Another blog I read sometimes had a link to this post today. My first reaction to reading it was "AMEN!!!" But as I kept reading, the piece I found missing was the necessity of community for the Christian life. He kind of hits on this by saying church is good for those who don't have Christian friends. But then he says that since he does, he doesn't need to go to church. I suppose the implication is that he does spend time in community with his Christian friends, and I certainly hope that's true.
My recent explorations of "church" outside the norm I grew up in (read going to Common Table) have really brought home the concept and importance of community to me. I am only beginning to develop relationships with the other people there, but they are already becoming very important in my life. I am so excited on Sundays to go and worship, discuss, and eat with them. I even got up at 7am to go weeding with this group! Now that says something...
The "church" as it currently exists may indeed feel like "reruns" to many people. But I think that the reconceptualization of church, really focusing on the communal aspects, could be very powerful for this world.
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cool link - i think darin nailed it -
early on when commontable was still marshill (full of idealism and spunk and vinegar, oh and the slogan "expect the unexpected") - our founding pastor led us through a series on the ten commandments - called "Gods Top Ten List". I'd like to say this was when David Letterman was fresh and new, but it wasn't that long ago.
a couple years after he left - we were surprised to find a book called "God's Top Ten List" in the church library - except we weren't that surprised. it became even more disheartening to the lay people of our weekly service production team (the Design Team) to discover there are all kinds of resources for pastors all over the internet. so here we were doing fresh original content every week (well, since the pastor left, with his empty slogan) as volunteers - and people who were getting paid full time to create content were buying their term papers.
one of my brothers and one of my best friends can't go to church's like the ones darin describes. when they do, they come out swearing - and off all the metrics to evaluate a church by, I'd say if you're walking out the door pissed that the church has sold it's soul to a corporate business model - you have a case to stay home.
and the alternatives are few. it's so sad we don't have more churches interested in acknowledging this and confessing their sins ... enough so to start over... but when you wonder why that isn't happening, consider "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it"
your post was on community though - and here is how i think the two relate. when we attend a theater - the subconscious message is "you / your thoughts are not important to what is happening here". when you attend a service that is not only original thought, but unscripted(!) you / your thoughts play big! which is why we find no one moves for an hour or more after a service ends... and then we eat together.
so glad to have your thoughts and weeding around at common table kr!ss!!
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