This has been in my head for a while but reading the dual posts of Jonathan Tony and his friend Brandon Noel provoked the thoughts to the surface. Here’s their posts:Brandon’s Post and Jonathan’s Post What do I abhor about “the church”? Brandon speaks of why he left the church proper because he felt that they weren’t living up to what it should be and is beyond repair as an establishment. In some ways I agree strongly. So from Jonathan’s side I have to ask why have I stayed and how possibly to address it.

If you’ve seen Good Will Hunting you know of this scene:

Will’s friend has ripped him a new one claiming that he’s wasted his life. He has the power to lift himself out of poverty and be known, and yet he does nothing. He tells him everyday he drives to his home to pick him up he hopes he’s gone. He hopes that Will has packed up and left to claim what is his.

This is how I feel about the church. I hope with all my heart that someday the church picks up and claims what is ours. Claims the message of the gospel and OWNS it.

#1 in my mind is the tying of what the church is to a building and music. This is funny to me as an Architect and someone involved with the production of the church service (sound tech). People will leave churches because the music is too loud, or too old. They’ll leave because the seats are too uncomfortable leading to the movie theater seating monstrosities we have today. I do however hope with all my heart someday I show up to church on a Sunday and the doors are chained shut. With the pastor outside he says, “Go forth. Be the church, today our service is out here in Jensen Beach.” I want a church where the people know the pastor’s office is the living room of his home and the sanctuary of his church is not defined by man-made walls.

I play ultimate frisbee every Monday with a younger set of people in the area. We had just moved fields a few months ago and the new one is not in one of the nicer areas of Stuart. Not that it’s bad at all, but it’s a working class neighborhood, and to be frank many of the privileged white kids felt strange with a lot of Hispanic people hanging around playing soccer and just loitering. There was one group that stood out. They were a large group and had been huddled for over an hour just outside the park fences seemingly doing nothing.

One kid asked what they were doing. Another who I know not to be a believer said, “I think they’re praying. I’m not a religious man, but I think that’s the kind of church Jesus would have wanted.” What he said stuck with me. He KNEW. All I could say was, “I think you’re right.”

I’m sure thousands are like him that pass our church and long for and know what happens inside the walls of most modern churches is not what their heart longs for. To the ignorant our customs are strange, our music lame, and the attachments to our core doctrine a leech to the power of God.

At the same time I cling to hope. Despite being one of the larger and more modern churches of the area I’m involved and committed to it. My hope springs from the joy that made me stay after the first service I went to. The head pastor at my Church, First Baptist of Jensen Beach, said that if someone asked him what they should go to if they only had one event they could attend… that it’d be our church’s life groups (small groups or whatever else you may want to call them) and not the Sunday service. I have joy and hope for the church on Saturday’s when I’m at my group. We meet at a church elder’s house, eat together and then open the word. Beyond that we go to goofy events and gorge on Taco Tuesday and debate what it means to practice our faith over Coldstones.

It ignites me inside. That’s what I feel sometimes, that the church is a fire that has run it’s course and needs either new wood or to be stoked again.