Name That Church

We have been in the process of a church merger for the past year. And I love the new, emerging church I am a part of. I can proudly state that it is not a "Normal" church. One of the most difficult things we had to decide on was what to name the church. If you thought that old television game show, "Name That Tune," was tough, you should have been with us when we played, "Name That Church." My favorite suggestion was The Church of Restoration and Peace. Quite honestly the only reason I like the name is that the acronym would be C.R.A.P.

After almost forty years of serving in the church in North America I believe I have become somewhat of an expert on the subject of the church. I have been working in it, observing it, thinking about it, working to better it, studying it, writing about it, preaching to it, praying for it, attempting to lead it and loving it for the better part of four decades. I know the church. And I have come to the conclusion that CRAP is a great name for the church. Let me explain.

The church has become so lost and wandered so far away from what God intended for it to be and do that much of what the church says and does seems to be a bunch of CRAP. Since I am a part of the church I can say, that is not our intention. We want to be helpful. We mean to be sincere. We just can't because of all the CRAP. We don't mean to preach CRAP but we do. The liberal/progressive church preaches a hazy religiousness and mishmash of psychology, philosophy and suggestions of nice things to do that has little to do with God and lots to with being nice and thinking nice thoughts and wanting good things to happen in the world. We are much more excited about going "green" than we are about going out to share our faith. The preaching sounds meaningful but it is empty and meaningless because it lacks the spirit of the living God. A vast majority of theologically liberal ministers I have met don't really believe God is a reality and seriously doubt that Jesus ever really existed and certainly didn't physically rise from the dead. When challenged about their lack of faith in some of the central issues of the Christian faith and it is suggested that they are not Christian, they are deeply offended. And I wonder why? I don't hold as true some of the basics of other faiths but am not offended when accused of not being a Muslim. I am not. But the church in North America has become so full of crap we can't tell the crap from Christianity. We literally don't know the difference. That is why many church people who read this will be infuriated. I have called their faith system CRAP and they are absolutely positively sure that it is the purest form of Christianity ever practiced on this earth because their progressive theology has evolved.

On the other hand, the conservative/legalistic church has reduced preaching to emotional manipulation that seeks to frighten people into the Kingdom of God. There are some Biblical references mixed in (God forbid that they be from the wrong translation.) but that preaching is just as much CRAP as the stuff spilling from the liberal pulpit. Oh, now I have gone and done it. The fundamentalists were with me up until now. I am sorry about that but crap is crap. In the evangelical church becoming a Christian is reduced to repeating a prescribed prayer giving some form of intellectual agreement that Jesus died on the cross for sinners and calling on God to do His duty and forgive me and let me into heaven. Having had my ticket punched, having purchased my fire insurance policy, having the assurance that because I said the magic prayer I am now heaven bound and free to live my life as I damn well please. As we go about living as we please, if things don't go well, all I have to do is press the panic button of prayer and the God who is obligated to save me is obligated to fix whatever mess I have made and make my life perfect and pain free. If God fails to do as requested I will, of course, be really pissed at Him and, as punishment to Him, I may never set foot in a church again. That will teach him. And I really don't need to because the preacher is preaching that same "get saved" sermon every week (with new illustrations) and since I am already saved I don't need to be there.

The church is teaching crap. On one side we hear the call of the gospel reduced to trying to be nice and do stuff to bring social justice. Don't do anything difficult or meaningful. Instead do things like hold candlelight gatherings that condemn the social injustice in some African or Latin American country. Write a letter to a politician. Stop shopping at Wal-Mart. (Like you had ever set foot in the place.) Only drink coffee harvested from the approved farms – unless you are at Starbucks and then all bets are off. Don't get carried away and do something that would alter your lifestyle, cost you some money and really make a difference. Instead do something that won't make any difference in the situation but will make you feel better. On the other side of the church we spent hours each week studying Scripture so we can decide exactly when Jesus is going to return, what form a baptism God really likes, why the Jews should have known that Jesus was the Messiah, who is the antichrist, which translation of the Bible is God's one true inspired Word, and other amazingly meaningless topics so we can stay busy thinking about this meaningless drivel instead of taking Jesus' teachings on how to treat others, social justice, how we use our money, and serving a lost and broken world so they might catch a glimpse of God in our lives and be lured into the warm embrace of God's love. We must spend hours studying what are the right and wrong things to do so we can ride herd on our society. If we stay busy enough doing this crap we won't have time to even consider the fact that there are millions of people all around us suffering from social, political and economic injustice. We don't have to consider that fact that our lives are in total disarray and completely out of God's control. Here we are living self serving lives that look exactly like the lives of non believers and then wonder why others aren't interested in becoming Christian.

