It’s called Under the Overpass.

I’m really wrestling right now with what seems like a huge chasm between what the U.S. church is and what it should be.

Because frankly I don’t go to church, precisely because of the reasons Kim mentioned. A sense of obligation, habit, (often somewhat forced) relationships with people we wouldn’t want to spend time with otherwise, obedience (to whom?), to participate in a kind of worship that often seems devoid of any content (but full of jargon we don’t understand ourselves… “grace”, anyone… or “forgiveness”?), to get on the right track (by listening to a sermon by someone whose authority to speak on the matter is what, exactly?)… those things don’t smack of the holy presence of Jesus in the kind of yearning, intense way that He seems to ask of us. In evangelical circles especially, I think church has become a social club/pep rally/sense-of-righteousness-injection moment for nice people who want a sense of community and who want to be told that their opinions are correct. And getting away from the Sunday-Wednesday-pew model doesn’t change that basic failure.

So that’s a blanket statement, yes, and it’s unfair. But I’d like those who wish to change that to come out and say what they mean, exactly, when they talk of things like “celebration” (apart from what happens in all self-help groups where the members share how they’ve been “touched” by whatever’s important to them and everybody else nods affirmingly and sometimes they cry), by “expressing the overflow of days” (apart from the slightly embarrassing “I am so thankful”-confessions we affirm our sentimentalities with in small groups with about as much spiritual depth as a Hallmark card), or by “meeting Jesus” (except by making him in our image of an ornery nice guy and then ourselves being nice guys to each other and then hoping that means we’re holy).

How’s that for playing devil’s advocate? (For those of you who don’t know me, btw, I’m not really that down on the church. I say this like I do because I think we tend to evade the question by falling back either on change as a virtue in itself, or on holy talk, or on justifying what we do by the pleasant emotions we feel while we do it, such as a sense of belonging or a sense of purpose or a sense of acceptance or a sense of joy… those can be had in hundreds of ways other than church.)

Have at it.

Why I wish our community gathered:
To celebrate what we have experienced God to do throughout the week.… to express the overflow of days lived with an awareness of and obedience to God’s presence.

Honestly, I know a few people who do gather for those reasons. And I want to be just like them when I grow up.