Living Consciously: church

“Where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.”
Matthew 18:20

What’s the most identifying characteristic of Christianity? I don’t know this for sure, but if people were asked to respond to that I bet the largest response would involve church. Generally speaking, a Christian can be identified as someone who attends church, usually on Sunday morning. It’s important to us. For some, it’s the only thing that really matters in their Christian life. Some people identify themselves as Christmas and Easter Christians and only attend church twice a year. It’s that church attendance that does it though. They go to church, therefore they identify as Christian.

Jesus didn’t talk much about church. Where ever he happened to be, people gathered around. There was teaching and preaching and sometimes dialogue, but never church as we see it today. Does this mean that church might not be as important as we make it out to be? I say yes. Church is certainly important and there are many reasons why Jesus didn’t talk about it, but I don’t think church should be the crucial identifying feature of Christianity.

All of this has nothing to do with living consciously though. I think everyone should be actively involved with a church. As our most visible representation of Jesus to the world, we should invest our time and energy to the work of our personal church and the larger church, but as we do so, we should be asking ourselves some questions. We should insert a Jesus lens to our view of church.

Jesus cared about people. (I think that’s a pretty safe statement.) He cared about children and, to his disciples’ amazement, said people should be like children if they want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18:3). He cared about the injured and disabled, healing them many times in the gospel. He cared about the diseased, even the outcast lepers. When ten of them came to him in Luke 17 he didn’t send them away as most people would have. He spent time with sinners that the religious leaders all excluded. Yep, Jesus cared about people.

So next time you’re in church (tomorrow?), take a look around you. Who do you see? Are the welcomed, included, valued? How do most people view them? How do you view them? How would Jesus view them? Hopefully your view and Jesus’ view are pretty similar, but I bet they aren’t the same. What if you were to sit with the visitors in church once a month instead of with your family or friends? Would that destroy your relationship with your family and friends? Almost certainly not. And then after the service you can introduce the visitors to the group you usually sit with. That’s not a terrible idea.

I plan to be a church leader some day. That means I’ll have responsibility in church before, during, and after the services. I’m not a fan of that aspect of my calling. It means I have less freedom to be social on Sunday mornings, yet it’s important that I am able to meet and talk with a lot of people. Hold this thought. I’ll come back to it at the end.

Jesus cares about people a lot, and didn’t seem to care about time at all. We never hear in the gospels about Jesus racing to meet a deadline or making sure his preaching doesn’t go longer than fifteen minutes. Now, granted, most of that had to do with the culture of the 1st century and reading it from the 21st century taints our perception and maybe our interpretation as well. Still, I have a feeling a strict time schedule would be something in our culture that Jesus would question. (For those who know Myers-Briggs personality tests, I’m a P. Therefore I realize this is much easier for me to write and probably hard for a J to read. Stay with me though.)

I’m not going to say we should throw out the concept of time entirely, but at least in church can we have a little more flexibility? Do we really have to cut out three verses of the closing song because it’s already 1 minute after noon? I think a good sending is important and deserves time. (Hold this thought. We’ll come back to it.) And do we really need to cut sharing time short because we’re a little long? Giving people a chance to share takes time and it’s what helps the service belong to the congregation. (Hold this thought too.) And do sermons really have to stick to a specific allotted time? I realize people’s attention spans don’t last forever, but sometimes the Holy Spirit inspires a preacher with a message that takes longer to deliver.

So instead of getting anxious when the timing of a service is off, let’s sit back and think a little bit. This is when we insert a little conscious thinking. If we came to church, then we must think it’s important, therefore we can give it the time necessary to run its course. Maybe we need to free up a little extra time on Sundays so that time is less of an issue. I understand that there are other factors, like children, or house guests, or sports events. If, for a particular Sunday, something else is more important than the service, then maybe it’d be best for a few people to slip out quietly instead of rushing the service for everyone. I dare even suggest that some Sundays it might be best not to come to church. Again, church is not the most important part of the Christian faith. Just be careful not to take this too far.

Living consciously requires us to put more thought into our church service. As a participant we have to ask ourselves if we actually should be participating. How often do we sing a song without even thinking about the words? In my tradition is way easier to pay attention to the music and totally miss the meaning of the song. What if you don’t even agree with the words? It’s also easy to automatically join in with the “people” part of a reading without really meaning the words we say. Stop. I think it’s better to be silent in church than insincere. Paul challenges us to examine ourselves before participating in the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:28-29). How often do we simply eat and drink because the pastor invites us to without actually making it meaningful for ourselves? Choose not to take communion sometime. God won’t hate us.

Now for all of those thoughts we’re holding. The organization of a church and planning of a service usually could use a little more consciousness, a little more of the Jesus lens. It’s far too easy to do something simply because that’s the way it’s always been done. I don’t think that’s ever a good reason to do anything. That’s more of a convenient cop-out. I’ll never presume to know what’s best for other congregations, but I challenge us to start from scratch and re-imagine church starting with only what’s most important. If the church you build is the one you currently have, then good job! Don’t change anything. But if something seems out of balance, then let’s go through the tough work of balancing it.

You’re holding the thought about having responsibilities before, during, and after a church service. It’s true; there are lots of things to do to run a church, but no one person should feel over-burdened with it. We find it easy to toss all of that pressure on the paid staff, but the early followers of Jesus gave us a model of a church with everyone participating. Maybe not having a paid staff would make it easier for everyone else to step up.

You’re also holding thoughts about a good sending and sharing time during the service. These are just two elements of a service that I think are important. Teaching, praise, prayer, a gathering—these are also important elements. Church, with its non-essential status, is a break from a “24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year . . .” Christian life. We can pray and praise God any time. We can receive sound Biblical teaching just about any time too if we know where to look. Church is different because it’s a time for us to be together and share our journeys. I think space in the service for people to share formally with each other before God is essential and often overlooked. I also think a commissioning to send church-goers back into the world (aka benediction) is crucial and often rushed. Let’s put a little more conscious effort into these things—things that make church different from the rest of the Christian journey.

Woah! This post got really long! I could have broken it into 2 parts, but I couldn’t make you hold those thoughts for a whole day! Besides, if this is important enough to read then the time was well spent.

What are your thoughts on church? How could it be done more consciously or more Jesus-ly? Maybe you have a story of a church service that got it right.