It’s a beautiful sunrise this Sunday morning! I get to watch the deep orange hue of the sun lift and turn to warm yellow, from our lounge window.
How do we spend our Sunday mornings? Some of us sleep in, after an exhausting week. Some of us rise to breakfast in bed, served by our kids. (Seriously? I mean, has anyone actually had that happen?) Some of us head out to sport. And some of us head to church.
But what is church? A building? A traditional service? A contemporary service? A home group? Well, for me, church is this. Right here. Right now. You and me. And, I believe, God, with us.
Not the building? Not the service? These things can help, sure: beautiful cathedrals, evoking the majesty and beauty of God. Services leading us, where others have gone. But what is the point of it all? Why have church?
Church exists to build connection: connection with God, and connection with each other.
So you don’t believe in God? Welcome! If you’re not into the connection with God bit, I’m still keen to connect with you. Why do you not believe in God? I want to read all about it. I want to build a cathedral into which you can walk, and explore: in which you can freely wrestle (safely) with those who do believe.
So you don’t know whether or not God exists? Welcome! We have hours of potential conversation ahead, my friend.
So you’re already going to church? Awesome: keep it up! So do I. The beauty of the internet is that this is available 24/7.
The sun has risen now: people are waking up. A neighbour of mine is gathering up garden leaves outside.
How will you spend your Sunday? Let me know! And see you next week! 🙂
Agreed not the buildings nor the service. For those who don’t believe, one of the difficulties is that they have “going into a church” issues in respect of the fact that going in there is non-neutral. Plenty of evangelists have sweet dreams imagining floods of new converts rushing back. Unlikely: most non-believers flee church screaming for any number of reasons, knowing they’ll be preached to being top of the list. Being courted to go back/in is thus hardly an inviting prospect, just as a person honesty accepting of this has already presupposed most of the believers argument.
And so making church attractive is precisely beside the point for these people for the above reason.
What should be the case is an invitation that is strictly neutral: zero brick and mortar church and all theology rigorously off the table. This is not to say it must stay off. Merely that it begins off .. and is only placed back on with the greatest of care: plenty of debates beginning from productive cross-over topics are destroyed by suspicions of religious suppositions in the initiator.
Why is this a problem?
Presupposed superiority of knowledge: it places one side at a definitional disadvantage, hardly grounds for proper debate.
Neutrality is all. It cannot involve a church. Oh sure it can for believers. But that’s just obvious: same side.
I don’t really agree with this. What is the neutral position between belief and unbelief? Where two individuals meet they are equally powerful. What else is needed? Granted, if an agnostic enters into a church they are outnumbered: it is equally so if a Christian enters into a proactively agnostic setting. But where they are one on one? They are already matched.
Few more thoughts..
I was trying to work out the problem here. It seems there are two. Yup the first I think has to do with the structure of the question.
Why do you not believe in God? You feel placed in a disadvantageous position to begin with. You are presumed to lack. I think a better starting position is something like: “wanna discuss origins?” .. with all presumptions (genuinely) open and the believing side somehow made to feel non preachy – many a debate is collapsed because of this “oh you would say that” attitude.
I’m not sure how you make that happen. And many have no interest in the slightest. Of course if a non believer initiates then it’s totally different.
And that leads onto another question: why the instinctive defensive reaction when a believer identifies themself? Why is their position seen as immediately invalid? (Don’t worry I’m not answering that one it’d take hours!)
And the second is church. Not cool. For plenty the fundamental problem IS church. They’re never coming back. Inviting them feels like pulling teeth. Let’s make church welcoming misses the point on the above. In the past it trashed them. So don’t offer. Not to say no offering. Just not church. Coffee shop perhaps. Seat outside that lecture theatre.
Seen as immediately invalid by whom? Good to see the comment about the defensive reaction: that’s what I’m picking up here, from both you and Zack. Why not get beyond that? There’s no threat here: just a single Christian person offering her faith. That is my entire purpose.
I guess a strong defensive reaction might expect the other person to undefine themselves: but isn’t this reversing the dynamic? There’s a lot of this taking place too. Best to get beyond it, I’d say. Let Christianity and agnosticism co-exist, without feeling a need to make one into the other – without feeling a need to vilify or minimise the other. Let them coexist, and then they can really chat. 🙂
Many good comments here Chris!
