Faith in action talks. One critical component that is missing in our society is community. Churches in my neighborhood, and there are many still standing until they too sell out to large condo developers, are locked up tight all week. There is too little to nothing offered to build community. A friend is finding community in a local Unitarian Church, so she is lucky. It is rare, and yet we have a loneliness epidemic.
I was reading in Matthew 15 today. Jesus describes love for God being greater than tradition. Of course, the Pharisees were offended. Two thousand years later, there are still those in our churches who worship tradition. Lord, help us!
I am convinced that the world finds us irrelevant because we are so focused on the minutiae of the right way to live, making sure we follow all the rules, and we ignore the needs like people with mental illness, depression, financial struggles, gender issues, etc. Church should be a place where we can help each other with those things, be a friend, love where we are.
"Because if all they see in our pews and social media feeds is culture-warring, fear-mongering, mean-spiritedness, and over-politicization, well, our young people will head for the doors. "
Amen.
Doing booth outreach here in the Midwest, we have a whiteboard on which we write various things over the course of a weekend (verses, questions, etc.). The option that has garnered as much or more positive response than anything else?
Not about money.
Not about politics.
About preparing for eternity.
People (young and old, alike) are weary of churches focusing on things of this world...as they should be. Number 2 on the list of reasons Millennials give for dropping out of church speaks to this: https://bibletruths.substack.com/p/the-black-hole
I often think about the two poles; of threatening, muscular, hellfire Christianity, and the simplistic, childish version proffered by timid, unimaginative clerics, unwilling to offend (the second is possibly even harder to stomach for an educated person - and there is certainly something a little nobler than pride at work in their distaste). Neither version adds up. Trying to convince educated, reflective people otherwise is never going to work, nor would any sane person want it to. There is a temptation to demonise the education that made doubt so natural, and compel a dishonestly that would prevent a doubting Christian from admitting to an agnostic or an atheist that they recognise the reasonableness of their positions. Being honest, if you believe in a God who doesn't deliberately set traps, should never carry a risk of spiritual harm. Honesty saves us from these by turns terrifying and laughable poles. It results in Churches where people are curious and rarely fully convinced - A terrifying prospect when viewed from the vantage point of traditional repression.
The real question is "What exactly should the church be?"...and we have been asking that question since the Reformation. People forget the original Reformers were not trying to create a new church, they were trying to fix issues within the Catholic church. However, with the schism from the main Western church, all sorts of proposals have been made to "fix" the issue with varying degrees of success. Since America does not have a state church, it gets even harder to answer that question.
Faith in action talks. One critical component that is missing in our society is community. Churches in my neighborhood, and there are many still standing until they too sell out to large condo developers, are locked up tight all week. There is too little to nothing offered to build community. A friend is finding community in a local Unitarian Church, so she is lucky. It is rare, and yet we have a loneliness epidemic.
I was reading in Matthew 15 today. Jesus describes love for God being greater than tradition. Of course, the Pharisees were offended. Two thousand years later, there are still those in our churches who worship tradition. Lord, help us!
I am convinced that the world finds us irrelevant because we are so focused on the minutiae of the right way to live, making sure we follow all the rules, and we ignore the needs like people with mental illness, depression, financial struggles, gender issues, etc. Church should be a place where we can help each other with those things, be a friend, love where we are.
"Because if all they see in our pews and social media feeds is culture-warring, fear-mongering, mean-spiritedness, and over-politicization, well, our young people will head for the doors. "
Amen.
Doing booth outreach here in the Midwest, we have a whiteboard on which we write various things over the course of a weekend (verses, questions, etc.). The option that has garnered as much or more positive response than anything else?
Not about money.
Not about politics.
About preparing for eternity.
People (young and old, alike) are weary of churches focusing on things of this world...as they should be. Number 2 on the list of reasons Millennials give for dropping out of church speaks to this: https://bibletruths.substack.com/p/the-black-hole
I often think about the two poles; of threatening, muscular, hellfire Christianity, and the simplistic, childish version proffered by timid, unimaginative clerics, unwilling to offend (the second is possibly even harder to stomach for an educated person - and there is certainly something a little nobler than pride at work in their distaste). Neither version adds up. Trying to convince educated, reflective people otherwise is never going to work, nor would any sane person want it to. There is a temptation to demonise the education that made doubt so natural, and compel a dishonestly that would prevent a doubting Christian from admitting to an agnostic or an atheist that they recognise the reasonableness of their positions. Being honest, if you believe in a God who doesn't deliberately set traps, should never carry a risk of spiritual harm. Honesty saves us from these by turns terrifying and laughable poles. It results in Churches where people are curious and rarely fully convinced - A terrifying prospect when viewed from the vantage point of traditional repression.
The real question is "What exactly should the church be?"...and we have been asking that question since the Reformation. People forget the original Reformers were not trying to create a new church, they were trying to fix issues within the Catholic church. However, with the schism from the main Western church, all sorts of proposals have been made to "fix" the issue with varying degrees of success. Since America does not have a state church, it gets even harder to answer that question.