We don't "do" church

Some time ago a church sign caught my attention.  The sign announced a new sermon series entitled  "Why do church anyway?"

I understood what the preacher was driving at.  We often go through the motions of faith without thinking.  We come to church, sing songs,  go to Bible studies, all without a clear end in mind, because those are things seem to be expected.  It certainly makes sense that we should think how we should do things at church.

But do we "do" church?  Really?

Church is not a verb. It is a noun.  It's not something we do; it's something we are.

The church is the visible Body of Christ on earth. It is not a voluntary association like the Lions club or the Rotary or even the Republican party.  It does not exist a purpose, any more than our families exist for a purpose.  It exists because it exists,  just like you and I.

Suppose we substitute a person's name in the sign instead of the word church?  Suppose we say why "do" Mary,  or why "do" John?  The only time  "do" in used in such a context is crude slang for killing or having sex.  Either way, they become the object of either anger or desire.  To think of the church in such utilitarian terms is to depersonalize it, to deny its essence,  the very essence which makes it the church. 

We don't "do" family--we are a family.  We don't "do" church, either--we are the church, existing as a community because God put us here.  We are related by blood--not our own, but Christ's, and that means we are responsible for and beholden to each other in a bond that is greater than that of our own flesh. We are fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers in the Lord,  called to love each other in Him.

The church is not a means to an end, not even a good end like evangelism or social justice.  It  is an organism, not an organization.  Organizations exists for a purpose.  Organisms exist because God made them for His own glory. 

The problem with the modern church is that it thinks it must  have a reason to exist.  If we applied the same utilitarian standard to infants,  the elderly, or the handicapped, it would be horrific.   If the bonds between brothers and sisters, fathers and sons,  were only important if they furthered some greater  purpose,   then the world would be a horrible, loveless place.  So why should the bonds between Christians only exists for a greater purpose?  Why can't a church just be?

The modern church, both in its traditional and  contemporary forms, has been often guilty of treating its members as mere utilities.  Contemporary church leaders in their zeal to win the lost, have often seen their members as unimportant in themselves  unless they further the cause of church growth and evangelism.  The preferences and comfort of older members are often cast aside in favor of the new, the experimental, and the innovative.  We spiritualize the abandonment of the old, calling it "pruning the dead wood" or of "throwing out the old wineskins."   C S Lewis once commented that Jesus told Peter "Feed my sheep" not  "perform experiments on my lab rats." 

The traditional church is no better, in fact it may be far worse.  Traditionalist want nothing to do with  "do" church in a differently, confusing outward form with inward conviction,  freezing the church in whatever era they feel most comfortable, allowing church ritual and expression to become increasingly irrelevant and archaic.   They, too, favor the members who can best maintain our institutions,  pay for our preachers, and bring prestige to our tarnished denominational names.

The church isn't something we do.  It's a family--a fellowship of men, women, and children in which everyone is loved, everyone is important and everyone is cherished.  When the church is viewed as a means to an end, it ceases to be a family and becomes an adornment to our egos.  It becomes  a way for pastors to prove their superior worth by performance instead of by  humbly accepting God's gift of grace. 

With all due respect and to Rick Warren (who I really do admire), I've seen the "purpose-driven church," and frankly it sickens me. I would rather have a church which goes nowhere but loves everyone than one where its members are merely means to an end. 

If there is an a way to "do" church then it should be with love, and grace,  praising God and being in favor with one another. 

A Manly Grace

Highway 74 west of Waxhaw is our main link to the outside world. It's just four miles long, stretching from Highway 521 to downtown Waxhaw, parallel to the railroad tracks. It is, for the most part, a barren stretch, except for an occasional old house or trailer. Otherwise it's mostly woods and kudzu.


I was surprised then to see a sign for a new church go up on this lonely stretch of road. I was even more surprised to see it on the north side in a kudzu patch, slap up against the railroad tracks. I cannot imagine how they will manage to build a church there.

The sight said "Future site of Our Lady of Grace Catholic church."