My take? (and I’ll endeavour to leave my thoughts at 1 message….!) – as you know, I was born and raised a Catholic. Mum was a Staunch Catholic; Dad…..let’s call him lukewarm, at best. As a kid I was obliged to undergo all the Catholic rituals, and went to Mass on a periodic basis. By my mid-20’s I’d put a stop to that. Mum was sad about it, and Dad was blasé re my decision. Why did I decide this? Simple – church and everything surrounding that institution did nothing for me. The hypocrisy I heard whenever I went was astounding; a celibate priest telling couples and families how to behave (often wagging a condescending finger), and there are numerous more reasons, too many to mention. Finding ‘the truth’ for me as an individual is a lifelong experience and I honestly don’t need to belong to some establishment to try and find that.
So, back to Michelle’s original question re why does church exist? Money! I’d been inside Catholic Churches, Protestant, Dutch Reformed (< the same group of folk who perpetuated Apartheid….!!) and the Happy Clappers. All, in my mind, have one fundamental theme – to send the coffers around (the Catholics would do that twice in one service!) and to collect as much of the green stuff as possible. The rest; the service, the preaching, the bible – that's all fanfare. The real issue is bucks, and lots of it! Now, I'm sure Michelle would retort with a million other reasons why going to church (for her!!) is such a moving and glowing experience, and you know what Michelle? Good for you! Honestly. Where I live in Japan with Harumi (my darling wife) is on the outskirts of Tokyo (Kawasaki City) and here we have lovely parks and forests which we often visit. I find infinite more peace there, listening to the myriad birds, insects and animals that abound than any church could offer me. And how much money I'm saving in the process!….. ;-)!
So, this is the bottom line and this is a subject of pointless debate – the merits of going to church vs not. To some (Michelle) it's a moving and heart-lifting experience. To others? A total waste of time and much better spent on the golf course, with family, friends, watching the Olympics on TV, etc, etc…..
As Chris wrote, the most who don't go do so because of past (bad) experiences (me!) and now choose better ways to spend their time. Who needs the ongoing guilt trip and hypocritical accusing finger wagged in the face by a total stranger?? Not me. 🙂
'Live and let live!', eh?
Thanks for the comments, guys: good to have you here.
My point? ‘Church exists to build connection: connection with God, and connection with each other.’ The idea of church isn’t confined to a building, a form of service, or to previous bad experiences, much as these all can be important: the idea is much vaster than this. ‘Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself.’ The outworking of these two principles can take on a multitude of different forms!
As for worshiping amidst nature? Oh, yeah! I mean, hey: I live in New Zealand! Spoilt for choice! 🙂
Oh, and I’m already aware of the perception re money: self funding’s a great thing…
Perception?! Tis a stark reality. And it’s not ‘self-funding’…..well, ‘self’ if you look at it in the way of the preacher man making his congregation so guilty for being born (< original sin) that it's almost ingrained in the sub-conscious that the more money we give brings us that much closer to heaven and eternal life. And it's not just Christianity that does this. Doesn't Islam talk about 72 virgins??…. :-)!
Zack, my point? I choose to be self funding. This post has nothing to do with money. Why not explore the themes above? As for money, I must write a post on that later…
Once again Michelle – what you write here are your thoughts, views and opinions as to why going to church is such a good thing. Good for you. Are you right though? Wrong? Who can tell?? You have to admit that yours are very subjective and as a result private thoughts?!… What works for you won’t necessarily work for the guy next to you, and visa versa. And that is……….that.
As for worshiping (in) nature: didn’t the bible talk about JC preaching at the base of trees, in the desert, possibly in caves, etc? Why do we need buildings to do what he (supposedly) tells us to do?
We can close the conversation down, or we can open it up. Why not join me in the exploration? And, yes, that was my point: I love to worship amidst nature too, as well as in cathedrals, as Christ did. When it comes to potential for worship, the world is our oyster.
Back to my original point: ‘Church exists to build connection: connection with God, and connection with each other.’ Not only my opinion: this is the meaning of ‘communion’.
Many good comments all!
Michelle: ‘Church exists to build connection.’ Why is church needed at all then? I can connect with people I meet on a bus. I guess it’s one place in this modern world of fading human connectivity in which the capacity for human companionship still exists – to a degree. So that’s one good thing going for it I guess. Connection with God? Well only for ardent believers I suppose. Plenty (me included) go/went for the human variety simply to meet friends of a Sunday or to be seen (peer-pressure)..
It’s a good question: and you do connect with people you meet on a bus. 🙂 Church is about spirituality. It seeks out God, to know, and be known by God – and the human connection takes on a spiritual significance too. There is a potential depth to that kind of connection – but this kind of depth needn’t be limited to a particular type of service, or building: the potential is vast. Hey, it can happen in a bus too! 🙂
Zack: it’s called victim-blame mentality; God favours the wealthy .. and if you are not wealthy then you are not favoured of God. It can get pretty nasty all accounts.
