Meats and Sweets

Written on July 21, 2010 in thought

I’ve decided that there are two kinds of church-goers. Pastors, leaders and churches have to understand this.

First of all, there is the family dining-room type. This type of church-goer doesn’t consider herself a church-goer, but a member, a part of the family. She believes that being faithful and committed to one community is important and necessary for the quality of the life of that community. She considers the church community her spiritual family, and to go to another church would be the equivalent of having an affair. It would be a sign of unfaithfulness and spiritual lust. She might visit another church, but only when it is a public event like funeral or wedding or something of that sort. She might go to the odd conference, but she’ll be very selective on which ones she attends.

Then there is the other kind: the restaurant type. This type of church-goer will probably find a church that he will consider his main church or even his home church. But no one church is going to meet all of his needs. Not any one church is enough. He doesn’t consider going to another church spiritually adulterous, but ecumenically support and spiritually necessary for his own health. He might go to one church to get the meat for his spiritual diet. But he’ll go to another church to get his dessert. And he will probably go to any other church or conference in town to get his treats, especially when there’s a guest speaker.

I’ve been a pastor of both types. I’ve realized that even though I thought I was providing all the nutrients necessary for a healthy spiritual life, not everyone thought so. They might have appreciated what I offered, but it wasn’t enough. I was often informed that I served meats but no sweets. Some never realized that for me to offer their desired dessert menu would have been radically at odds with the main course I offered.

Some people were satisfied with what I offered. Some weren’t. That’s just a reality every pastor must face.

16 Comments - Leave a comment!

April Alexander

I wish every pastor accepted this truth as much as you do. Going to another church because our daughter had no connection at our “meat” church was the beginning of the end for us. Our pastors were furious, and at the next leadership meeting handed out a list of rules for leadership, one being that we weren’t allowed to go to another church unless it was once in a while, (a treat.) We refused to go along with this, and the leadership tried all kinds of ways to make life uncomfortable for us so we would leave. We hung in there for quite some time until we knew it was time to go.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

April:
Ya, I must admit, as a pastor, I prefer the family dining-room types. But I allowed my mind to change on that over the years. I have new ideas on this thing but they’re not easy. My ideas of church have really changed recently.
caty

Wow, now that I think about I am the ” family dining room” type. To think about going to another church does make me just a little bit quesy. However I do and will attend conferences, concerts, plays,etc.. at other churchs…you know as long as they do not occur on Sunday mornings
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

caty:
I hear that. It’s a difference of perspective. Some see church as community. Not all do. They see it as an event. Both are fine. But very different.
http://www.roccocapra.com/blog Rocco

What about those who do not go to any ‘church’, but love God and live life in community with others who love God?
http://thescepticalbeliever.blogspot.com Dan King

Maybe there’s a 3rd type?

Maybe there’s a bigger view of church which includes all of us who follow Jesus? Maybe some people like to spend some of their time with different bits of this larger family rather than spending all of it with the same group of people?
Kirsten Mebust

I’ve done both ways, although at heart I’m a dining room Christian. The question I have for Christians of both types, and perhaps Rocco’s type too: What happens when you need to have your vision of God and the world corrected from outside yourself? Don’t we all need this?
Fred

I think you’re right. You can starve in the dining room. But you can be disconnected in a restaurant.
http://www.lelightclub.com Louise la francofun!

Hey I wrote about this before too! Here’s a copy of my FB note Hoping and Hopping of Feb. 17, 2010.

The Church totally hops!!

I was thinking today about how people are hoping and hopping … in constant search for the right church… (pretty much the way they also look for the perfect life partner).

I call it the restaurant approach. You try out restaurants, sometimes you become a regular customer. You pay money, you consume and comment on the service, ambiance and menu and sometimes shake hands with the chef. You can recommend it or invite friends and family to join you for a meal until the day you find another restaurant that caters better to your taste and need for novelty. In restaurants, patrons come and go as they please. It’s not a home! It’s an artificial recreation of the home dinner table. It’s not a place where you develop a sense of belonging. You don’t live in a restaurant. Churches these days seem to market themselves more as restaurants than homes and church goers seem to behave more like patrons or clients than community members, ergo the mobility.