The sign of a new Catholic church coming to our neighborhood fills me with--well actually it doesn't fill me with much of anything. Not being a Catholic, I don't much care where the put a church. They can put one on he moon, if they want to. It's their right, I guess.

The name fascinated me. "Our Lady of Grace." I presume by "lady" they meant the Virgin Mary. It is unlikely that they would build a church and dedicate it to someone else. To my Protestant ears, naming a church "our Lady" seems a little weird.

But the last word "Grace." Is one I am very familiar with. It's a good Protestant word. Grace, as we are fond of saying is God's Riches at Christ's Expense. Grace is a free gift a donation to us as charity, instituted by Christ on the Cross and given upon asking to anyone who will believe.

But it puzzled me to read the sign. I know that Catholics are particularly fond of the Virgin Mary, but still why would we associate with Mom that which seems rightfully associated with the Son? After all, we don't refer to the "Obama's Mom's Administration." We don't celebrate "Columbus' Mother's Day."

This is not to take anything away from Mary at all. It's just a question. Since Catholics believe as we do that it is Jesus, not Mary who really saves us, why do they say "Hail Mary, full or Grace?"

I don’t' think the reason for it is spiritual. I think it has to do with our emotions. We tend to associate grace with women more than men. When we skinned our knee as children, who was it who bandaged us up, kissed our forehead and gave us a cup of hot cocoa? It was mom. Our dads were yelling at us go get back in there and finish the game. We look to Dads for inspiration. We look to mothers for grace and hot cocoa. That's probably why Mother's Day is bigger than Father's Day. Mom's are just cooler, that's all.

In our society grace has become (I think) a feminine Ideal. Women are gentle an graceful. Men are tough and forceful. Grace is gentle. Men are proud. We men tend to leave grace to the women folk, as we go out with our guns to blow holes in cute little animals. Leave the grace to the women.

But God didn't see it that way. Our Savior was male on purpose. Again, not to take anything away from Mary, but God chose to come to earth in male form, not female.

Christ came to offer us, not just grace and forgiveness, but a manly grace and a manly forgiveness. I'm not saying the sexes are not equal. Both sexes need this forgiveness equally, to be sure. But it's just that the kind of grace that God offered us is a grace born of blood and suffering. It is a grace that came from facing the worst that people could dish out, and to throw back forgiveness into their raging faces. In order to give us God's grace, he had to bleed like a soldier in the height of battle. He had to bear a burden that would make Atlas shrug. He had to stand before kings and governors and speak truth boldly to power. In short he had to stand up like a man.

Come to think of it, women also know what suffering is like. What man could bear the pain of child-bearing? What man could bleed and groan, and through that suffering bring new life into the world? There is a reason that God made women more able to bear pain than men--because they had to.

God was no wimp when it comes to grace. Grace is never soft, not when it was given to us on the cross, nor when we give it out to the persecuting world. It is still God's riches at our expense. It is still a forgiveness born of blood and pain.

Maybe I'm just being picky about word, but then that's what theologians do. Grace did not begin with our lady. It began with a suffering Father looking down on his dying Son, and pronouncing it good, a necessary sacrifice for the sin of the world. No one on earth, man or woman, can fully grasp the enormity of this sacrifice.

In Defense of Impurity

The word "Puritan" is a kind of shibboleth word when it comes to Reformed theology. If you are a Reformed Christian, you are likely to be attracted to them. If you are not a Reformed Christian, then the picture you are likely to have of Puritans is likely to bring images of dunking stools and witch hunts.


This is an unfair picture of the Puritans. They were not the prudish, judgmental fanatics they have been portrayed to be in popular culture. They were not killjoys. To the contrary, they were passionate people who ate, drank, smoked, and made love with passion and gusto. Because they loved God, they loved life, and they showed it.

The Puritans were not perfect, and did not claim to be. But they understood that they were saved by grace and grace alone. But they did get angry at times, and yes, they were judgmental sometimes. They were called Puritans not be cause they themselves were pure, but because they sought God with an even greater passion their love of life. Their greatest passion was to walk always in step with God.

