Rethinking Church

I keep coming across articles on the internet in which the writer is repeating a variation of the same theme—the important of church attendance. But I must wonder whether the people at whom these articles are directed—those people who have not yet returned to church—are reading these articles. Are they even visiting the websites on which they are posted? Some articles are almost panicky. Readers are admonished that they are not really Christian if they do not regularly attend a church and so on.

I also have to wonder if we are going about it the wrong way. One article to which I posted a link today points out that Generation Z are going to avoid the websites that their parents frequent. If a writer’s aim is to encourage young people in Generation Z to come back to church, he is wasting his breath. They are not hearing his message. They are not going to visit a website that their parents frequent. They are not going to pay attention to a writer in their parents’ generation who posts on a website that they frequent.

Rather than urging people to return to church maybe we should be offering them help to be followers of Jesus wherever they are. In the case of Generation Z, the ones offering the help should be members of Generation Z.

Last Friday I posted an article on “Instavangelists,” social media influencers on Instagram. YouTube and TikTok also have their influencers. Facebook too. People are turning to these influencers for advice and direction, not to pastors, not to priests.  For one reason they are more accessible. You often as not get an immediate response. To get advice and direction from a pastor or a priest, you have to make an appointment or go to what may prove a boring service and listen to what may prove a boring sermon.

If we are honest with ourselves, church attendance is not what some writers would have us believe. Some churchgoers may have friends at church; others do not. Some churchgoers may be inspired by the songs and the sermon; others are not. They find our church services to be flat, like a soda or soft drink that has lost its fizz. These writers assume that everyone has the same experience. We cannot make that assumption. Longtime churchgoers tend to overlook their church’s shortcomings. To newcomers, however, they are glaringly obvious.

While some writers keep telling Christians that we must get out our buildings and go to where the people are—the workplaces, the universities, the cafes, the bowling alleys, the gyms, and all the places where people gather, we seem to be very much obsessed with people coming to us. I must wonder whether we really understand what getting out of the building means. It is not about venturing briefly into the world and then scampering back to the safety of the building. It is about leaving the building and locking the door so we cannot get back in. It means being what Jesus called his followers to be—his church in the world and not our church in a building.

The early church did not have buildings. It met wherever it could meet. The early church did not have organized service of worship. It did not have Bibles, prayer books, hymnals, and priests. When it gathered, one person shared a song that Holy Spirit had inspired, a second offered a word of encouragement, a third person gave a talk on the faith and life of a Jesus follower, a fourth person offered a testimony, a fifth person read passages from a roll of Old Testament scripture, a gospel, or the latest letter of the apostle Paul circulating among the churches, whatever the church possessed, and so on. The term coined for this way of holding a church meeting in the last century is “open worship.” Everyone present at the gathering contributed in some way. They may have eaten together. From the bread and wine they had brought for the meal some was set aside for the Lord’s Supper. One of those present offered a prayer of thanksgiving and praise to God; the others added their own prayers, and then the gathering shared the bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus’s suffering and death.

When we take the church to the world, we will not stop gathering together, but our gatherings will be smaller and less formal. Those present at these gatherings will be Jesus followers, those exploring that spiritual path, friends and acquaintances and others who came to the gathering to check us out. Like the early church we will meet wherever we can. We may meet in the full view of the world—in a café, for example. We will not hide our faith and way of life behind church doors. We will live it out in front of friends and strangers.

Being Jesus’ church as I believe that he intended will transform the church. We will stop talking about discipleship, about following Jesus, and will start living out discipleship, really doing what we previously only talked about. We will no longer be preoccupied with who shows up on Sunday morning, but rather will be focused upon how we are impacting lives.