On my favorite episode of my favorite animated series King of the Hill, Hank and the Family are discussing church when Lucky chimes in with this infamous quote “Me, I don't got to church - church goes with me. I'm worshippin' when I'm drinkin' a beer, diggin' a hole, or fishin' for trout”.
I have heard this theology in slightly differing forms all my life.
As a son of a Baptist preacher, one who’s loving mother insisted he wear tight double-knit slacks and a clip-on tie every Sunday for the first 12 years of his life, this comment on modern ecclesiology started sounding right. I mean I could just see myself sitting on a stump, fishing pole in one hand, beer in the other, sitting next to Jesus as we laughed and talked about life. This sounded much better to me than any flannel graph production or doing “Farther Abraham” one more time.
Sadly, as I grew older, I began to study and the Bible and realize that skipping church to fish and drink beer was in fact, just that and nothing more. That sitting home and reading the bible on a Sunday morning was not a proper substitute, let alone a somehow more spiritual notion.
Although I had yet to fully understand what church was, I was certainly beginning to understand what it wasn’t.
If a simple laymen’s study of the bible would conclude that church is essential, if not the guiding force to our growth as a Christian, how did we get to where we are? Why do so many people believe church is unnecessary for Christian growth and development?
I’m not sure you can generalize but I have seen differing events or movements that seem to have attributed to this wholly unchristian phenomenon.
Bigger is Better
The first I think would be the 20th century church in North America took on the personality of the “American Spirit” in that bigger was better. In the latter half of the 20th century, the measure of any “good” church was attendance. We looked at anyone cleric who could grow a church into the thousands as almost achieving sainthood. As these men and their parishes were being celebrated, it became clear that something that large with such a head of steam left casualties. Casualties who needed smaller more personal care than the large churches could give. What were these people to do? Go to an “inferior” smaller church? These were the options. So they opted for a third. Simply not going felt better than going. Since it felt better, it must be from God ergo God does not want me in church.
Tradition is of Man, not of God
Our second notion began in the 70’s as a rouge, parachurch movement. The Jesus Freaks, Campus Crusade and many others decided to push the setting of tradition and namely the tradition of church itself into the background. Teaching that a personal relationship was primary, and everything else was peripheral. Of course the natural progression of this though is to exorcise anything that is not essential. Thus each person chose to focus on his or her own salvation. The church itself was seen as nonessential and passé.
The Seekers and Comfortable Christianity
In the 90’s and pushing into the 21st Century we began to witness a new kind of Church. The Seeker Church. This church was focused on bringing back those who were familiar with church but had seen it as boring and uninteresting. Generally types of these churches focused on church wide curriculums, like Saddleback, that showed you how to target a particular demographic. It showed how to market your services and church structure make this particular “seeker” feel interested and comfortable in your church. It made going back to church easy. Sadly, and I’m trying not to generalize, although explosive growth was experienced inside of the movement, it seems that it lacked depth to see people grow past modern music, multimedia and being big into small groups. In essence people were not pushed towards growing in quiet prayer and study but towards the service of feeding the ever-growing machine that has evolved into the mega church. Eventually these souls get pushed towards Martha service instead of Mary worship and eventually, seeing the end as fruitless labor, burn out and try to find quiet solace.
What we have accomplished in the latter half of the last century and the beginning of the current is to marginalize the sacred practice of regularly attending church. All three movements consist of formulas that grant instant satisfaction but do not focus on proper nutrition. Like a quick hit energy drink, they give instant energy but leave you depleted in the long term.
The Church Fathers, all the way back to Paul, refer to Christians as athletes, and our daily life as training. To utilize this analogy, let’s focus on our “diet”. Early on, dating back to St. James, head of the first church in Jerusalem, Christians had a steady “liturgical diet” of prayer and worship prescribed by the Apostles and their successors. This “diet” was a health conscious diet built for the athlete. This diet not only provided short-term satisfaction, but also was made to sustain the athlete through training and propel him through competition.
But over time we began to break down the deliberate structure of the liturgical diet and have substituted healthier aspects with prepackaged junk food. Preparing the healthy foods and their organic nutrients has been replaced with a drive through, fast food mentality of get it and go. Sadly we have found that the diet of the modern evangelical church, although appetizing and delicious at times, leaves us lacking the proper nutrition sustain the athlete when under duress and needing it most. Of course the logical conclusion is former athletes who have fallen from competition, who claim that diet plays no role in training and competing.
It is in my Orthodox journey that I am rediscovering the proven liturgical recipes that provide the nutrition we need to “run the race” and “fight the good fight”.
