This has happened to me at every church I’ve attended semi-regularly as an adult: When I go to an event, the people at the event, when introduced to me, ask, “Oh, do you go to the 8 o’clock service?” At churches where there are more than two services, I get “So which service do you go to?” There is, I guess, an underlying assumption that in order to be a part of of church community, one must attend ONE of the services a church offers, and since they don’t see me there, I must go to the other one.
It has happened so regularly that I’m beginning to think there’s something to this, in spite of the fact that I have yet to actually meet a new person (i.e. be introduced to a strike up a conversation with someone, not just shake their hand at the Peace) within a church service.
Now, for the baggage part of that: I don’t go to the 8 a.m. service, and I sometimes feel like there’s something judgmental inherent in the assumption that if I don’t go to one, I go to the other. There’s a big part of me that feels like I got so much church service between the ages of roughly 3 and 15 that now, when I go, it’s a recitation. That’s not to say there’s not comfort in it: there is, it’s like meditation, it’s like practice, a regrounding of oneself in the pray, listen, reflect, repent, commune cycle of the Anglican liturgy.
But I really don’t go every week, at least not to one, single church. Sometimes I’m traveling and visit other churches. Sometimes I go to church in Second Life. Sometimes I flip open my prayer book right here in my office and discover something new in it. Sometimes I’m out hiking and it’s just enough to know that presence within the cricket and bird song, the rustling leaves, and the laughter of a partner who loves you pushing you along.
Truth is, I have trouble imposing structure on my life — structure tends to impose itself on me, and the results can be painful. But on the other hand, I find that I’m always in a place of discovery and delight. I think it’s part of my ENFP wiring, that I like the unpredictability of “church where you are,” and thrive on it.
So what service do I attend? The one in my heart. I’m still trying to figure out how that works in community, but I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with why I have so many Episcopal priests among my Facebook friends.
Heh – as I read this, I was struck how the experience you describe is soooo totally what happens in my Episcopal church (which I love – don’t get me wrong), and to totally impossible in my “emerging” church, on several counts:
1) We’re really small and really close, so everybody knows everybody.
2) It’s totally normal for folks to be 100% part of the community yet very rarely attend a worship service – it would be really strange for anyone to question that.
3) If you do come to a worship service, unless you actively avoid engaging with folks (which is OK!), you will definitely, really meet and have conversations with multiple people.
4) Our services are really, substantially different every week (though firmly grounded in tradition, and even specifically in the BCP), so it would be hard to feel like it’s a recitation.
Last week, a couple who are new to our community invited us to an evening of scotch tasting, cigars, and philosophy (though it turned out to be more politics than philosophy) at their apartment, and all present agreed that that was as much “church” as what happens on Sunday mornings.
Srsly, Helen “church where you are”, yet in community, sounds an awful lot like us, to me. If it’s too far to commute to us, why not plant??
(You may be on to something about your clergy friends, tho – part of the character of our church is that just about everybody in it has a commitment to living out their faith every day that is more comparable to that of the average priest than it is to the average Episcopalian lay person, IMHO.)
I actually have been trying to figure out how to create that emerging church experience here within the chaotic framework that is my life. I have the vision for it but can’t seem to execute it. I’m full of ideas but need some “do” people!
My priest here loves the idea, and I think if I can ever get to a point where I’m not on the road all the time it will be an ideal thing for me to take a leadership role in.
That said, can we persuade you and your lovely wife to export something out this way sometime in the fall? This is a lovely time of year and will get prettier in the next couple of months!
And thanks for your comments, because I think you’re absolutely spot on!
Hmmm, where to begin here?
A friend of mine contends that we (many of us) have been taught bad theology (or at least ecclesiology)from a very early age and pass it along without a second thought.
It goes something like this:
We fold our hands together and say, “Here’s the Church, here’s the steeple, open the door and look at all the people.”
The reality is that is backwards. Garrison Keillor puts it this way, “sitting in church no more makes one a Christian than sitting in a garage makes one a car.”
The point is that Church is first the gathered people of God and then finds a place gather for worship AND other things.
Worship is one of the principal functions of Church, it’s easy to quantify and report, but it’s not the WHOLE life of the Church. The whole life of the church goes on in the office over the Book of Common Prayer, it goes on in the creation that has been called the ‘Church not made of hands’, it happens in the conversations about something deeper than weather, sports, politics or music, it happens when an act of love is offered without thought of what might ‘come back’ my way. Church happens when folks are genuinely hospitable, welcoming folks on the guest’s terms and with the compassion and selfless caring that can only come from God.
Church is Matthew 25 every bit as much as it is The Upper Room and the meal. Church is the footwashing, the feeding of the 5,000, quiet prayer in our closet, bringing the paralytic to Jesus, calling out “I believe, help my unbelief”.
I believe wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus name, there is Church.
But it is most the church in gathering. Some like to call it balance. I prefer to think of it as rhythm. It’s a dance with the Divine moving between contemplation and action, between solitude and solidarity always in and out of the light. Dancing well with any partner doesn’t just happen, it requires practice and a willingness to live with the fact that we’ll both step on toes and have our stepped on.
Maybe that’s why the Good Friday Collect calls the Church a ‘wonderful and sacred mystery.’ This is mystery I’m way more interested in experiencing than I am in solving it.
That’s about all I have to say about that!!!
Sure! We’d love to visit this fall! Not quite sure what you mean by “export something”, but we’d love to come visit and see the beautifulness!
I was thinking exporting you’ns’s awesome presence, actually. 😀 Only weekend that’s out is 10/11 cause we’re in philly, and we do kinda need to visit my folks at some point to show them the wedding video, but aside from that we’re pretty open come October. 😀