Home on the other hand is a whole other matter. There you get to cook, wash the dishes, eat what’s in your plate, argue, forgive, grow, share, love, be loved, get taken care of when you are sick, belong, see others as they really are and seen as you really are, this is where you live, where you have ownership. There is no chef. All are equal but have different roles; all are accountable to each other. In a healthy home, there is transparency, vulnerability, closeness, bonding, happy times, sad times, full or empty fridges, children crying or laughing, dog or cat hopping on your lap, stuff lying around or needing repair.

Perhaps because I’ve longed for a normal home and family since my youth, I have been thankfully blessed to attend churches that were real homes to me (except for one which felt more like a parking lot during my divorce). Thus, I can still feel a strong attachment to my brothers and sisters from past congregations years later while I find it easy to remain faithful to my present community of believers.

So no, I’m not about to hop and shop around for the next great blessing. I’m not an “eventgelical”. If you ask me, people who run from meeting to meeting and teaching to teaching don’t look that well-fed. Actually, they are a famished bunch and I do hope that a real hunger for G-d will arise, a hunger not for fast-food, snacks or convenient easy microwavable meals (read teaching) … but a hunger for intimacy, relational and authentic communion in His beautiful but sadly still broken and bleeding Body.
dcsloan

(excerpts from “RECLAIMING CHURCH”)
http://dmergent.org/2010/06/03/reclaiming-church/

How many of us have seen or participated in placing a hand on the wall of the sanctuary and then said, “This is not the church.” With this act, we were trying to illustrate that it is the people of our faith community who are the church and not the building. Do we have any idea what we just said? If the building is not the church, why do we spend so much time and effort dealing with it? If the building is not the church, why is it so important to us? After we have said, “This is not the church,” have we ever taken a far look in the direction we just pointed? What happens when we extend that thought?

Much of what we call successful Christianity and successful worship and successful congregations has nothing to do with living and sharing the Good News.

Once we begin to think of our faith in terms of largeness instead of largess or in terms of measurable success or significant achievements or community stature or statistically significant gains or business models or congregational models or appropriate budget processes or cash flow direction or generally accepted accounting practices or independent audits or administrative requirements or managerial transparency or proper leadership roles and boundaries or membership trends or effective organizational structures or a current and accurate vision statement – at that point, we have become the money changers – we have lost our faith and deserve to be driven away for we are neither living nor sharing the Good News.

“Doing” has to be the new definition of faith. A “new definition” will not be statements of purpose/mission/vision or political participation or public stances on issues or styles of worship. It will be specific activities; specific ways of living that are the new definition. Participating in CODA or LifeLine or Habitat for Humanity will not be an outreach activity; it will be what we do and definitive of who we are. Supporting a free clinic or a food pantry or a shelter for the homeless will not be the focus of an annual fund-raising event; it will be part of our continuously active and visible theological and spiritual DNA. Worship will not be every Sunday morning – it will be whenever and wherever 2 or 3 (not 200 or 300, not 2,000 or 3,000, not 20,000 or 30,000) are gathered to live, study, and contemplate the Good News. Indeed, “doing” will be about living and being the Good News, not scheduling it as a repetitive activity on our digital calendar on the same day at the same time that always occurs at the same location and always follows the same program and sequence just so it will be easier to update the Sunday bulletin. “Doing” our faith does not require capital campaigns; local, regional, or national governing boards; seminaries; or licensing/ordination policies.