This brings me to the point that the church looks, lives and acts like CRAP. The divorce rate among Christians is as high as among non-believers. And I am one of those idiot divorced Christians. We don't do relationships any better than pre-Christians. Our children are as messed up and confused as the rest of the yahoos they run around with. They don't dress any different than their peers. I am not suggesting that we send out kids to school decked out like the Amish. But how about the clothes fit and more cloth than skin be showing? (Have you visited a public school lately? It looks like the boys dressed out of a dumpster and many of the girls look like hookers.) Unfortunately a common Christian response to rearing kids in our secular society is to home school. God forbid we empower our kids with good values, our good example and support, the Word of God and the Holy Spirit and send them to public schools to make a difference. Has it even occurred to us that perhaps, instead of being poisoned by the other children, our children could provide a positive, healthy Christian witness to their pre-Christian friends? Instead, we encase them in a safety bubble and keep them from that big bad world out there and ensure they are completely incapable of living healthy, impactful, meaningful lives in our culture as adults. The Christian kids listen to the same nasty music, say the same nasty things and do many of the same nasty things their pre-Christian friends do. Just like their parents. Christians are as deeply in debt as the unchurched. Believers worship at the altar of materialism and seek power and stature through the same accumulation of wealth as those who don't claim to know Christ. Believer's lives and schedules are as out of control as their unbelieving counterparts. We hate and complain about our jobs, spouses, children, and lives in general as much as those who don't know Christ.

People outside of the church look into the church and, from observing our lives, see no advantage to being a Christian. We are as messed up as they are. The only difference is we have a bunch of boring, judgmental friends we have to hang out with for a couple of hours on Sunday morning while pretending that we are not what we really are and that all is great in our lives. Instead of doing that the unchurched can go have a few beers and some fun on Saturday night with some fun friends and then sleep in on Sunday morning, enjoy a late breakfast and a second cup of coffee and the morning paper. Gee, what a difficult choice. I wonder why our churches are not growing.

The church puts up with CRAP. People in the church often are often hateful and rude to each other. We fight with each other about some of the most meaningless junk in the most venomous terms. We gossip about each other. We say unkind things about each other. We judge each other. We often have little grace for those who fall into sin (and get caught. The trick here seems to be, don't get caught.). Instead of loving each other and those around us we often screech at them pointing out the things in their lives that we don't approve of. We come across as judgmental jackasses braying at all that is happening around us instead of quiet voices of God's love, grace, healing and power. The sad thing is that we often are judgmental jackasses. Isn't it time for us to start to say to one another, with the love of God in our heart, "For God's sake, shut up."

When the church worships we are at our Crappy best. We have worship wars over the music and style of worship. When we are with our gang, we belittle the way those other, less spiritual Christians worship. The funny thing is that this holier than thou worship attitude is held by both sides. As Christians seem wont to do, we are all quite sure that the way we do it is the holy, God pleasing, God ordained way of worship. We are so busy being right about worship and so busy doing worship just right that somehow we manage to pretty much leave God out of the mix. We don't care if our worship pleases God as long as it pleases us. My assumption is that since it pleases me, it must be pleasing to God because, I don't know if you have noticed, but God just happens to be just like me. What a happy coincidence. And we certainly don't care if worship is inviting to the unbeliever. So what if what we do in worship seems weird, meaningless or even nonsensical to the unchurched who visit. I don't care because it is working for me.

The church worships a god of CRAP. Since my god is created in my image, god is a god of crap. He/she is only interested in me. In me getting my way, getting more stuff, getting people to do what I want them to do. God is also very interested in the survival of the intuitional church and looking good to society. As a believer, god wants me to own more stuff and have more status in the community. He wants the church have more stuff and have more status in the community. It is all about how we are perceived by the world.

Last but not least, the church doesn't do CRAP. We talk a lot. We hold candle light vigils. We write unread letters to the Heads of State. But we don't do crap. We don't do things like get our debt and spending under control so we have the resources available to really help change the lives of a family in need. We aren't willing to abandon our all important schedules to make the time available to give some time to someone who may only need a listening ear. We rush past people in need because we can't be late to a soccer game or a tennis lesson or a church committee meeting. We would like to help the homeless as long as we don't have to see them, talk to them or (God forbid) provide them someplace to sleep. We will feed the hungry as long as it is about a meal a month delivered to some folks that live several miles away and I won't have to deal with them until my next drive-by feeding. If the church does anything to help others it is done at arm's length.

The people in our culture who are not in the church are not stupid. They see clearly that the church is a bunch of CRAP and stay away. Church people are astounded and offended by what the honest non believer has to say about the church. The truth is that when you have been living in crap as long as the average church member has, you just get used to it. Generally speaking, the church in North America is not healthy, helpful, healing or holy. It is not powerful, life changing, culture impacting, or life giving. It offers little joy, love or hope. It lives to serve itself and maintain the status quo. The church seems no different than and from the secular society that surrounds it. The church offers little or nothing of value to the culture in which it exists. The church has lost its voice because it has lost its mind and its spirit. It has nothing to say to the world because the church is just full of CRAP.

Like I said, I love the church I am a part of. We haven't arrived. We still have a ways to go in being the church God wants us to be. But we are certainly working on it. And we are not the only church seeking to be a church that makes a difference. They are all around. It is just that they are few and easily lost in the shuffle. Now that I think about it, perhaps we should have named our church the Church of Radical Action and Power. That is a CRAP church that would work for me. How about you? Want to do church with me?

Copyright © 2008, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved