A Call To End Your Church Baggage

I think I know how doctors feel… well sort of.  You know how when someone in a group meets a doctor, someone (usually me) blurts out some question seeking free unsolicited medical advice.  I have found that when I tell people I work for a church I usually end up with a lap full of unsolicited church baggage. 

Now my purpose in writing this isn’t to invoke sympathy.  It’s actually quite interesting to hear the very personal yet very common story about how God, Jesus and the church was terrible to you.  However, what does bother me is the caricature of the church I find myself defending in these conversations.  I often want to stop the conversation and say, do you really think we are all a bunch of delusional fundamentalists who hate women, the gays, and science.  Are we still going with the narrative that says the church is only interested in condemning people to hell if they don’t adhere to a strict moral code?

This is what evangelism has become for me.  Instead of spreading the ‘good news.’  I find myself at social gatherings answering the same series of questions about what I/the church think(s) about homo-sex, drinking, and hetero-sex.  What disappoints me is that I rarely get to share why I’m passionate about the Gospel and the church.

So here is my question: Is the overarching consensus about the church really that bad or has everyone just gotten too lazy to see the forest for the trees? 

It feels like every time there is a situation like Chic-Fil-A Day it only adds fuel to the superficial anti-church fires.  Come on, we are a brilliant generation of people, clearly you can see Chic-Fil-A Day was a political stunt and had nothing to do with the bible or church doctrine (if a man lies with another man, thou shalt eat chicken?  Come on).

My point:  If I were a nurse or a school teacher, no one would ask me to apologize for their childhood experience of going to school or the doctor.  Jesus nags this culture.  Why else, would people so voluntarily tell a stranger such personal information?  (It’s not uncommon for a stranger to cry in front of me about the subject)

For many in my context of the American South, I believe that Christianity is a dormant part of their identity that eats away at their soul.  I wonder if Jesus hovers around reminding people that there is life outside of this ridiculous rat race of hollow achievement and insatiable consumerism.    However, I believe people are mad (and people like me are left to apologize for it) because they believe the institutional church stands in the way; It’s too corrupt, too rigid, too anti-intellectual.

But you have to be smarter than that… right?  Every institution fails, every human has flaws, every person disappoints.  So why can’t the church?  Why can’t we simply discern that the church is the road that leads to the divine and not the divine itself.  Who told you the church was anything different, that you are left with this unrelenting disappointment?  Why can’t your own experience of your own shortcomings offer a perspective that understands this?   

So to everyone, my challenge to you is this: make a choice.  This way of ambivalence and bitterness will not lead you to wholeness.  Yes, the church in modern America has baggage.  But to everyone in their twenties and thirties, I write this to invite you to consider beginning a dialogue about how we are actually going to heal our planet and restore our humanity.  You know, something beyond good ideas, bumper stickers and conscious consumerism.  The church’s mission is to join God in healing the broken creation by living and loving as Jesus did.  You may not agree with a particular parish’s interpretation of that message but, I’m certain continuing to deconstruct the church won’t get any of us any closer to wholeness!  So either join the church or call a truce with Jesus because these conversations are a distraction!