I’m lonely for the church. There are many things I would like to say to the church but mostly, I would say, I miss you.
I don’t miss the programs or long sermons. I don’t miss the music or the potlucks. I certainly don’t miss being limited because of my gender. I miss being known in community. I miss the mission of caring for “widows and orphans” and the “least of these” together. And it is in my missing, where my frustration towards the church becomes actualized. The injustice lums large, Christian celebrities take center stage, and the divisions top the cake. Yet with all the garbage the church has picked up like lint to a wool sweater, I know in my gut there is much more. God, I hope there is. Or is this what we get? A good show with a side of Jesus at best. I don’t believe that is all because I long for something I have both experienced personally and something I have yet to fully encounter.
I also sense the collective loneliness of the orphaned church. It’s a deep cavern, carved from hurt and confusion. I can sense longing mixed with fear. We want community but have lost trust in the church. Many have looked around the church and are asking, “Where is Jesus?”. Our experiences reveal the church sees us as commodities, a means to an end. Tithers. Volunteers. Warm bodies in seats. A number. A task. Then if we dare step outside the comfort of those convenient categories, we are ignored or dismissed. But there’s always room for the charismatic and the gifted but the broken and quiet ones are forgotten, glossed over with side hugs and prayer requests. There’s opportunity to participate in holding babies and bulletins but little opportunity to ask questions, be creative and speak into the life of the church. Instead, we sit quietly and listen, over and over again until we eventually stop listening.
Is it fair to ask for more?
If you are like me, this question has me turning inward. What could I do to help? Is there something more I should be doing? Then I recall the many times I’ve tried and I am instantly discouraged. Maybe I should have stuck it out or fought harder. My friend Emily texted me the other day:
“I don’t know how to help the church. I just know that I love her.”
That’s it. You nailed it, Emily.
This made me think of Kate Bowler, author and professor at Duke University. After surviving stage four cancer, Kate began to rethink the spiritual and intellectual dimensions of an American belief that “everything happens for a reason”. In her devotional book, Good Enough: Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection, Kate defines what a “good enough” faith looks like:
A good enough faith is not reaching for the impossible. We can’t be everything to everyone, even enough for ourselves. We’re human.
Furthermore, Kate says:
A good enough faith looks for beauty and truth in what’s possible. No, not everything is possible. But we will hunt for places where we can find an opportunity for a little more.
What would good enough look like for the church? What would it look like for us, its members to look for truth and beauty? As it is absurd to expect ourselves to be striving towards perfection, why would we expect more from the church that is made up of…well, us?!
So, what is good enough for the church? For me, it is connection and mission.
Connection: Learning to love God and neighbor. Staying connected to the Vine who is Christ and bearing the fruit of that love by our love of neighbor.
Mission: Serving the “least of these”, fighting injustice, and sharing the good news of Jesus.
Those seem reasonable enough for me but I am slow to realize they are also large asks. Just as Bowler states we can’t be everything to everyone, what makes me think I can ask this of the church? Because the church isn’t an individual, it’s a community of people. I’m not asking the church for perfection, I’m asking for participation. To participate in the things of God that reach outside a Sunday morning.
If we put half as much effort into mission as we did in the 90-minute service/show we put on each week, the church would look much different. But mission is messy. It doesn’t come with a clean outline, a start and stop, it has endless opportunities. This terrifies us because requires us to see it through. What if I learned more than my neighbor's name? What if I learn they have cancer or are struggling as a single mom? I would be obligated to help. But I am busy and have little capacity as it is. So we opt for the 90-minute box. It’s easier and it fits into the schedule. You see, we the church, have created what we are now unable to stomach. But just as we have contributed to its current state, can we, little by little, reshape the church? Yes, I believe we can but who’s willing to sign up for that laborious task?! I know I haven’t been.
It’s easy for me to sit here and bitch (sorry, write) about the church, but it’s a lot harder to actively engage in reforming our communities to look more like Jesus because it requires me to look more like Jesus. Not in a morality, “what would Jesus do?” kind of way but a Jesus who was willing to lay down his life for the sake of the other, kind of way.
But I hate to admit, I like my opinions far too much than what it takes to reconcile and reform. It’s easier for me to hold onto what Dietrich Bonhoeffer call’s my “wish dream” of the church rather than seeing it for what it is in reality. Yet, I have been forever changed by an experience of the church I didn’t know existed. Though this community is long past, it has offered me a glimmer of hope and a fresh way of seeing the church. It’s not a wish dream, I know that church can be more. I believe it can engage connection and mission because we are thousands upon thousands of us, we are not siloed individuals. But change is often slow and difficult, and many of us want to give up. Many of us have already.
So where do we go from here?
When I am ready to give up, I try to remember that the true Church, the catholic, apostolic, eternal, with a capital-C Church, is something supernatural and still being led by the Holy Spirit. This Church is always working, always serving, and always learning ways to make disciples who love, the way Jesus loves. It may be hard to see at times but it is not an invisible phenomenon. I have seen it with my own eyes and have felt Her loving embrace. We may have to adjust our vision and commit to looking closer but She is there, amidst the messiness of our attempts to be the church. Perhaps this is where the reshaping begins, with a willingness to look for beauty and truth, for the good enough in our imperfect lower-c churches. And then be willing to ask, when the opportunity arises, for the church to be a little bit more.
It's hard to reconcile the ideal with reality so I feel you very much here. I have been in many Christian traditions at this stage and all have something I love and value but none have been my 'ideal' church. I opt to stay in structured church because I feel more can be done within than outside it. It's good to have these conversations to remind each other to both think about and act according to our hopes and commitments