Church in America

It's time to end church. Mind you, it isn't time to give up Christianity, but I fear that it's time to give up church. At some point, some suit in the marketing profession must have decided that church was something that needed to be sold to the masses. So today when you go into any Christian church, you are presented with a packaged product. Facing declining numbers of churchgoers, pastors ask themselves, "What will bring people in?"

So they try everything--good music, good seats, great childcare, short sermons, free food. They make the churches look like coffee shops, warehouses, art galleries and concert halls, and they do it all because they want to draw people in. Hey guys, (and gals), let me give you a clue. If I walked into your musty little church and saw someone praying for someone else in a wheelchair, and then I watched as the one in the wheelchair stood up and walked, I would join your church. If I saw your pastor bless the doughnuts and coffee, and then the doughnuts multiplied so that there was enough to feed everyone at church and in the whole neighborhood too, I would join your church. If I saw you making Sunday lunch for widows and widowers every week I would join your church. If I saw those things happening and yet your music was awful, and you sat on hard wooden benches, and there was no childcare, and your pastor preached long into the afternoon, I would come to your church anyway.

Seeing the works of Jesus happen today is what will make the church grow. That's what the church has that cannot be obtained elsewhere. Church is not a business. The Church does not need marketing or ratings. Church is a body, a living organism. Its purpose is to carry on the work of Jesus until that work is finished. That means that in church we should be seeing who God is. We should see the divine.

Until that happens, until we see what is divine maybe we could spend our Sunday morning doing something more productive or at least more restful.