Have we gotten church wrong?

It started with a tweet. I suppose that’s how most things begin these days.

But my friend, Warren, shared a thought on Twitter … and like most things do, it got me thinking. #enneagram5

He wrote that if your church doesn’t want kids in the main service, then the theology may be off behind it. (See link/tweet below) I agree. And I think if we took a look at where the church is growing … and where it’s not. Then we’d likely come to the same conclusion.

https://twitter.com/WTruesdale9/status/1102317620370518016

However, even that is really a symptom of a greater problem — that maybe we’ve gone about church in a way now that doesn’t do what church is meant to do. I thought back to my many church experiences at home and overseas.

The big baptist church that first shaped my Christian walk … the modern Bible church I now attend … the classroom floor in Southeast Asia where we sang worship to one guitar … the tiny room in the dark lit by one candle and full of people lifting one another up in East Asia … the vibrant greeting of joyful singing as I stepped out of a van and into a small mud hut in Africa.

I could list off more, but I think you get the picture. I have had the privilege of seeing worship take place in over 10 different countries on 5 different continents, and in that experience, church doesn’t usually look like the Western ideal that we see around us each day.

In fact, the Church wasn’t established as a Western entity at all for hundreds of years. Even today, the global Christian population is shifting south and east … we’re falling out of favor, partly because the way we do church doesn’t translate or replicate, and partly because our faith is falling out favor altogether — maybe because the way we do “church.”

Our ecclesiastical practices often caters to the Western mind, and I think it’s hurt the development of the Church in the US over time. Worse, it’s hurt the development of the disciples the Church was meant to make … because we’ve made church what it’s not.

Church has become about us.

The reason the tweet about kids in the main service got me thinking was that I fully realize that I might prefer to not have kids in the service. They can be distracting. They can be loud. They can be … well, kids.

But church isn’t meant to be designed purely around my preferences, and shouldn’t we want our kids to grow up watching our families and friends experience God in worship? To grow up with complex topics and theology around them?

In one small church in East Asia, I remember seeing little kids roam around the room going from person to person — each one taking a turn playing with them and holding them. In a prayer meeting in Latin America, the kids did the same.

A friend of mine who grew up as a missionary kid in the Middle East reported the same. You see, when few spaces are made where you can be free to be with God and others who love Him … you want to be there and you want everyone else to experience it too … at any age.

Worship as a church isn’t about us. It’s about God. And it was designed FOR us — not so we feel comfortable, but so we grow.

Church has become a building.

In Southeast Asia, I visited a lot of Hindu temples. Hinduism is largely a thing of the past in the country I was in, but the relics of it still existed. Now they’re less of a place where people worship and more of a tourist attraction.

The thing is, they keep falling down. They’re stones piled on top of one another, and every time a major earthquake or tsunami runs through, they fall. And when they fall, they rebuild them. But they fall again — or will soon — and in the meantime, they had already moved on to another belief system entirely. One with a different kind of building.

It made me really excited about the fact that the Church cannot be contained by a building. The Church is all of us. It cannot be shutdown or stamped out. It won’t fall down or go away. In fact, one of its major advantages worldwide is that it doesn’t need one specific place or type of building to make worship possible.

And yet, church in the West feels like it’s connected to a place … a building.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a beautiful church. I cried when I walked into Notre Dame because it was actually that stunning. You know what else it was? Empty of worshippers.

But that doesn’t mean the Church in France is gone. It’s still there, because the people who believe are still there. Our meeting places aren’t limited by type or location. They’re only limited by having others to meet with.

Church happens in a coffee shop, on a living room floor, under a tree on a dusty plain, and around the table. When it’s tied to a building, we limit its power and its beauty … and we limit the power that the Spirit has to work through us when we’re outside of it.

Church has become an institution.

Because the Church has become about us and a building, it’s become a place to slip into and out of easily. It’s become very big. My church home is what I would consider medium-sized, and I still find people who’ve attended for years that I haven’t met before.

The setup of big worship services and voluntary small spaces has been designed to make us feel comfortable … and for some of us, comfortable is being left alone in a chair to worship then sneaking out before enduring any small talk. #introvertproblems

I could easily hide — and frankly, I have before. It also means people outside of the Church are less likely to come in (at least on Sunday or without a darn good reason to). They don’t know the people, the layout, the practices … they feel like they’re stepping into an alternate universe — and they can hide too.

Church was made for us. For connection, for growth, and for accountability — the knowing and shaping of each other. But churches in the West largely aren’t bodies anymore … they’re organizations and institutions. So a few get to lead and use their gifts, and the rest are merely constituents.

Every person in the Church needs the other people in the Church … it’s part of why the Church ISN’T a building. Because our needs exist outside of a building just like our lives do. And we were brought together to be the provision of the Lord in each other’s lives.

But we can’t do that, when we don’t have space outside of the 3 minutes of worship to meet new people or safe space to have deep conversations instead of being lectured to.

I love the Church.

I feel like I should say that, because I want you to know that I love the Church and I love my local body. But I often feel at war with what I experience today and what I felt moving in other parts of the world. I often wonder if the way we’ve set things up is helping or hurting … or which parts need rethinking or which parts are tailor-made for the culture we’re in and if that’s okay.

You’re seeing that here, and honestly, I don’t have an answer. Just lots of questions about what I’ve seen, what I know, and what God wants for his people.

But that’s the beauty of the Church too, right? I don’t have to know. There is space to ask questions, to bring other believers together to work through the hard questions, and to let the Spirit use each of us to minister to one another through it all.

At the very least, I feel confident in saying that’s part of what Church is and I’m grateful for it.