Reimagining Church

There was a six or seven week period this summer where I didn’t attend church.

Phew, that feels good to get off my chest.

And mentally, I felt clearer over the course of those weeks than I’ve felt in probably eleven years. I don’t know if it was due to the lack of church influence during those weeks, almost a year now of hour-long therapy sessions every two weeks, or something else.

But over the past decade (actually 11 years), church has been the biggest contributor to my pain and confusion, so I’m inclined to attribute a lot of the improvement of my mood to my recent lack of church attendance.

But here’s the problem.

The more I studied for my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees (Biblical and Theological studies respectively), the more I became convinced of the critical nature of the Church. I read Cyprian’s words that “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother,”¹ and I wanted to pursuade people who left the Church to return. Many of my posts here contained the tags “exvangelical”, “deconversion”, or “deconstruction” in an effort to find those who had been hurt by the church and offer them an alternative vision for the church. The problem was—I never presented an alternative vision of the Church. I simply knew that the Southern Baptists are schismatic, and that autonomous church leadership is far too easily prone to abuses. I even reread Augustine’s Confessions as an allegorical plea with the Donatists of his day to return to the Church (a fascinating idea that I still need to write about more officially).

But complaining about problems helps no one. But that’s all I could do, because I saw the problems so clearly. I’ve studied ecclesiology up and down from as many angles as I possibly can, and I’ve been hurt deeply by those same institutions. But I have no interest in reinventing the wheel. That’s how cults start. No thank you.

But then I was asked what I think church should look like. I wasn’t judged for my discomfort with church. I wasn’t shamed for my lack of attendance. I was simply asked what my vision of the church was.

I want to present it in one beefy paragraph, and then break down 5 reasons why I find it compelling and not a reinventing of the wheel. Here goes:

Church should be a place where a group of people—I imagine a small group, though numbers aren’t ultimately important—comes together once a week (at most twice) to do life together. They bring their fears, concerns, doubts, and questions, and together the group prays and searches Scripture, wrestling with God for clarity and comfort. If one person feels compelled to expound on what they are hearing from God, they can speak—whether male or female, adult or child—and that spoken word then enters into the search for clarity and comfort, open to rebuttals, elaborations, and explanations (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:26-33). Perhaps each meeting starts with singing and a prepared homily on a chosen text, but the main point is the edification of one another’s faith and the pursuing of God together. The Lord’s Supper is practiced weekly, perhaps with tortillas and Welch’s grape juice (or maybe wine).

Intimate

“I imagine a small group—though numbers aren’t ultimately important”

Church should not be focused on the numbers. The bigger the church, the less united it can be. And this is not because more people bring more diversity of opinion; more people simply mean more time to truly get to know everyone intimately. It’s relatively easy to get to know a handful of people well, but how well do you know each of your Facebook friends? My guess is that the more you have the less intimate each of those relationships is (on average).

The church I envision would fit in a house, and it would be a tight-knit group of people, who know each other (see more on this below). But their knowledge of each other and their tightness would not get in the way of building relationships with newcomers. That sort of pride destroys a church’s reputation and falls under the charge discussed in James 2:1–4.

Preparatory

“a group of people comes together once a week (at most twice) to do life together”

Church should not be a social club where people go to avoid doing real life with people who think differently than them. When churches have events every day of the week it is clear that they aren’t really interested in being salt and light. They’re interested in control and distraction. They’re interested in keeping their people busy with “spiritual” matters so they end up being no earthly good.

The church I envision prepares people to be salt and light in the rest of their life. It makes the day-to-day grind in the world the focus, helping them more capably serve their neighbors as the priests they are (1 Peter 2:9–10).

Sincere

“They bring their fears, concerns, doubts, and questions, and together the group prays and searches Scripture, wrestling with God for clarity and comfort.”

