Instead of teaching us how to defend the Gospel, teach us how to live it.
Growing up, I never liked going to church. I basically only went because my parents made me. I mean, why would you want to waste three hours of your day going to a large but unexciting building, sitting in a class where you learn nothing except how to goof off, go upstairs, sing three generally boring songs, and then sit for half an hour on hard benches and listen to someone talk about something completely uninteresting, if not seemingly irrelevant, to your life, and then wait for your mother to finally finish talking to all the other ladies so you can go home, change, and watch TV? Welcome to my old view of church. I usually read a book through it.
Recently, I have learned that church can actually be good. It can feel alive. And you can get stuff out of it to encourage and support your daily walk with Christ. Not to mention that Christian community is really really important.
But I have one complaint. Why did I have to leave the country to learn this? One church service from last year stands out in my mind. It happened at my parents' church in Saskatchewan, the same church I grew up in. Maybe I'm jaded, I don't know. But the person who was preaching that day preached on creation. How creation was right and evolution was wrong. He had examples and everything. Proofs. Details. Complicated intricacies of the animal world, proving that we are created beings. And my problem is this: I don't care. People have decided their stance on creation versus evolution a long time ago. I didn't come to church to hear another argument about it, when you're saying the exact same thing everyone has already said. Again. I came to learn about how to live my faith in the world. I want advice on how to love people who are hard to love. I want to know how to live my faith in the workplace. I want to know how to not be distracted by boys. I want community that encourages me, where I feel that after these few hours with other Christians, I can go out into my extremely secular culture and live for another week or few days confidently, strongly, differently. I want to learn how to share my faith with strangers who confront me in the street. I want to know what following Jesus is. And I'm sorry, but I didn't come to hear how the mosquito proves that we are created. I don't give a damn. Teach me how to live so radically different from the world that they will notice, and then teach me how to love those who are persecuting me. That is what I want to know. And then shove me out the door so I go do it.
So my final question is this. How do you bring to life a dying church? Because I can't get over the fact that I feel like the church I grew up in is dying. It's not growing. It's cold. And at the risk of being called an upstart young girl who went to Bible school and now thinks she knows everything, I think something drastic has to change.
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2 comments:
Maybe someone else who was there that Sunday needed to hear what was being said. It didn't matter to you, but maybe it helped solidify what someone else had been dealing with.
This is the cry of a lot of other people who have left church because theology replaced theophany. If we are to reach the rest of the world we have to be able to show something real, something that you can get passionate about. But like you said, it's those things we were once part of that we become most critical of. When we start becoming the solution, those with good hearts will follow.
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