Why No One Should "Go to Church"

Is it church if no one's there?
(Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash)

Years ago I cut out a magazine article and posted it on my office door. It was written by Dan Kimball, an Emergent church pastor from California. As he starts out, he shares a story of telling a group at his church that “According to the Bible...it is actually impossible to ‘go to church.’” After letting confusion wash over their faces, he explains that in the New Testament, the word “church” never applies to a building, but always to the people who follow Jesus. “We can’t go to church,” he concludes, “because we are the church.” (Unfortunately, other than these quotes, I can't find any trace of the original article. 😞)

This is a principle that we’ve all learned (I remember singing in Sunday school, “I am the Church, you are the Church...”), but we don’t act like we have. The way we typically talk about church actually suggests that we think of “church” as the building, or, at least, as only what we do in that building. 

Instead, we need to distinguish between the church that is a static building and the church that is a people or a movement. Being an English major and a writer, I like to think of them as the "little c church" (building) and "big C Church" (the people).

The word the early Church used to describe itself in Greek is “ecclesia,” which literally means “those called out.” The Church, then, is the people who are called by God. We are called out of things and ways of living that rob us of life and joy and God’s presence, called to gather to hear the Good News of life through Christ. And we are also the people called out of our places of worship (out of our comfort zones?) to be the Church in the world and for the world.

This is why Paul says Christians are the "Body of Christ," a living, moving extension of God, instead of an unmoving building. (Or maybe an unmoving audience?) If we think church is just the building, we can think our faith and lives are as static and passive as the building. It becomes the country club (or bomb shelter) that we retreat to when we need to rest. 

One of my favorite images for the church I heard years ago at a youth gathering (I apologize that I can't credit the source), where someone said, "We too often think of church as a buffet, where we come to gorge on God and then hope we won't starve before we return; instead, we need to think of church as the grocery store where we gather the ingredients we need to make meals throughout the week."

Just as the goal of going to the grocery store is to have a dinner party, the goal of going to church (the building) is to live as Church (the people). We are "called out" as the Church not to escape from the world or hide from it, but to learn to live in it with identities, patterns, and habits that are healthy and cooked from good ingredients. 

The God of Life has called us out, called us out of death and into life, called us out of the noise and chaos the world around us to rest in (and then share) a message of hope. God calls for us to grow in that life and God calls us to share that life with others. God doesn't want us to go to church; we are called to be the Church.

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

"May this place of rest in the fold of your journey bind you to hope. You will never walk alone." -Jars of Clay, "The Shelter"

Faith in Media: When the Pop Star Interviewed the Late Show Host

Image Found at TowardInsight.com

When I first heard about this interview clip between Stephen Colbert and Dua Lipa, I was confused. I was told that Dua Lipa, the pop star, was interviewing Stephen Colbert of The Late Show on his show? And Lipa, known for sexy dancehall hits, was asking him sincere questions about his faith as a Christian? And Colbert had a profound and personal answer? 

That combination of factors didn't really compute in my brain, and so I forgot about it at the time. Then about five months later, someone told me, "No seriously, you need to watch it."

I've now watched it multiple times because I think it really is that good. And the novelty isn't even the best part. (The first few minutes sets up the conversation, but the relevant Q&A begins at 2:43 in the clip.) There are at least three things that I find particularly worthy of reflection. 

First is simply the authentic humanity of the conversation. While they are joking around, Lipa's question is honest (she is really curious to learn what he has to say) and dignifying (she recognizes something that is important to Colbert that she may not share or understand) and Colbert's response is respectful (he answers honestly without scoffing at the question or trying to convince her of anything). In an age where we so often see differences of opinion as a threat or lack the curiosity to want to understand another point of view, it's refreshing to see a conversation that isn't a debate. I wish more conversations around the dinner table or water cooler went like this.

Second, I think it's amazing how well Colbert is able to use his faith to interpret a movie and a quote with theological lenses. And he doesn't use clichés to do it. I know I struggle to do that at times with a master's degree in religion, but he is at ease with the ideas and language of his faith. It's clear that he has thought about how his faith, his comedy, and current events intersect in strong ways. If I could teach that skill effectively, I would probably put myself out of a job. 

