After
some reflection I think I’ve been too hard on some church members, especially
families, specifically those who are what might be called lightly to moderately
involved in the life of the congregation.
All of us need instruction in the faith, an opportunity to worship, and
some fellowship with other Christians, but I have been committing that
churchman’s sin of equating a person’s church involvement with their Christian
faith. This realization has caused me to
start asking what is essential and what is just extra in the life of a
congregation? Should we gripe at people
when they aren’t interested in the extra stuff?
Should we even offer the extra stuff?
Should we realize that the extra stuff might just be our own pet
projects, which doesn’t make them bad but would explain why we’re the only one
who’s interested in it? I don’t know the
answers to these questions but I’ve been asking them a lot lately.
Here’s
where I’m at in the thinking process right now:
I have
come to realize that paid staffers and retired church members need different
things from a congregation than today’s average Christian family with kids at
home. To be honest, we paid staff
members need to keep a job and, understandably, we need a sense that we are
doing good work. So what the staff feels
is in our best interest is a busy and active congregation. This is what you call “job security” and “life
purpose.” We church staffers get grumpy and
worried when folks don’t jump onboard with the busyness and activity within the
congregation. We say things like, “Those
darn young families and their mixed up priorities,” which may be partially true
in the end, but usually comes not from in depth analysis but simply from an
initial surface reading of the situation in light of our own needs, not theirs.
What retired
(and often widowed) church members usually seem to need from the congregation
are a sense of purpose and the company of friends. They want opportunities to serve alongside
one another, which fills both of these needs.
They don’t understand why everyone else in the congregation (i.e. the
non-retired folks) isn’t jumping onboard with the busyness and activity within
the congregation. They join with the
staffers in saying, “Those darn young families and their mixed up priorities,” which
again may be partially true in the end, but here it also usually comes not from
in depth analysis but simply from an initial surface reading of the situation
in light of the retired folks’ own needs, not the families’.
Neither
the staffers nor the retired members seem to understand (or are unwilling to
understand) what the actual needs are for “those darn young families.” We assume that everyone’s needs are the same
as our own, that because as staffers and retired folks what is in our best interest is a busy and active
congregation that this is what is in the best interest of all church members. We
project our own needs onto others. This problem is exasperated by the fact that in
pretty much every congregation I’ve ever been involved with, it is the staffers
and retired members who are the decision makers for a congregation. So the staffers and retired folks develop a
church life that fits their needs and
that doesn’t take into account the possibility that their model of church life minimizes,
ignores, or outright condemns the needs of the families in their midst. Those in leadership build up a church
construct that is not in the best interest of a particular demographic group
and then spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about why that
demographic is absent from participation in the busy and active church life. Those in leadership don’t realize that their
leadership often is only providing for their own needs.
Richard
Rohr is fond of saying that whatever is received is received in the manner of
the receiver, not of the giver. This
plays out when a staffer or retired church member comes up with a good,
faithful idea for ministry or mission and then presents it to others, only to
be surprised when a percentage of the hearers aren’t interested or are outright
opposed to it. “But wait a minute here! This is good Kingdom work! The staff likes it! The retired members like it! Why won’t the young families get on board?” The answer is that whatever is received is
received in the manner of the receiver.
As mentioned, the staff and retired folks are different “receivers” than
the young families. It doesn’t mean it’s
a bad idea. It just means that it works
for some while it doesn’t work for others.
What I’m starting to realize is that this has to be okay. We have to figure out how to minister to
different people who are in different seasons of life without looking down on
others because their needs are different from our own.
Think about
this: how often do we have an officer dragging into a meeting late, exhausted
and often hungry, because they came directly from work to the meeting? How often has this person spent their whole
day at work and then their whole evening at the church building and they won’t
get home until bedtime for the kids or maybe even later? This happens quite often. And then when it comes time to nominate
candidates for officers we can’t figure out why the parents with kids at home
aren’t willing to serve? It should be
obvious to us. We have to ask ourselves
whether or not the church should be keeping people from their families? Should the church be adding to members’
workload, busyness, schedule, and stress?
Is that really the role we want to play in people’s lives?
Staffers
and retired folks often want and need busyness and activity at the church. But families are already busy and active, and perhaps most importantly they are at a
time and station in their lives during which their lives, identities, and
emphasis are outside the walls and
busy schedule of the church. Staffers
and very often retired folks gain our
identity and value from our participation in
the life of the church, and understandably so.
However, families usually gain their identity and value from their
participation in home, school, activities, work, and church. Therefore, what
families may need from the church is very different from what staffers and
retired folks need. Actually what they
may need from the church is the complete opposite of what staffers and retired
folks need. A busy and active church
life may not be in the best interest
of families. This doesn’t mean that the
church shouldn’t be important to families, but it does mean that the church may
need to minister to these families in different ways than to retired folks and
based upon where they are in life and
not where the decision makers are in life.
It seems to me as both a staffer and
a member of a young family, that what families seem to need is support, rest,
and to be equipped to live out their Christian faith not within the life of the congregation (like staffers and retired
members) but at home, at school, at the ball field, and at work. Because they have different needs, the
families get grumpy and don’t understand why the staffers and retired folks
keep harping on them to jump onboard with the busyness and activity at church,
ideas which have usually come from the staffers and retired folks who are in
charge. For families—which is the
demographic all the churches want to attract—a busy and active church may very
well be the last thing these folks need.
To them, a busy and active church often just feels like more work, more
stress, less rest, and something that makes their life worse, not better.
The
Christian life is a 24/7 lifestyle. The Church
is meant to facilitate that Christian life, but not to take its place. The truth of the matter is that Church is not
life. God is life, and this life is present
everywhere and at all times, whether we are in a sanctuary, at the grocery
store, in the bathroom, or on a cruise ship.
We have to be careful not to replace Christianity with what has been
dubbed “Churchianity,” which is defined as “any
practices of Christianity that are viewed as placing a larger
emphasis on the habits of church life or the institutional
traditions of the church than on theology and spiritual teachings; the quality
of being too church-focused.” The church
isn’t supposed to be an end in itself, but a means to the end of guiding people
into and equipping them for a relationship with God in Jesus
Christ and to infuse every aspect of
life with that relationship. The church
should not be church-focused. The church
should be Christ-focused. Those are
often two very different things.
So let’s start thinking about what is essential around here
and what is extra. Also, let’s begin to
understand that staffers, retired folks, and families may need very different things from
the church and subsequently may be able to offer
very different things to the
church. Finally, let us think about
whether we are operating in ways that are church-focused or whether we are
fulfilling our purpose by operating in ways that are Christ-focused.
Now there’s some food for thought.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Everett
