Am I Done with Church?

October 26, 2015 Roland Kuhl 0 Comments

In my new role as being a pastor at large in the community (cf. www.CommunityPastor.com) I come across a number of people who are done with church, but not done with God or done with faith. And that raises a question of me from colleagues and friends who wonder about me – are you done with church too, Roland?

The short answer is No and Yes. No, I am not really done with church, but, yes, I am done with how church is largely being done. For the most part, church is North America is still very much a business enterprise, with pastor as business leader, running the programs, ensuring success – and all that is part of what missiologist George Hunsburger noted years ago when he remarked that the church has become “ a vendor of religious services and goods” (Hunsberger, “Sizing Up the Shape of the Church,” The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, ed. by George Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 337-338.)

So, yes, I am done with church in the way it is being done. I have given years of my life to being part of such a church, and I guess I am glad I have failed at it. It’s just not what I think church ought to be, what I sense others deeply desire out of church, what I read about church in Scripture amid all their struggles. Many who are “done with church, but not done with God” are leery even of statements such as mine – but to be honest, I cannot completely reject what it means to be a people of God in the world. Such a people strive to be a community of people seeking to live out a different way of being human in the world in an interdependent relationship with God. The problem is there are very, very, few of such gatherings available.

Many young pastors whom I have met, sense deep down this problem and are uncomfortable with doing church in the way that it has been done over the past 30 years or so, but when it comes to needing to pay the mortgage, pay the bills, have stuff for the kids, enough pressure is placed upon them to conform – to maybe play around with the settings, but still to do church the way it has been done – and no matter what “clothes” are put on to cover up, the church they are part of organizing is still largely a business, vending religious services and goods. But then, that still what most people want – it’s a growing number of people who are saying, “Stop, no more, I am done with church!”

In the sociological study by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope, Church Refugees, what is revealed is that persons who are done with church but not their faith is that they long primarily for a few things – community, active participation to affect change, spiritual conversation, and meaningful engagement with the world (p. 28).

And as I stated above, I ask here: “What does it mean to be the people of God in the world, who are human in a very different kind of way, humans who are new creation because of their encounter with the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and are filled with the Holy Spirit, who are a community that engage one another, their neighborhoods, their worlds in such a way that they live out God’s unfolding Vision of shalom in the world?” What kind of church would that be? For me, that is the kind of church I am not done with, the kind of community with which I am eager to share in life.

What might such a community of human beings in relationship with God, participating with God in God’s redemptive mission in the world, be like?

I envision such a church as having no paid staff (to avoid slipping into hierarchical structures, and ones vying to be in charge, solely setting the direction), but being a community of people who share out of their giftedness, their passions, their callings, growing in the freedom of discovering their place in God’s mission.

I see us gathering for worship around the Lord’s Table – because Christ is the one who invites us together, calls us together – to break bread together and to remember his life, ministry, death and resurrection.  And together we discover, whomever we are, that Christ is the one who holds us together. We may discover that as we look at one another, we may wonder what Jesus has in mind drawing such a community together – and so rather than questioning Christ’s wisdom, we try to discern and figure out together how Christ is calling us to be community together. That is to say, all whom Christ invites and gathers are welcome – the community work for us to do is to discover how we are to be disciples of Jesus together and how that shapes us to be engaged with all that God is doing in the world.

We gather together as community to attend to God, to others, to selves, and to the earth. This we do by engaging and reflecting on Scripture, hearing and responding to God through prayer, through worship, and joining with one another in spiritual conversation and spiritual action in order to encourage our living in the way of Jesus in the world, so that we might participate with God in God’s redemptive mission in every place we find ourselves.

We gather together, not to build a non-profit organization, have status in the community, build a name for ourselves, but we come together to encourage each other to be the community of Christ in the world, to live as human beings who have been radically re-created through our encounter with Christ Jesus, to be human and to relate humanely in very different kinds of ways – for peace, for justice, for reconciliation, for community, for re-creation in our world.

I still think such a community of Christ is possible – but it does not fit our present paradigms of being church in the world. Yet, it is something I dream about and am giving myself to see happen.