Finally, I love how Colbert identifies fear as the opposite of faith. Fear leads us to excuse evil, he says, and the solution isn't to ignore death or evil, but to disarm them with laughter. I think we're often more likely to ignore uncomfortable feelings like sadness or pain, but Colbert suggests we need to confront them or else they become too powerful. Finding ways to laugh about death to care for one another has echoes of "take up your cross and follow me." If you want to find God, don't run from hurt, but tend to it until something new grows out of it. (Luther called this his "Theology of the Cross.")

I hope you can find something as useful in this interview. If you have your own perspectives and know how to reach me, please engage with me by email or on Facebook. I'm happy to continue the conversation started by a pop star and a late night host. 

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

“I’m a walking, talking question mark, but what is the question again?” -Jamie Lidell, “What’s the Use”

Learn the Story: How the Old and New Testament Fit Together

Illustration by Aase Mattson

While I was growing up in the church, I got the impression that the Old Testament, which makes up the first three quarters of the Bible was... well, old. As Christians, we could learn some important things from the Old Testament (or the Hebrew Scriptures) but it was mostly background information. The Bible that really mattered was the New Testament, the Greek Scriptures, because they were about Jesus.

As I grew and studied scripture though, I came to a very different conclusion of what Christianity teaches. Thanks to some good mentors and authors like Philip Yancey and Daniel Erlander, I realized that the New Testament doesn't replace the Old Testament, it continues and completes it. 

One of the best examples of this is in Luke 24, where the resurrected Jesus twice explains to his disciples how his ministry, death, and resurrection is a fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures: "everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled" (v. 44). (See also: v. 27) Jesus is the culmination of everything that has been taught and done through the history of God's people, not the rejection of it. In fact, if you aren't familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures, you miss a lot of the symbolism and meaning behind what Jesus does.

Unfortunately, I still hear from people that they believe (or have been told) that the Hebrew Scriptures are... old. 

This past week, I started a special sermon series at my church I'm calling "Rooted: Learn the Story."  I'm teaching from ten major stories of the Old Testament in order to show how they are part of one continuous story and how that story points us to Jesus. If that's the kind of thing that interests you, please check out the sermons as they are posted on our YouTube page. The first one, "Made in God's Image," can be seen here. In it, I make two central points: 1) to be created in God's image means we are created to reflect God's character and nature to the world and 2) when we do, creation is good, as God intended it to be. 

I hope someone may find this helpful.

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

"Gonna need a little water from another time." -John McCutcheon, "Water From Another Time"

Rooted: Learn the Story Sermons

• September 11:
  • Made In God’s Image -- Genesis 1:24-2:3
• September 18: 
  • Rejecting God’s Image -- Genesis 3:1-13, 19-23
• September 25: 
  • Abraham, Sarah, and the Forever Promise -- Genesis 12:1-8
• October 2: 
  • Blessed and Limping (Jacob) -- Genesis 32:9-12, 22-31
• October 9: 
  • God the Liberator (Exodus from Egypt) -- Exodus 3:1-14
• October 16: 
  • Becoming God’s People (10 Commandments & The Wilderness) -- Exodus 19:1-8
• October 23: 
  • What is a Messiah? (Saul, David, and the Kings) -- 1 Samuel 10:17-25
• October 30: 
  • When Everything Falls Apart (The Exile to Babylon) -- Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14
• November 6: 
  • How to Speak to God (The Psalms) -- Psalm 13 and Psalm 23
• November 13: 
  • Don’t You Remember? (The Prophets) -- Micah 6:1-8
    

Cancel Culture and Dealing with Sinful People

The author at Taliesen West

Last November, while doing some continuing education in Arizona, I took the opportunity to visit Taliesen West, Frank Lloyd Wright's second home and studio in the desert. Wright has long been someone I admire because of the artistry of his designs, but even more for the way he thought about the experience of his buildings. He wanted to create specific emotions and thoughts for people who used his buildings.

