Many don’t understand my difficulty with the church. My struggle with the church is often perceived as hatred for the it. Many wonder why, if I experience such a profound discontent, why I stay. My critique of the church is deemed as a disdain and a dismissal of it altogether. I had lunch with a photographer friend of mine yesterday who asked me questions along the same line, trying to understand where I was coming from. Here’s an analogy I gave that I hope might help:
What if there was a Maritime Photographers Association that every photographer had to be a member of in order to publish his or her photographs? Let’s carry it further. What if you couldn’t even buy a camera without a license to do so, and that the only way you could take photographs publicly was if you had the proper documentation? You could only display your photographs after they had passed a panel review of adjudicators who alone could give the authorization for them to be displayed. In fact, the Association took it upon itself to regulate what was considered acceptable to the public and to even dictate to the public what it should appreciate as admissible photography. You love photography, but there’s something oppressive about being a photographer in this milieu. You experiment with unauthorized photographic exhibitions on telephone poles and walls of buildings and in clandestine events, but it is all considered seditious. Some interpret this as a disdain for photography because your actions seem to be a self-defeating struggle against The Photographers. The repercussions are serious. But you persist because there is a small band of artists who feel the same way you do and subversively continue to work within the system while at the same time sabotaging it because they feel that photography should be liberated from the Association’s categories. As I write this I’m reminded of a movie (I can’t remember the title and don’t have time to search for it) about a photographer in Eastern Europe who’s job is to take photos of ceramic tiles for a company. His life is lonely, boring and depressing. His full-of-life cousin comes to visit. Long story short, on a drive to take his cousin somewhere, they come across a beautiful scene of cattle grazing on a hillside with the sun setting in the background. His cousin says, “What a beautiful photograph that would take!” The photographer stops the car, considers it for a moment, then says, “Fuck it!” and starts driving again, much to his cousin’s amazement. This gifted photographer had regulated his own creativity to fit the constraints of his employer. (Just a note: after I gave this analogy, my friend said that there is such a Photographers Union and laughed at just how accurately I described its dynamics.)
This is how I feel within the church. I’m in it but not of it. And I am a pastor of a small community of people that, for the most part I think, are on the same page. This is why I continue. Somehow, I feel it is my duty to be a subversive among subversives, to liberate people from the constraints of systems and ideologies that oppress, restrict, regulate and bind us.
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David Hayward is an artist trapped in a pastor's body, stripping to the essential.
i enjoy lifting issues out of one fishbowl and sticking them into a different one – to see the issues in a different context and different light – away from emotional baggage.
this was incredible.
It is amazing how we as humans have to have everything all figured out. This creates the boxed in theologies that make up orthodoxy and none dare question is lest you give up your salvation. Inclusivism?!?, heaven forbid we serve a God that is Just and Merciful. No we need to rehash the scriptures that backup the excusivity of the God that we serve. It makes us more puffed up and priviledged. WE know the Truth, WE are the Elect, WE know scripture better than those other “deceived” denominations. It is easy to see that Jesus spoke out against this mindset, yet many of his followers can’t see it.
I really felt this post. Being critical openly of the Ch. myself, as well as into photography, BOTH aspects hit me. I have run into the same things you have when people see I’m critical (read cynical) about the Ch. and the religious framework that christianity has created for itself.
This is a great post, and I think it is a great analogy. Thanks for the (unknown to you) affirmation and comfort! I read your blog but have not commented before. But I needed to tell you that you that I’m there with you, and it sucks, hurts, and is frustrating. But hopefully we are all using this to help us move us and others to a better place. I think you are doing a marvelous job of that! thank you!
j
I just thought of a story: recently Rob Bell (a guy I respect but.
don’t fully.
agree with.
a lot.),
was at some sort of compassion conference. any way, the context of the entire conference seemed to be a all religions and faiths are one and all paths lead to the same god sort of thing. Now Mr. Bell said some great words but he didn’t say Jesus Or God (at least not in the 3, 2 minute video clips). Another guy at the conference said the we all worship the same God sort of thing (think he was a Skith).
So my pastor sees these clips and decides that based on what Bell did not say and what the other guy did say, Bell was a heretic that has “completely left orthodoxy.”
The sentiment pretty much sums up the church I think, “If you don’t think, talk, act, do like us, you aren’t us.” Pretty sick.
Do you hate the church or do you hate what people made of it?
David,
Thanks for such a gutsy post. It seems to me that only someone who loves the church could possibly write something like this.
You said:
“Somehow, I feel it is my duty to be a subversive among subversives,”…is that like usurping the usurpers?? Just a thougt.
I like your way of thinking/being NP. Great way of going to the heart of someone who inquires about your heart. Very Christ-like.
To be part of the system….but not of the system. To be in the world but not of the world??
Good lamenting here. Hugs!
NP, I perfectly feel the same way.
But what can we do? We can’t even scratched the surface to expose the secrets that lies within the Church.
Nice post.
Why don’t you do what countless others have done?
Start your own.
I’m sorry, but I still infer a degree of disdain for “the church” … evidenced not least by your post some time back … the last paragraph in your 10/3/07 post titled “My Church Visit” It seems to me your perception was formed before you went through the door.
