Our Sunday routine is pretty predictable. With rare exception we sit in the same pew at the same church for the same service every week. Of course, the reality that my husband is a pastor and my children are preacher’s-kids may make that somewhat more assumed, but it remains our pattern, our tradition, our life. Such is not the case for many – and more all the time.
Church attendance drops nearly weekly – at our church and across the nation. It is harder and harder for pastors and church staff to know what to offer in order to entice former attendees back or invite new ones in the door. It feels like a losing battle. But yesterday I began reading a book that had been recommended to me by one of the faculty at Mars Hill Graduate School (where I work) – Dr. Dwight Friesen. The book’s name: The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser. In the midst of many brilliant thoughts he talks of the church, its declining appeal, and our unrealistic expectations. Unlike many writers today he takes a rm stand on why Christians must attend church; why it’s a non-negotiable aspect of our spirituality. I was surprised to read something stated so strongly. I was also caught short by my own lack of commitment to an institution that is necessary as a marker of Who I serve. Consider Rolheiser’s words:
We go to church looking for friendship or ideological soulmates and, often, do not find them. This does not necessarily mean that there is something wrong with the church, merely that we have false expectations. To be in apostolic community, church, is not necessarily to be with others with whom we are emotionally, ideologically, and otherwise compatible. Rather it is to stand, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, precisely with people who are very different from ourselves and, with them, hear a common word, say a common creed, share a common bread, and offer a mutual forgiveness so as, in that way, to bridge our differences and become a common heart.
He lists nine reasons why we should go to Church – which I will not list here, but consider some of these statements:
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To attempt to make our spirituality a private affair is to reject part of our very nature and walk inside of a loneliness that God’s very self has damned.
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There can be no real Christian spirituality divorced from ecclesiology. To deal with Christ is to deal with the church.
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…we should also not be surprised that we find every kind of sickness within our churches. But the presence of those pathologies should then not deflect us from going to church but, instead, positively beckon us there.
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…when we avoid the pain and mess of ecclesial encounter to walk a less painful private road or to gather with only persons of our own kind, the heart need not and generally does not stretch. Going to church is one of the better cardiovascular spiritual exercises available.
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Most of the time (church) is so frustrating that we do not see the joy that is, in fact, underneath. In the end, we go to church for the same reason that we continue to have Christmas dinner together as a family–for the pure joy of it.
This morning I found myself more curious about the lives of those around me; particularly those who often rub me the wrong way and make me wish I could have just stayed in bed. I thought more about the liturgy, the music, the message – all vehicles by which together we manifest Christ’s body: actually incarnate Christ in the here-and-now despite all our pathologies, irritations, idiosyncrasies, and faulty expectations. Any movement toward that kind of grace feels consistent with Christ. And any experience of Christ in our midst ought to draw us – ought to draw me – speedily, readily, and consistently to such a place and such a people.
Rolheiser states the following:
Anger and hard theological questions about the church are not the biggest problem; indifference and a culture of individualism are.
I can relate to and even choose indifference and individualism but at least this morning, while sitting in my same pew and seeing the same faces as every other week, I found myself wanting to both experience and be about incarnation instead. I close – at least for tonight – with a quote in Rolheiser’s book from Alan Jones:
In the waters of baptism we are reminded that we are not born in a vacuum, nor do we journey entirely alone (though loneliness is often part of the burden). Being reborn, being made alive, involves being born into a community. So there are strings attached to this adventure. Far from being the spiritual journey of the solitary individual in search of God, it drags a people, a church, a nation, the human race, along with it.
Today I’m thankful for those strings…