith and live out their faith.
I don’t think I’m the only one.
