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| photo by Carmen Andres |
The
other day, I took the Metro into DC. The station was at the beginning of the
line, so the car was only a quarter full. I grabbed a seat, took out my phone
and started scrolling through email and social media apps. By the time I put
away my phone 10 minutes later, the car was packed.
You’d
think with that 60 or so people crammed in one little space, there’d be some
noise, but it was so quiet that I could hear the rustle of a newspaper page
being turned half a car away from me. Some riders were reading or looking at
their phones while others closed their eyes or looked at nothing in particular.
No one was talking.
This
isn’t unusual. There’s a certain etiquette for riding public transportation that
creates a kind of unspoken social order to protect personal space and politeness.
And as an introvert, I don’t mind at all.
But
that morning it suddenly struck me that one of the only other places where I
could sit with that many people in silence was in a church service.
And
that got me thinking.
Silence
in services can be a good thing. No doubt, many are silent before a service
begins out of reverence for a sacred space or the desire to take a few moments to
quiet before God rather than out of politeness or respect for personal space.
But
I can’t help thinking there are some connections between the silence on the
Metro and the kind of interaction that characterizes Sunday mornings in a lot
of churches.
After
walking in the doors, it isn’t uncommon—especially of larger congregations—for a
lot of people to know only a few, if any, of those they pass in the halls or sit
beside. Perhaps they exchange a few greetings on their way to claim their
seats, where they sit silent, eyes forward, looking at their phones or reading
something until the service begins. Then
they’ll sing songs, listen to a sermon, perhaps stand in line to take communion
alone or with their family, sing some more songs, and leave—walking through the
doors again, like Metro riders reaching their stop, having had nothing more
than a superficial conversation with another person, if that.
I’ll be honest. I’ve had shades of this
experience. A lot.
Don’t get me wrong, I find many aspects of worship
services very meaningful, but—and if you’re familiar with this blog, you know
what’s coming—the current way we define church and how we structure our
gatherings opens us up to creating an experience echoing that of a Metro car
full of strangers rubbing shoulders instead of the kind of people of God we are
called and enabled to be.
While we can point to and pour efforts into programs
supporting small groups and discipleship as ways to create more intimate
interactions, the resources and emphasis we continue to place on the Sunday
morning (or Saturday evening, etc.) service—and how many we can get into the
pews, chairs or stadium-style seating—belies the true focus of many
congregations.
And what we do when we gather can trip us up,
too. In Pagan Christianity, Frank
Viola suggests something as taken for granted as the “order of worship
represses mutual participation and the growth of Christian community... There
is absolutely no room for anyone to give a word of exhortation, share and
insight, start or introduce a song, or spontaneously lead a prayer” (which are elements
expressed in the meeting-togethers in the New Testament). It “encourages
passivity” and “implies one of hour per week is the key to the victorious
Christian life.”
But I think what trips us up the most is how so
many of us still think about church—as a place
to go instead of people to be.
We are God’s called-out ones, called out of
darkness to light, sin to righteousness, death to life, the world to the
Kingdom. And the church is us called-out-ones living-together—and the vast
majority of the time we do that takes place outside the walls of a building.
And our living-together in the Kingdom is the visible community of those living out Kingdom mission and Kingdom family. We are like
those in the early church, as Joseph Hellerman puts it in When the Church was a
Family, “a society of surrogate
siblings whose interpersonal relationships are to be characterized by …intimate, healthy, long-lasting
relationships” which place “the good of the church family above their own personal
goals, desires and aspirations” and can “count on support from the community to
meet their material and emotional challenges” which often comes “with
commitment to Jesus.”
This living-together
family becomes a living, breathing message of the good news to a world that
desperately needs to hear it.
I am encouraged by the creative ways some believers
are rethinking themselves and how they gather—Meeting House and Hill City come to mind. They are
wrestling out what it means to be and live like a
people characterized more by the family
relationships Hellerman references than the Metro-car like atmosphere that too
often creeps into Sunday mornings.
I continue to long for the spread of missional
communities that yearn and actively seek to live as the families that God calls
and enables us to be, who don’t see church as a place to go—one more activity
in our week full of activities—but families who live and breathe gospel
rhythms, eat together regularly, are the first ones we pick of the phone to
call in joy or sorrow and the ones with whom we love and serve side-by-side our
neighbors.
Just because a congregation has Sunday morning services
doesn’t mean it’s doomed to a Metro-car-like atmosphere. But I think it is one more
obstacle in an uphill battle when it comes to a full experience of what it
means to be the people we were created to be—a people in which God, as Dallas
Willard puts it, “is tangibly manifest to everyone on earth who wants to find
him.”