Loving God . . . Outside of the Church
February 12, 2021 Roland Kuhl 0 Comments
All my life I grew up and went to church, worshiped in church, and served in the church for over 40 years in pastoral roles. Yet, I find now, in my later years, I am exploring loving God outside of the church, specifically the North American church.
Years ago I heard the following joke: On a Sunday morning a voice yells down the hallway to a sleeping young man, who has overslept, that it is time to get up for church. Fifteen minutes later, still asleep, the voice calls out with more urgency reminding him, “It’s time to get up.” “Why?” he responds. “Give me two good reasons why I should get up on a Sunday.” Responding she says, “Well you’re thirty years old, you’re no longer a teenager, and two, you’re the pastor.”
I know as a pastor that I had my moments of feeling like this, getting up on a Sunday morning, to fulfill the various roles and responsibilities pastoral duties entail in leading worship, preaching on Sunday morning, offering hope and healing to those who struggle for various reasons. Indeed, this has been good work. Though I loved God deeply, and still do, my Sunday morning routines could often feel like performance, rather than an act of joining in with others in expressing my love to God, making sure worship went well, rather than joining with others in participating in worship. Though this was not always the case, yet it was often enough for me to reflect on how I might pastor differently.
Now that I am not serving a church, as well as being in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, I find myself not often participating in church – for sure not in face-to-face worship gatherings, but also I do not often find myself engaging in online versions of church. It seems that I am beginning to understand more personally those who identify as being “Done with church – yet still open to God.” As a clergyperson, I find that I am increasingly finding God outside of the church, specifically the way church is being done in North America.
In recent years I have found myself more and more engaging with a younger generation who are wrestling with their own questions about God, about church, and what life means. There is a growing number of people who identify as “Nones” – those with no religious affiliation, as well as “Dones” – having tried church, but now giving up on church and looking for a relationship with God elsewhere, outside of church. In fact, many suggest that they have a more meaningful experience and relationship with God outside of church – that the way church is being done in North America takes away from encountering the God who is Living, Compassionate, and makes all things new.
The question that I pose, for them (and for myself) is whether it is possible to be a disciple of Jesus outside of the church? A few years ago, I heard a friend of mine confess that they no longer identify as Christian, but rather identify as being a disciple of Jesus. The reason being that the identification of “Christian” in our consumeristic North American society has become weighted down with much negative baggage.
I find something fundamentally intriguing about that confession – a confession I have begun to express about myself as well. I can attest, and those who know me well will also attest, that I am deeply committed to being a disciple of Jesus, seeking to participate with God in all that God is doing in the world, and to continue the ministry of Jesus in what I express as Christopraxis (a term introduced to me by my former theological professor, Ray S. Anderson).
So, again, is it possible to be a disciple of Jesus outside of the church? Is it possible to love God and participate with God’s redemptive and recreative mission in the world outside of the church? My response is both a Yes and No.
First, of all Yes, it is possible, especially when we have come to understand church, the way we so often do today in our social and cultural contexts. Indeed, the church, has become an integral part of the social structure (going all the way back to the 4th and 5th centuries), though of late, within postmodernity its value and significance in society is growingly being questioned. Though there have been attempts to revitalize the role of the church in society since the last two to three decades of the 20th century, the established, institutionalized church, that once shared power with the state, whose vestiges still remain, is seeing itself becoming more marginalized, more irrelevant and out of touch with the goings on of an increasing number of people.
I do struggle with our understanding of church as it is so often expressed in our contemporary cultural context. We view church as a building or organization (indeed, which it has become in our North American and Western contexts). We view the church as a not-for-profit organization, with the IRS designation of being a 501(c)(3) organization that has tax-exempt status. The church has become a social institution which serves a purpose, not only for religion, but for culture, society and politics as well.
Though the church ought to be incarnational, having a presence in culture, in society, it is to be a salt and light in the world, pointing to a different reality, rather than following after whatever trend might make them seem relevant. In regard to what is largely our present understanding of church for many, I would say that I am becoming more and more “Done” with identifying with such an understanding of church.
This is quite traumatic for me, since I have given all my adult life to supporting for the most part, the institutional church, as well as it has supported me and provided for me and my family – not only in pastoral functions, but in teaching within theological seminaries as well. As I find a place of ministry “outside” of the church, connecting with people who are “Done” with church, but not God, I find there are fresh encounters, led by the Spirit, in which I am in deep conversations with people who seek to love God outside of our present understanding of what it means to be church. So, yes, we can love God outside of church in light of what it has become in a consumeristic culture.
Yet, my response is also, No!
It is not possible to love God outside of church. This requires a different understanding of church; an understanding that is more foundational, drawing not on an institutionalized understanding, but rediscovering what Jesus meant when he talked about ekklesia (which though has been translated as church – actually means “a gathering of people for a specific purpose.”)
It raises the question for me – with my being “Done” with institutionalized and not-for-profit designated church, what does it mean to be the community of Christ Jesus in the world? For one I have discovered that I still have the experience of being part of church as I gather with other disciples and seekers of Christ in all sorts of places – having a conversation in a restaurant, coffee shop, tavern, or pub, sitting on a park bench reflecting on what it means to be part of what God is doing in the world, or even in class settings in which I seek to present in fresh ways the Story and Vision of God in such a way that it gives new insight to students questioning their faith in which they were raised, to see a pathway ahead of them that is indeed filled with purpose and life, that God can be part of a whole and fulfilling life.
But how can this be “church?” What does it actually mean to gather together around Jesus outside of the established and institutionalized church in order to be gatherings of church spread out all over a community – without buildings, without tax status, but rather, as people who are exploring ways of loving God, speaking life into one another’s lives, joining in with what the Spirit of God is up to in the world, who find each other and sit down over a coffee or beer to be church (ekklesia)?
Actually, Jesus’ understanding of church is more like the latter, than what we see represented by edifices. Jesus in Matthew 16 expressed, “that where two or more of you are gathered, there I am in the midst.” Loving God, for me, has become more about gathering with others who gather around Jesus, so that we can love God together – outside of institutional church, but actually as a different kind church/gathering together in the presence of Jesus. In such gathering together, I have come to discover that in sharing life together, we speak life, the life of God into each other.
A number of years ago, when I was living in Illinois, a group of us (3-4 guys to be exact) gathered together every Wednesday morning for breakfast. Over the years, this became a kind of church for us – we gathered together to speak life into one another’s lives, because God poured out life into us. We were open and honest with each other, expressing our spirituality in messy and earthy ways, reminding ourselves of God’s Story and Vision in our lives, amidst our struggles, doubts, hopes, dreams. We prayed with one another and we were church together sharing the life and love of God with one another. The writer of Hebrews declared that we are not to forsake our gathering together – and indeed, our Wednesday morning gathering over great food and coffee in a local restaurant, was something I deeply looked forward to and hardly ever missed (something worth getting up out of bed for at an early hour) – because in our gathering we deeply loved God and one another. So, No, we cannot love God outside of church, but it seems that increasingly church in North America is not what is being expressed by what Jesus had in mind for church.
I invite you to explore this question for yourself as you struggle with thoughts of being “done” with Church, but not with God. Ask yourself, how might we gather as disciples of Jesus, not as Church, but as church?