People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God. January 14, 2010
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the church. We’ve been struggling lately with a multitude of things both directly and indirectly connected to our church and our role in it. It is exhausting. I wrote this earlier this week as a part of a conversation about church: what it is, what it means, why it exists and why we continue to be a part of it.
We are going through a really difficult time in our church, the details of which are outside the context of this conversation (and completely exhausting to type out), and I’ve been wondering about these things. We are in a place right now where we’ve done all the right things, served and participated and even taken a staff position, but somehow we are still struggling, and I am frustrated. I feel like we have worked really hard to make sure we are making the right decisions for ourselves and our marriage over the course of our church life as a couple, and now I am looking back and I feel like maybe some of those decisions have led us to our current frustrations and I don’t know what we were supposed to do differently.
I say all that to say this: in my current state of church and job frustration and my overwhelming desire to bail on all of it and start over somewhere that I can be anonymous and have no responsibility, I feel committed and connected to my church because of all the things it offers and represents: the history, the sacraments, the connection to people who came before us and will come after. It’s not even the people for me right now – I could take them or leave them. But we are a part of a body of faith that we are invested in and that is full of people just like us and completely different from us, and we need all of them. I am starting to view it as a relationship… we are in a serious relationship with the church, and we have hit a major rough patch. So we have two options: bail or hunker down and get through it. And because I have also been in that position with Aaron, and have chosen to hunker down and get through it and have seen how beautiful that can be on the other side, I am choosing to do that here.
What I want to do is to leave and make it easy on myself by only ‘doing church’ with the people I like and who don’t make me crazy. But I can’t grow like that. It doesn’t challenge me to learn and stretch and see the world from someone else’s perspective. And I don’t think that’s what church is meant to be.
I wanted to repost it here for two reasons: I don’t want to forget that I wrote it because I think our hardest times are still ahead of us, and I am curious to hear what you have to say as well. Do you go to church? Why? What does it add to your faith? Why church and not something else – a small group, a parachurch organization, solitary study and prayer at home?
Help me think through this.
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Thanks for sharing this Brandi. I appreciate where you’re at. Giving your life to a relationship only to hit a rough patch is the pits.
) – but there is great joy that comes from the larger collective gatherings as well.
One thing that I’ve come to realize is that all relationships will develop tension. And it usually occurs when those involved are most authentic and real with one another.
I’m definitely a BIG proponent of small group settings, organic expressions of the church and doing church differently (heck I wrote a book about it
I recently heard – that being a part of a community of faith is like giving birth. “Out comes blood and gore and beauty and hope — all together.” (http://vimeo.com/7238583)
I think that’s a great summation of community and church. Some days it really sucks and really hurts but like you said, when you get to the other side there is absolute beauty.
Finally a quote from St. Augustine – “The church is a whore, but she’s my mother.” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/118-22.0.html)
Keep following His dust. He’ll take care of the rest.
Brandi:
I’m glad that you’ve made the choice to stick it out. Twice, I’ve become overwhelmed and left churches to start anew, for exactly the reasons you’ve alluded to here [although unlike you, I've never been on staff; but I did get asked to be the youth director once when I was in college, but anyway]. I find in the results of this that the problem lies, well, with me: how I balance my life, how I react when challenged by others, etc. Unlike you, I’m still single, so I don’t even have the marriage relationship to remind me that these rough patches are worth trucking through. I envy you that.
I am currently between church congregations for a number of reasons. One, which seems quite silly, is that my overwork at work and at my previous congregation got me to a point where I was overwhelmed and ultimately depressed, and I gave up the thing I could afford financially to give up. Sad, but true.
And yet while I’ve been out of a congregation for more than a year now, I find myself yearning for corporate worship and study. I find that I don’t challenge myself—rightly or wrongly!—in solitude. I find that small groups can often end up having herd mentalities, and I need something bigger than that so I don’t get into those mentalities.
And … in the course of writing this, I think I just talked myself into going to the local megachurch on Sunday. Heh.
[...] Brandi is struggling with church and why we do it, and I wrote this comment, which I’ll repost here because I think it’s highly relevant to my main consumer of this site: me. I’m glad that you’ve made the choice to stick it out. Twice, I’ve become overwhelmed and left churches to start anew, for exactly the reasons you’ve alluded to here [although unlike you, I've never been on staff; but I did get asked to be the youth director once when I was in college, but anyway]. I find in the results of this that the problem lies, well, with me: how I balance my life, how I react when challenged by others, etc. Unlike you, I’m still single, so I don’t even have the marriage relationship to remind me that these rough patches are worth trucking through. I envy you that. [...]
We went through a similar situation over the past few years. We had been in the same church ever since we moved to Iowa, and we hit the same sort of exhaustion and burnout. Our first jump was an “easy” one – to a church plant that our church was doing. That eased some issues, but made some others worse. Finally, a year ago, we made the break and started attending one of the larger churches in town (600+ on a Sunday).
Why not just quit or do something small, in-home? First, because I’m lazy, and making a commitment to be a part of a church gets me off my backside and actually listening to God’s word and around His people at least once a week. I also feel like I need to set that example for my three daughters who are just learning what Jesus is all about.
I wrestle with the whole big church/small church debate, but I’m increasingly leaning toward accepting the idea that the big church can provide some things quite well, and that small groups and intentionally-initiated fellowship and friendships can provide the other part.
One thing is for sure: it’s not easy.
Found this post while searching for something else today as well…
http://www.casadeblundell.com/jonathan/faith/5-myths-of-community/
“if we want real community like the early church… we must be willing to embrace hurt and suffering… because love is costly.” – Mark Scandrette
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You have already heard the other things I have to say about this. I just wanted to comment specifically on what you said and say that the relationship analogy works for me another way, too. The idea of being anonymous is appealing sometimes. Escaping the person who knows all your baggage and starting over and having a clean slate. But knowing and being known by a person or a community of people in a church is a beautiful thing. It’s what all the hunkering down is about in a lot of ways.
I am a part of a small church, (30-35 members), in a rural area. I’ve found small churches require a lot from their members, otherwise they would die completely. Before the current pastor came, there were 12 seniors 68+ years old who didn’t have a clue what they were doing or why. These are lovely people who wanted and yearned to be part of something bigger and greater, but just didn’t know how, and had no real leadership. (ever, obviously)
I left a large church to be part of this one, not sure why, other than God. I was extremely involved in the large church as well. I thought when I left to attend my new church there wouldn’t be that much to do being there wasn’t that many people. Wrong, there’s more.
I say all that to say this:
I have no idea who you are, but it seems as if you are going to be a church leader of some sort where ever you might go. God is teaching you and molding you. Maybe for another people somewhere else, maybe for the people right in front of you, or maybe just for you. There are no mistakes with God.
I don’t think you would be happy blending in. It might be easy at the moment, but it wouldn’t last long. God doesn’t develop leaders to sit and blend in. (although its nice for a short period, and I think it is also needed at some points in time)
Be used by God, whether it is where you are at, or somewhere bigger, smaller, or the same size. Continue to develop yourself and others, unfortunately its a never ending process here on earth.
Looking to that day of completion,
Rusty
Thanks, you guys. This is really helpful. I appreciate hearing everyone’s experiences… it’s good to know I’m not the only one who has thought about this stuff.
going to church is truly optional, you can foster faith, geniune faith, outside the church, but you cannot know the common bond that church afford its community of believers. We christians need that bond more than we know.