“Doing” our faith has to be seen as a radical, counter-cultural, defiant way of living. By its very nature, our faith is not supposed to be institutionalized and not measured by largeness, cultural pervasiveness, or authoritarianism. Our faith is supposed to be personal and divinely humane. Our faithful doing is to be delivered person-to-person, face-to-face, one-to-one – not by an invisible faceless remote committee or collective. “Doing” our faith can be accomplished only with more personal involvement and not with more technology that is better, more pervasive, more invasive, and increasingly remote and detached.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

Hey Rocco and Dan: You are right. There are all kinds. I was mainly talking about those who would consider themselves “members” of a local congregation that meets on Sunday mornings. But I agree with you.
Sandy Farris

I left the organized institutional church 3 years ago and have had a radical paradigm shift since then. The whole concept of people sitting in a theatre style room and gleaning the teachings of one man week after week for spiritual food seems crazy to me now. I just don’t get it any more and wonder if I am just totally jaded. Not that I don’t think we all have so much to offer because I do…I know that many have the gift of teaching, but to have one ‘pastor’ week after week be responsible seems wrong and quite passive of church-goers.

Do you think you can be a healthy believer, following Jesus and involved in community without a ‘pastor’ or ‘shepherd’ leading you week by week, and without being a member of a church? I have found spending time alone with Him, and others endeavoring to follow Him is enough. I do miss corporate worship though and I guess that would be my dessert?

Thanks for reading this…I know I am ranting a bit but after being a faithful church goer for all my life, and then almost being destroyed from the infighting I really don’t want to do it anymore. More than that I think there is so much ‘wrong’ with the system and that Jesus and the Gospel quickly become second among many good things.
Mar

Dan and Sandy –

I am right there with you … I too think there is a “3rd option” — one which doesn’t think in terms of our own local fellowship being our only “family” and which doesn’t look to one person to figure out what to feed us. Committing to one fellowship as “family” to the exclusion of the rest of the family, the body of Christ, can actually be very damaging and can lead to thinking of fellow believers as “others” or “outsiders” rather than as members of the very same family. Thinking of one person/pastor/teacher to figure out “what to offer” or “what to feed us” isn’t a Biblical concept either …

So much to reflect on — it was a turning point to me to realize that Paul’s letters are almost always addressed to all the saints in any given city … not to any one local fellowship in isolation from all others in their city.
dcsloan

(excerpt from “House Church”)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i7tADnxuR79MJPcf7h0C8jxGSMGQD9H3IT782

The members of this “house church” are part of what experts say is a fundamental shift in the way U.S. Christians think about church. Skip the sermons, costly church buildings and large, faceless crowds, they say. House church is about relationships forged in small faith communities.

In general, house churches consist of 12 to 15 people who share what’s going on in their lives, often turning to Scriptures for guidance. They rely on the Holy Spirit or spontaneity to lead the direction of their weekly gatherings.

“I think part of the appeal for some in the house church movement is the desire to return to a simpler expression of church,” said Ed Stetzer, a seminary professor and president of Lifeway Research, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. “For many, church has become too much (like a) business while they just want to live like the Bible.”

House church proponents claim their small groups are sort of a throwback to the early Christian church in that they have no clergy and everyone is expected to contribute to the teaching, singing and praying.
Christine

So, first I really thought I would be the first type:

“This type of church-goer doesn’t consider herself a church-goer, but a member, a part of the family. She believes that being faithful and committed to one community is important and necessary for the quality of the life of that community. She considers the church community her spiritual family…”

So far, so good. I really do have a spiritual family in my community and I take my relationship in and committments to that community seriously…

but “to go to another church would be the equivalent of having an affair. It would be a sign of unfaithfulness and spiritual lust. She might visit another church, but only when it is a public event like funeral or wedding or something of that sort. She might go to the odd conference, but she’ll be very selective on which ones she attends.”

Seriously??? This sounds like my first church that basically became a cult.

We are ONE church, ONE body! Even if all my spiritual needs are fulfilled in my small intimate community, all those other communities out there are still family. How could I refuse to fellowship with them as well?

I’m not shopping around for “treats” in other churches, they are family too.

My community is like my immediate family, those I see all the time, am closest too, and have responsibilities in. But all those other communities are like the extended family, the aunts and uncles and cousins.

My church actually facilitates my fellowship with the wider Church, and benefits from the insights and experiences our members gain in other contexts. We bring back to one another what we gain elsewhere.

I’m not sure how it could be any other way.
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