Church Membership

I'm not saying that we should throw the baby out with the bath water and forget everything about church as we know it. We've tried that already when we tried to plant a "post-modern" church in Richmond a few years back. A lot of the reason why this didn't really work out was because we, as leadership, were reacting to all the things that bothered us about church. The church plant was based on our "anti" reaction and we thought we knew better because we knew what we didn't like about the institutional church. The problem was we didn't have the wisdom to really see God's essence in church. Church (or "church" with a small 'c') is institutional, Church with a big 'c' is a freeing, loving communion with God.

All this talk about wanting to be part of a community has got me wondering why it's so darn hard to accomplish this. Well, I think for one thing, living in community is not part of our North American cultural DNA. If you've ever been with people from Latin America or the middle east, or even some European countries, they know what it means to live with others. They have a different sense of boundary, privacy and their perspective on sharing life with others. Here, we live in walled boxes, we work in walled boxes, we drive in little boxes, we don't talk to each other or really hang out with neighbors or people we don't know. We chat and email online and text message and the closest thing to community is joining an online social network or chat group.

We have a lot to learn about truly living in community. We haven't the faintest idea what that means and quite frankly, I think it scares us because this would mean that we would actually have to be with people. And being with people is hard, messy and involves a high level of emotional commitment.

Maybe this is why when we've been a part of a church for awhile, our whole world begins to revolve around it. Our friends, our kids' friends, our activities, the activities around our children are all with church people. Small group gatherings throughout the week are full of church people. There's nothing wrong with having Christian friends, my closest friends are Christian, but when we hang out with "just our own", we don't really need to work too hard in loving. Truly loving. Low emotional commitment. Life is safe in our Christian bubble. God created community so it can enlarge and expand not self propitiate.

There needs to be a balance. We need to find a place where we can feel safe and recharge so we can go out and be with people who need Love. We don't get to choose who we can love in Church (with a capital 'c'). Being in God's Church is messy, crazy, hard, deep, personal and real. Crazy high emotional commitment, no turning back.

Are we willing to step out and pop that Christian bubble we live in?

Do you belong to a church or are you part of Church?