Sunday Without Church

Although I am neither traditional or nontraditional in certain ways, I do want authenticity. And that includes church.

That authenticity includes not going to church -- not because I'm an uninvolved Christian, but truly and frankly, because I'm so involved I can't spare the cost.

I wonder as a Christian how I am benefited from church. Although we often hear The Bible read, study The Bible before the auditorium-part and sing praises to God, I do not see how I can't do most of this on my own, with other Christians, and skip what I now see as ineffectual on any serious level.

I've got The Bible on computer, The Bible being read in audio, any time I want to hear it. I can study on my own, and I've learned a lot more effectively. Older people often cease going to church and listen to perhaps a better preacher on their syndicated channel on TV or the radio. I can sing without anyone else being necessary.

Now this may sound all-too cynical to the dedicated church-goer, and I used to be one of them! I thought it was just what you did. It was an expectation of every dedicated Christian. But how far does my dedication and gravity go in it? I've found church-Christianity to be very lighthearted, unconfronting, and never too deep.

I know that Jesus was so offensive to his synagogue, or 'church,' gathering, that they tried to throw him off a brow of a hill. Jeremiah, even his own family was calling for his blood. Paul's jail-time. John's, the baptist, beheading. In a Christian society, Martin Luther's sentence. Tyndale's perfidious translation! And what of me? Am I satisfied with arm-chair Christianity? Then let my name be never: John, Jeremiah, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, Paul, the Anabaptists; let me never be burned at the stake for translating into English, sought for opposing the practices of a corrupt Catholic church, beheaded for speaking the truth, persecuted from city to city, as Jesus promised; let me be satisfied to sit back and accept right or wrong, whatever the pastor, priest or minister, board, etc., tells me, that in any practical way has nothing to do with mission work, persecution, objection, offense, church holiness, repentance or anything else than attendance at a edificial slightly-varied repetition at an institution ...

... Yes, that doesn't satisfy me and isn't me. And few, of course, are prone to question. No message will ever rattle our boat. Sedentary. Static. Just the way we perceive our Christianity to be, just as Jesus' ministry exhibited, just as Paul's laid-back voyages, just as "upstanding" citizens of a Christian country that never go to jail! Or is there more? ...

Frank Viola and George Barna in their book Pagan Christianity, have alluded to more, a community of Christian followers, and participants ... but honestly that's not far enough for me. That Christianity in someone's living room by nature exceeds to God's calling in Christ so much over the building-style churches, that the topic is thereby ended, with some talk of "spiritual gifts," and "sharing," of the type where the word "community," ... "fellowship" and "brotherhood," ... "brother" and "sister" are mentioned. Is that the Christianity that was rocking the world in Paul's time, and with the Anatolian Christians to whom John writing concerning their persecution? Or is it just so Christian all of the sudden, our living in a Christian society that no stands and no work remains? ... It's all internal now. No need to get up. ... It certainly is honesty that gives us the answers we don't want to hear ...

That those of The East, many of them, can't see how we can be so immoral; that those of the Muslim regions can't see how we allow such a worldly life, with sexuality and disrespect in shows and in movies. And are we the light of the world, are we not worldly? The "unbelieving," ask us questions we can't answer ... even though we go to church Sunday after Sunday, or even more than once a week. Is there something wrong? You know there is!

It's as though people don't know what Christianity is, and as people of Jesus' time and afterward, in any practical way, don't intend to learn it. And that is the fact. Paul uses the term "holy and dearly loved," and does he mean us? We, holy? Of course not. That is not the kind of persons we find at church, nor expect at church, but we do find immoral and unholy people, whether we're honest about it or not. So what did Paul mean? ...

I think truly the house-church movement is a great movement, as one of the premiere proponents, Frank Viola, has extolled, and rightly so. And great. But it doesn't end there. Paul spared no measure himself in correcting the churches he wrote to, which discipline by Paul or by God himself we certainly do not expect today and in our churches. Again I ask you: What changed? Paul went so far as chastising the Corinthians, for what?, why, for even allowing the kind of behavior that was occurring among just one of their members. Can you imagine today? They wouldn't put up with it.

Accountability is a big portion. Another has to do with fellowship. Paul never intended, nor Peter if you read his two letters, nor John the apostle, that his and God's church and people have fellowship with one another including with an adulterer -- Paul even mentions that the body of Christ should not be joined with "a prostitute" -- even to the point of excluding an "immoral person".

Now shapes up Paul's intent for his church, and churches. That indeed the fellowship with God is not fellowship with evil, but fellowship with him, who is righteous, holy and good, and loving, and not the opposite. That their fellowship with "light" as John says, excludes fellowship with darkness. Thereby if the church you attend, as I've found through my travels, pleads "neutrality" on these life-altering issues, then it seems they plead "neutrality," on God and what the church is supposed to be.

Be like the first gatherings of Christians. You don't need a big building. You don't need people that feed over from the big building to find out what you are doing, or to corrupt your fellowship, or what I would call, your holy values. Of brotherhood in gratitude to Christ. If it is a fellowship with God, do we need claimants of the Christian faith mulling around a building, listening and proceeding through recitations and what's rote?