I was wondering, personally, as to reasons to go to church. I struggled. Communion with God? No. Communion with people? Can get that elsewhere (though not all can.) Singing the songs? Not into. Listening to choirs? Vaguely. Good sermon? Getting warmer. They are rare as hens teeth though (present company excepted.)
Why then? I mean for a relatively interested non-strict ex-believer? My last experience (as a teen) was one of either immense boredom or else embarrassment. I’d rather be walking on a beach.
I wonder what the ‘selling point’ would be? Of course from the perspective of believers it would be for the subject to meet and have an encounter with God. That can hardly be sold though – needs be a believer prior. To others among believers it would, actually, be for those lacking in certain human-related things/needs to come into church and receive them there (a non-theological reason.) I like that because you can understand how it would work. But it won’t sell to me.
Why then? Because often (and not only for me) the memories of the place are so negative. Why’d you volunteer to go for yet another round of teeth-pulling?
Knock knock.
Opens door.
‘Please come into our church.’
Closes door.
Yes, thanks for this: it’s helpful, and honest.
So, just to clarify: why was the memory of the experience so negative? Boredom? I remember this too, as a child. As a teenager I went to a Pentecostal church, because I could connect to the culture much more readily. I returned to the Anglican Church in my 30’s, and suddenly I grasped the depth of the spirituality there as I had not before. As a believer, certainly: some things can’t be seen yet unless one already has faith.
If there’s no desire for communion with God then I would say (perhaps controversially) that there is no point in going to a church service. But there is another possibility: desire to search out about God, or to test whether there is one. I want to create a space where these orientations are possible too.
Walking on a beach is great, for believers and agnostics: and a great neutral ground, as we both know. 🙂
Hence my view: zero church, perfectly neutral-initiated debate. I’m certainly okay with that.
Oh and that other thing. The presumption that the initiate is lacking. That feels quite big because of the deeply-held impression of believers being arrogant. In that sense a church feels like a hospital. Patronising.
I think part of this perception might be defensive, though, from previous bad experiences…Not all believers are arrogant, just as not all agnostics or atheists are mutually respecting of faith.
No – not negative for myself. it was more the boring, “what am I doing here?” thing. I was more referring to the experiences of others – though certain of my own that have occurred outside of church haven’t been too hot.
I’m not sure you can seek out a religious experience in church (or any other space) can you? Maybe you can – I didn’t know they were free to be dialled up like that. 🙂 Perhaps you meant a religious *feeling* .. don’t know.
Yes, I hear you re the boredom experience: my childhood exposure to the traditional setting was like this too, though in adulthood suddenly the whole thing came alive, and I could get it and connect spiritually very deeply with God through it. Dial up a religious experience? That’s an interesting question. One can certainly be blocked to a religious experience, either purposefully or inadvertently. (If that religious experience is there to be had.)
It’s interesting exploring the differences in opinions of both sides, this is one of them: that a religious/spiritual experience can be denied. A few others are the understanding of the word “miracle”, and sufficiency of types of evidence. There are many of them, and sometimes the two sides are 180 deg to what you’d expect.
The language. Separate pages. There’s still no real debate because talking about different things.
I’ll publish my list of them one of these days. 🙂
Expand…
Also interesting to explore whether a person truly wants to find evidence. 🙂
Motivational differences: that’s a whole area, right there!
It was arrogance more of the intellectual kind, the “we’ve got something you need” type.
Sure this is not arrogance if it were to be true.
But absent this conclusion it comes across as just another bunch of people claiming superiority.
Again the neutrality-in-theology thing comes in helpful here: beginning to debate notions of God places both parties on the theological side of the line in that even if you take the negative side of the proposition you are still playing in the religious court. This I remember was the state of play up to round the 1950’s: atheists were quite happy to play around in ground firmly on the religious side (for eg, Biblical quotes themselves were debated rather than being refuted out of hand as redundant to the question at hand.)
Yes, there’s lots to explore here. I get the perception of arrogance on the agnostic side, and appreciate the comment re truth also. The claim to superiority is certainly alive and well in certain expressions of atheism as well. Understood re joining in the middle in exploration. The difficulty with atheists trying to play within the theism camp though is that they are only selecting bits of theism, and not testing the entire worldview as a cohesive whole – which is a bit like taking a few random words of French, without grasping the entire language, and then critiquing how inadequate the few French words are with the entirety of English. Helpful? Not really. An adequate addressing of the different language? Certainly not. A person taking the different languages seriously will either try to master the entire other language, or seriously listen to one who has mastered it. In practice, most of the time neither of these responses actually happens.
Oic, maybe you were referring to that here.
I guess that was about definitions tho. Moral interpretation is another story I suppose.
To me, it’s quite simple.
That is gut.
How so?