I found it strange to read your post because recently my thinking has been in the opposite direction!
I’m a minister in the Church of Scotland but am now employed by the prison service as a chaplain. Although I enjoy my job, I miss the freedom of working in the church. In the church, well certainly in ours, you can really be as creative as you like, and our denomination also has a broad range of theological opinion within it, and good relationships with other denominations too. People who want to join do take membership vows in which they confirm their belief in certain doctrines, but people can be part of us their whole lives and never join and they won’t be treated any differently at all, or made to feel lesser in some way. Thinking about our church setting I find it very hard to relate to what irks you so much. I’m trying, I really am, and I can certainly see why your struggle with church is often perceived as hatred for it. If you say, it’s not, I believe you, though. But, in my job now, and it’s not just because it’s prison – the health service, and any big organisation would be the same – there is red tape and bureaucracy which can be quite stifling, and to me there seems to be a wonderful degree of freedom in the church, as I have been lucky enough to experience it.
Subversive is GOOD. I love subversive!
Interesting blog-post-link. “I love the church. What we need to do is to return to the Biblical principles on how the church should be (such as being a community of love, being a light and salt for the world, being united in Christ, etc, etc.) We don’t need new principles. On the contrary. What we do need is the wisdom to apply the old principles within a new and changed society”. I like that. I heard a minister say once, “We’re always on the look-out for new programs for our church, and that’s okay, but what this church really needs is MORE JESUS”.
What we do need is the wisdom to apply the old principles within a new and changed societyâ€.
Well said Anne
ok, so here’s my question. Just a thought. This idea of “getting back to biblical principles” and a “biblical church” or a “New Testament Church” is a tough one for me. Perhaps it is the way in which I read the Bible, but reading the narrative of the NT church, it isn’t consistent. It seems to me to be the story of the early “Christians” (although that term isn’t exactly correct either from a historical chronology perspective) trying to figure out what it MEANS to be the followers of Christ post resurrection. It is the story of the early leader’s and follower’s STRUGGLE to understand who they were and what they were supposed to do in the midst of the void of questions Christ left us in. In essence, we see the story of them wrestling with the question, “What does it mean to be the Church of Jesus.” As we see through Acts and the Epistles, there isn’t a singular, overarching answer. As we see in history, there were many ways (gnostics for instance) that communities chose to answer that question.
What if the Church, and us as the universal Church, are still struggling with that same question. Perhaps it was never answered in the NT. Perhaps that’s part of the Christian’s journey, both individualized AND corporately. What if we are still trying to figure out what it means to be the Church that Christ talked about? The Church that Christ talked about is very different also than the NT church that formed. So just to throw that idea and question out there. any thoughts on that.
That Aside, I do really like your comment Anne! I think the thing we need to pray for most now, and the thing we’ve prayed for LEAST in the last couple of centuries regarding the Church is wisdom!
j
excellent point justin. i agree.
Hi Justin. OK, Anne actually quoted something from my own blog which I posted and which ended up in this blog, under the title “Love / Hate relationship with the church” and which I posted here: http://missionissues.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/love-hate-relationship-with-the-church/
I’m only saying this as I don’t want Anne to take responsibility for something which I said and which she just quoted.
I agree to a certain extent to what you said. I’m not trying to say that things are clear-cut. What I did say is that we find certain principles in the Bible, in the gospels as well as in Acts and the epistles about how the early Christians understood the task of the church. Christ lay down certain principles (being a light, showing love instead of hate and plenty more) and the early church took these principles and put them into practice. And as far as I can see, these principles have never changed and where they are still being followed, churches grow consistently. When I read books of people writing about how they understand the task of the church (Brian McLAren, Bob Roberts, Eric Bryant, Ron Martoia, Scot McKnight, to name but a few) I find that all of them are actually propagating a return to the Biblical principles. Some make it sound as if they are saying something new, but in almost all cases they are merely saying what Christ have already told us 2000 years ago about how the church should be. The only thing new is to try and understand what it means in today’s society.
Yes, we are still struggling with the question on what it means. I’m struggling with the question on what it means to be the light of the world in a society (in Swaziland) where at least 40% of the population have HIV or AIDS. I’m struggling to understand how I must communicate love where almost 70% op the population get less than 45 US cents per day! (Read more on my blog: http://missionissues.wordpress.com ) My struggle is not whether I should be a light. My struggle is not whether the church should be a community of love. The struggle is how to do it in our unique circumstances.
Arnau,
I do want to say that I think that that quote is great. I think that in this struggle to figure out what it means to “be the Church”, that the only place we CAN start is with biblical principles. I think that we’ve seen the modern Church stray so far from what the original followers and disciples were trying to build, that we HAVE to go back and begin where they started and left off.
You are def. on the money with the new books exploring these ideas (McLaren, Jones, Scot, etc..) They “Ancient/Orthodoxy” I think is the place we must begin to build off of.
I think honestly, that this was always meant to be a struggle for us. As long as it’s a struggle, then we aren’t complacent in our responsibility to be “actively on-call”. I think your last paragraph is a fantastic example of this!!!