What For?

I have enjoyed not going to church recently.

At first, I was surprised how much I liked not having church services but as the weeks have gone on I just enjoy the absence. I enjoy listening to church at home. I read my Bible and pray more than I have in years. I have interesting conversations with my family. Sometimes people call me on the phone or send me an email. I like being part of the process to record a worship service for the website from time to time. Sundays are relaxing now.

I don't miss any of the things I thought I would miss. In fact, the other day I tried to think of anything I miss at all and came up with one – every now and again I miss the discussions that happened in my Sunday School class.

I have enjoyed not going to church so much that when the allowable group size went up to 25 about a week ago, I got worried. I thought about whether I would even attend church when it started up again. I have ignored my duties in the worship planning group and as a deacon and I don't care. I contacted our pastor and the worship planning group and told them they should go ahead without me. I have checked out.

I'm not ready to go back to church. I realize that some people miss it a lot and I don't want to minimize or cut down that point of view but one of those people isn't me. I feel like I'm done.

But over the last few days, I've had a little awakening. I don't miss going to church and I'm not ready to go back to it but I have thought about what church is for.

On the news, I see the family and friends of a man who was killed. They aren't standing there in their time of need with their favourite musician or politician or some buddies they play soccer with. They are standing with their pastor. They are calling on people to work for good important difficult changes but to avoid destructive violence and they are walking that balance with the support of their pastor and biblical teachings interpreted in their church.

In the scriptures, the prophet Isaiah has some quotable lines that we use during Christmas and Easter but much of the rest of the book is a criticism of the way people avoid treating others with justice, fairness, and mercy as God expects. A friend of mine reminded me the other day of a quote from a pastor, Martin Luther King Jr. who said that “we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people but for the appalling silence of good people.” King was speaking in the 1960s but before him in Germany during World War Two the evangelical theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said approximately the same thing, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil and God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

He saw in his own time that if good people stay home, listen to a church service, read their Bible a bit, do some praying, and that's all, then there is one fewer organized way for good people to call for good things to happen to show a good way of strength and confidence modelled on Jesus. Sinfulness has a remarkable talent for organizing itself but counteracting that urge to sin and exploit and torture and humiliate and destroy takes work and focus and organization. It takes faith, hope, and love. The church is not for policy meetings and planning schedules and singing songs that some like and others don't and listening to some pleasant ‘blah blah blah’ from whoever happens to be standing in the pulpit that day. Those are things that happen but that's not what the church is for.

The church is there to make it less possible for good people standing for a good cause following a good leader in the way of Jesus to be appallingly silent in the face of the sin of the world. We put up with the costs and downsides because of that one huge benefit.

The church can, by God's grace, help people to speak and act as we should.