Wright was also a selfish, irresponsible jerk.

History attests to the fact that he abandoned his first family to chase a mistress, he skipped out on many of his debts and contracts, he would often use his students as free labor, and he was known to be rude and condescending. 

My spouse and I have long discussed how to properly balance respect for his work with disgust for his character. Can you admire the art and condemn the artist? How do you praise one part of his life without approving of all of it? Or do we have to be all or nothing -- his art was great so his character doesn't matter OR we shouldn't study him or honor him in any way because he was so flawed?

I've thought about my dilemma with Frank Lloyd Wright often in the past few years, as we've had reckonings and reexamination of many public figures in movements like #metoo, confrontation of racism, and what is sometimes referred to as "cancel culture." 

• Thomas Jefferson and George Washington made incredible and brilliant contributions to human liberty, but they also kept slaves, the antithesis of human liberty. 
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was a giant of the civil rights movement for his moral and rhetorical clarity, but he is known to have carried on an affair until his death and to have plagiarized in his college papers.
• Michael Jackson was one of the best pop music performers of all time, but he's alleged to have sexually exploited boys. 
• Ellen Degeneres was known for bringing inclusion, kindness, and positivity to daytime television, but she has been accused of being abusive, rude, and uncaring to employees behind the scenes.
• Bill Cosby, Placido Domingo, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, and on and on...

Let me be very clear up front that I don't think these are all equivalent in terms of the public contributions OR the alleged crimes. Nor do I think the answer to "How should we deal with their legacy?" will be the same in every case. These are all unique situations and problems with different complexities to be debated on their own. But that's partly my point.

One of the observations I've made is the public often wants to take the all-or-nothing route for most cases. Either the good they did was too important and we should ignore their faults altogether, or they are flawed and so we should remove them entirely from the public record. Hence there are pastors who admit to adultery and get standing ovations from their congregation and some people get fired for stupid things they wrote when they were teenagers.

We seem to be really bad at dealing with ambiguity and human foibles. We want our heroes to be pure of heart and are deeply hurt when they aren't. Or we want people to fall neatly into "good or bad" categories and struggle when they (always) fall in between. Exactly why is beyond the space of this blog or scope of my knowledge, but from a Christian perspective (which fits into both) it seems we should be better at handling this. 

The Bible is full of heroes who have serious flaws: Jacob is a liar, Moses has a bad temper, Samson is controlled by his lust, David is an adulterer and murderer, and so on. Yet God was able to redeem them and use them. Paul says in Galatians, "You have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it," but God "called me by his grace" (1:13, 15). 

The Bible doesn't have "good" and "bad" people; it just has human people who "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). And unlike many popular depictions, God's goal isn't to catch people screwing up and condemn them forever, but to transform them and reconcile them to lives of faithfulness, like Paul describes above or Legion in Mark 5. 

None of this is to say that there shouldn't be consequences for moral failings. Christianity also calls for confession of sins, repentance, and justice. Sometimes people should be fired, arrested, or publicly shamed for their faults, but we can never divorce that from the hope for their redemption. 

We should never be surprised that humans can do stupid, hurtful, or even evil things, nor should we assume that great people are free from criticism. We are all what Martin Luther called, "simul justus et peccator" or "simultaneously saint and sinner." And he was a prime example of that. 

Luther was a brilliant theologian, preacher, and pastor, but later in life, he became deeply and violently anti-semitic. Some of the things he wrote were awful enough that Lutherans have publicly apologized and condemned these writings. 

As I said earlier, I don't think there are any one-size-fits-all solutions to the problems of flawed leaders and celebrities, but perhaps that is part of the solution: being honest about sins (either our own or our predecessors) and humbly pledging to do better, while welcoming others who make similar promises. 

At least, I hope I can receive that grace when my imperfections are brought to light... and can share it when the roles are reversed.

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

“Don’t have to settle the score, ‘cause we all live under the reign of one king.” -Creed, “What’s This Life For?”