To Church or Not to Church, that is the Question

Yesterday, Grace posted about Wanting Answers:

"I have been pretty patient about this whole transition thing for quite a while now. The time that has passed has been useful and necessary for healing and detox. However, these are important years for us, and our family needs something more spiritual, real, and communal than what we have now."

Yeah. Us too. But what to do about it?

Last night my husband came home from work and wanted to take the kids to our CLB. I shuddered. The kids complained. I asked, "Why do they have to go to church? It's their last week of summer vacation."

My husband answered back with an "It will be good for them" statement.

Which quickly puts me on the defensive. So, then you’re saying not going to church is bad for them?, I wondered.

"Why will it be good for them? What will they get there that they don't get at home?", I asked. I was really thinking "I don't want my kids subjected to that conservative evangelical programmatic mega-church cattle drive, where the same kids are convinced week after week to make redundant decisions for Christ so that the numbers look good for HQ because it’s more about the head-counts than the individuals; where an average week moves 1000 K-5 kids through the system."

He.just.wants.the.kids.to.go.to.church. Period. I don't fault him for this, it's just who he is, he believes very strongly in the value of the typical traditional church model.

I, well, DON'T. At least not the CLB. Or any of its counterparts, for that matter. It’s not just a church-level issue I have. It’s a denominational issue.

It seems there is this ugly chasm that is developing between my husband and I. I simply don't know how to resolve this. I am railing against my children being poisoned by our CLB’s rhetoric…to become one of those "I'm a Christian, he's a Christian, she's a Christian, they are Christians, wouldn't you like to be a Christian, too?" pop-culture evangelists. I don't want them learning about the doctrine of Hell, because I know from experience that does nothing but create a horrifying dichotomy about the Love of God. I don't want them to learn about having a dualistic life - church/spiritual life vs. everything-else-life, I want them to grow up to be holistic. I want them to learn to hear the Spirit, think for themselves, understand that the Bible is alive and therefore our understanding of is it always changing, that we aren’t responsible for legislating morality. I want them to know how to impact the world by Jesus' example, be kind and loving and generous, not because they are supposed to be but because Jesus is so alive in them.

I’m not completely opposed to returning to church at this point. But I won’t go to the wrong place simply to go. I don’t believe going to the wrong church is better than no church at all, any more than I believe when we are ill the wrong medicine is better than no medicine at all. In fact, it will likely only make us sicker. And I won't inflict that on my children. They know Jesus, we try to live Jesus in our home and in our lives.

All I can think of is the years I worked as a teller in a bank. When I started, it was a nice regional bank that cared about it's customers. We worked hard to make them happy, we made exceptions for people, we resolved issues, we took good care of them, we presented them with options, and never tried to sell them anything. I loved it, because the customers were happy.

My third year there, we were bought out by a national mega-bank, and things went to hell real quickly. Suddenly it wasn't about making anyone happy, except the bank’s bottom-line. The pressure to cross-sell, evangelize, if you will, was enormous. We took classes, all-day classes, sometimes all-week classes, on how to evangelize. We had to start cold-calling our customers, trying to sell them services they hadn’t inquired about. Our reviews and raises were dependent on how many people we sold services (they already had somewhere else or they didn't really need, but that generated revenue) to. If we didn't evangelize enough, we could lose our job. I hated it. I HATED it. Every step we took was about generating money and customers. We didn’t care one stinkin’ bit about the person; we only cared if there was something in it for “us” (“us” being the bank). It was all about the bottom line, we were servants of the bottom line. Lucky for me, or actually, thanks be to God, our financial situation changed about a year after that, and I left the bank.

That's what I DON'T want in a church...a bottom line. Whether that line is money, or souls won, or the republican agenda, or church attendance, I don't want it, I won't serve it. I want a place where I can be and allow Jesus to be in me, whatever that looks like. The only bottom line I want is Jesus; so I will continue looking for a place like that.

I just don't know what to do in the meantime. Let my husband take them to church? Start actively pursue finding a church as a family? Wait for God to direct us?

Yeah, the problem with waiting, is, like Grace said, it's taking too long! Let's get on with it!