Church is not supposed to be a movie theater experience. Grab your popcorn (coffee) and enjoy what is going on in front of you. The Church is supposed to be strong—the gates of hell can’t suppress its spiritual assault. Cranking the music up to 95+ decibels throughout a worship set doesn’t resist Satan; it only damages hearing. The early church, yes, committed itself to the apostle’s teaching, but that was only a quarter of their commitments. The other three commitments are all related to hospitality: breaking of bread, fellowship, prayers (Acts 2:42).²

The church I envision makes prayer more central than preaching. It recognizes that the Bible says a lot about prayer, contains a whole book that is a collection of prayers, calls people to make prayer a priority, but literally never once says anything like “Read the Bible daily.” Prayer is a primary mark of the church if one wants to be a “biblical” church—much more so than preaching.³

Spirit Led

“If one person feels compelled to expound on what they are hearing from God, they can speak—whether male or female, adult or child—and that spoken word then enters into the search for clarity and comfort, open to rebuttals, elaborations, and explanations (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:26-33).”

Church should not be a teacher-student experience. Jesus said himself that we shouldn’t be called teachers, leaders, or fathers (Matthew 23:8–10), which probably goes back to Jeremiah’s vision of the new covenant when no one teaches anymore (Jeremiah 31:34). Jesus’ words on this topic are in the chapter where he preaches against the Pharisees, so why has our so-common understanding of church been built so similarly to the polluted version of the first-century?

The church I envision is a true New Testament church. By that I mean Galatians 3:28 and Acts 2:17 and Matthew 19:13–14. Children are welcome. Women are equal to men. All are capable of receiving and speaking a word from God. No one is more or less worthy than anyone else. No one is shamed for falling short of some arbitrary standard. The standard is love for one another (John 13:35; Romans 12:10; 13:8) and the goal is to love people better today than we did yesterday. If we are doing this, then we will not quench the Spirit by saying certain people are incapable of speaking for God.

Church Identity

“Perhaps each meeting starts with singing and a prepared homily on a chosen text, but the main point is the edification of one another’s faith and the pursuing of God together. The Lord’s Supper is practiced weekly, perhaps with tortillas and Welch’s grape juice (or maybe wine).”

Church should not be a willy-nilly, free-for-all experience. There should be structure. Someone coming in from outside should be able to recognize that what is going on is sacred. They might not know what church has commonly looked like, but they shouldn’t be able to mistake it for a Super Bowl party.

The church I envision isn’t a reinventing of the wheel. The Reformers (and counter-Reformers) spilled a lot of ink defining what the church is. One of the points everyone agreed on was the existence of the sacraments. The two sacraments everyone is in agreement on are Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. While I didn’t mention baptism in the actual paragraph, that’s because baptism isn’t happening weekly—no church in history has practiced baptism weekly—and my paragraph was describing the weekly gathering of the church.

Rather, the church I envision is sacramental.⁴ The Lord’s Supper is held up as a central piece every Sunday because by it we are nourished spiritually and reminded of the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28). But there is also a teaching element, for those who insist that “preaching of the word” is a necessary mark of the church. Preaching is what prepares us for receiving the Lord’s Supper, like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:26.

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My vision for the Church fits the historical definition. A place that practices the sacraments and preaches the word. But beyond that, it is intimate, preparatory, sincere, and Spirit-led. I believe if churches like this were to pop up in homes around the world, the world would become a much better, kinder, more Christlike place.⁵

In this with you!

Thanks for reading!

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Notes and References

1. Cyprian, “On the Unity of the Church,” paragraph 6 (ANF, vol. 5, p. 423). ↩︎
2. Please don’t come after me that they are “actually metaphors for the Lord’s Supper.” That was originally an intimate meal, not what the average megachurch has adulterated it into. ↩︎
3. Admittedly 2 Timothy 4 does say “preach the word.” ↩︎
4. Someday I’ll blog about the validity or not of all 7 sacraments in Catholic theology. Here’s a question that bothers me: Why do Baptists believe a pastor can make two people one flesh, but he can’t do anything spiritual to bread and wine? ↩︎
5. Especially if we practiced the hospitality and generosity hailed so highly in the New Testament (not to mention the Old Testament). ↩︎