Until recently (in heart-time, if not calendar-time) I was very involved in a church that pursued the “seeker sensitive” model of worship. We spent many volunteer hours each week talking and e-mailing and meeting to plan services that would connect with the “unchurched” (assuming, of course, they chose to sacrifice their Sunday morning to darken our door). We cared (and I’m sure they still do) very much that we not miss our possibly only opportunity to communicate God’s love to just one of these folks.
We prayed and worked until 2:30 am on Powerpoint and song arrangements and skits and talked endlessly about how to make our ‘transitions’ better, so as not to be a distraction to what the Spirit might be doing. How can we be non-threatening? How can we engage their emotions? How can we welcome them, without being in their faces?
We prayed and worked until 2:30 am on Powerpoint and song arrangements and skits and talked endlessly about how to make our ‘transitions’ better, so as not to be a distraction to what the Spirit might be doing. How can we be non-threatening? How can we engage their emotions? How can we welcome them, without being in their faces?
We talked of excellence and building community and “worship”. We went to conferences, purportedly to “team-build”, but effectively to steal a few ideas that we could try to duplicate (“Hey, we could do that!”), and did but with mixed success. Drama teams practiced, music teams practiced, lighting was debated, language was bowdlerized. Images, dramas, and songs, OH MY!
My enthusiasm for the whole process was not without alloy. All we seemed to be doing is impressing people who had just moved to the area and were looking for a home church. There were baptisms, of course, but most of the testimonies revolved around the theme of “I met so and so at baseball practice and we started talking and I got interested in what he had to say about God…” and eventually, church attendance started to figure into the story somewhere. We were an afterthought. Something you did because of a conversation or a relationship or a crisis. Nobody seemed to actually go “seeking” at church on Sunday morning. We seemed to be targeting a non-existent audience.
The other day I was talking to someone we know through the kids’ school. She and her family have lived in the area for at least as long as we have and for several years now have been actively looking for a church they could call home. On a number of Sundays I met them at the one I was involved in. Spiritually, they seem very open to what God has to say about himself in the Bible and willing to learn, but I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to say that they are or are not Christ followers. Although, conversations are refreshingly free of Christian-ese.
So I found this conversation tremendously ironic. She asked if she’d heard correctly that we’d left the above church and I said yeah. She asked if we were going anywhere else and I told her about the congregation we currently attend. About how the ‘worship’ time is very open and people speak from the pews and we stop and pray for them and someone reads a scripture that is going to mean something to someone who didn’t even know they needed to hear it. My friend said it sounded good and nothing like the previous one, and she stumbled over the adjective she wanted until she settled on “too structured”.
It had been too structured. All that time. All that work. All the phone calls and e-mails and meetings and debates and hours and hours sitting at the computer or the piano, just to connect with people EXACTLY like my friend and she said it was too structured.
At this point I sigh. I think, “I don’t know.” I feel divided about how sad I was to leave and how glad I am not to be there anymore. How glad I am to be doing what I’m doing now, starting something completely different which is, in my heart, a church. But with “no sermons, no strings, no institution” as my team mate reminds me.
God save us from the well-intentioned desire to impress people into the kingdom.
My enthusiasm for the whole process was not without alloy. All we seemed to be doing is impressing people who had just moved to the area and were looking for a home church. There were baptisms, of course, but most of the testimonies revolved around the theme of “I met so and so at baseball practice and we started talking and I got interested in what he had to say about God…” and eventually, church attendance started to figure into the story somewhere. We were an afterthought. Something you did because of a conversation or a relationship or a crisis. Nobody seemed to actually go “seeking” at church on Sunday morning. We seemed to be targeting a non-existent audience.
The other day I was talking to someone we know through the kids’ school. She and her family have lived in the area for at least as long as we have and for several years now have been actively looking for a church they could call home. On a number of Sundays I met them at the one I was involved in. Spiritually, they seem very open to what God has to say about himself in the Bible and willing to learn, but I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to say that they are or are not Christ followers. Although, conversations are refreshingly free of Christian-ese.
So I found this conversation tremendously ironic. She asked if she’d heard correctly that we’d left the above church and I said yeah. She asked if we were going anywhere else and I told her about the congregation we currently attend. About how the ‘worship’ time is very open and people speak from the pews and we stop and pray for them and someone reads a scripture that is going to mean something to someone who didn’t even know they needed to hear it. My friend said it sounded good and nothing like the previous one, and she stumbled over the adjective she wanted until she settled on “too structured”.
It had been too structured. All that time. All that work. All the phone calls and e-mails and meetings and debates and hours and hours sitting at the computer or the piano, just to connect with people EXACTLY like my friend and she said it was too structured.
At this point I sigh. I think, “I don’t know.” I feel divided about how sad I was to leave and how glad I am not to be there anymore. How glad I am to be doing what I’m doing now, starting something completely different which is, in my heart, a church. But with “no sermons, no strings, no institution” as my team mate reminds me.
God save us from the well-intentioned desire to impress people into the kingdom.
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