But "puritanical" is a different word altogether. A puritanical person insists that they are morally and doctrinally pure already, and seeks to making everyone else conform to their own standards. Puritanicals are the rightful heirs of the Pharisees. They are reminiscent of the Pharisee who Jesus described in one of his parables as praying in the temple, pointing to a sinner in the back and saying aloud. "I'm glad I’m not like some people I know!"

The Puritans sought to be pure in grace and love of God. Puritanicals have their eyes on this world, and on themselves. They narcissistically apprise the world around them, and find that it falls short of their own standards. In their self-centered opinions, God's standards and their standards are one and the same.

When Puritanicals take over a church, they are always doomed to failure. The more they insist on doctrinal and moral purity, the less they exhibit the characteristcs of love and grace that God most clearly calls us to in the Scriptures. purity that the Bible calls us to is not a purity of doctrine or even behavior, but a purity of love and trust.

When God calls us to be pure, what kind of purity is he talking about? It can't be purity of doctrinal belief, since our understanding of doctrine is and always will be incomplete. We may pretend do understand the mysteries of the universe, but we can no more comprehend them than a flea can comprehend the nature a dog. We can only understand the little part of the universe we personally experience. It cannot be purity of behavior, either. If our knowledge of God's word and will are limited, our own will to resist is even more limited. Besides, there is that tricky problem of situational relativism. What is right in one situation is wrong in another. Even Solomon in all his wisdom was often deceived.

The purity I believe we should seek is a purity of the heart, which leads to a purifying life. It is a purity in living and understanding the central, saving message of Christianity, which is plainly expressed in the Bible.

Ephesians 2: 8-9. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, it is a gift of God, not of yourselves, so that no one can boast."

I John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness."

John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever would believe in Him would have everlasting life."

We will never be pure in any other way, but in our pure desire to attain the grace of God through faith.

This pure Gospel is expressed in two loves,--love of God and love of others.

1 John 3:2-3

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure .

I John 4: 7-8 Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God,. He who does not love does notlove God, for God is love.

Now, here’s the odd thing about it. We cannot be puritanical and pure at the same time. The more we insist on the church being completely pure, the less we love our brothers. The more we insist of being absolutely right about God in all things, the less we love him. We remake God in our own image. We think Him as judgmental as we are. But the more we forsake judging others and accept them gracefully, as God accepts us, the more we reflect God's love in the world.

I am not "totally" Reformed. I am not totally anything except Christian. I freely admit that there are things I am not sure about doctrinally and morally. I also admit that many of the things I do know, I fail to live up to. But the desire to get everything right is a foolish waste of time, compared to the goal of loving God and others purely and sincerely.

We should strive to live moral lives in accordance with God's will. We should also struggle to understand the meaning of the Scriptures. But there are limits to what is possible in our quest to be good. No matter how good we think we are impurity is there. It is part of God's plan all along that it be this way.

This impurity is not necessarily a bad thing. Iron is strong, but when it contains the impurity of carbon, it becomes steel, which is even stronger. Brass made impure with tin becomes bronze. The quality that makes live music so superior to mechanical music is the impurity, not the purity of the voices. No choir completely sings in harmony, we just overlook the difference. At some point our quest to purify makes our commitment to the Gospel impure.

God made a world where few things are completely pure. He did it on purposes, to show His grace and creativity. If we insist that the church we serve has to be on one completely without variation in thought or practice, then we will serve a church that has ceased to preach the gospel of grace.

Groucho Marx once quipped that he would never be a member or any group that would have him as a member. I feel the same way. If the church insists that all members look alike, act alike, and behave alike, then they should never have me as a member, and I do not want to be a part of it. But if the church can open its arms widely enough to accept believing Christians who think and act in a way that is different from the norm, then there may be a place for me in it.

Let's not sacrifice the peace and prosperity of the church for the sake of a purity we cannot ever fully attain. Instead, let's embrace our differences in the bond of love.