Membership Classes as Radical Hospitality #1 – Excommunication

I am a big fan of excommunication. I know it has its problems and I don’t think we could realistically ever reclaim it as something positive in the church; but I do actually think we’ve lost something by being so dismissive and afraid to even think about the practice anymore. Matthew’s gospel outlines the most clear guidelines in scripture for removing someone who has sinned against another. Church members are to confront the person, take another witness, and finally – “If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.”

It sounds like a harsh practice and the lived reality was probably even worse in the ways the church has treated the practice throughout the years, but the gospel itself has a very different understanding of why this practice matters. Jesus is the one in the gospel who ate with the tax collectors. Jesus is the one who would defy all common sense and leave the ninety nine behind just to find the one lost sheep. The point of naming someone lost or broken or a sinner or a socially unacceptable person in the gospel is not a reason to shun them; it is a reason to take ridiculous measures to love them.

I think one of the reasons we don’t take hospitality seriously enough is that doing so would require us to confront rather than ignore the things that have gone wrong in our lives. If everything in our world and everything with our people is basically alright, then there really isn’t any reason to worry about whether or not someone is or isn’t being faithful. But if we take seriously the struggles and the problems and the brokenness that everyone faces, then it makes all the difference in the world for us to pay attention. It makes all the difference in the world whether we are in fact OK, or if we are really in need of a new experience of the extravagant measures to which God has gone to love us all.

What is one thing we can do to create the space for admitting faults and embracing struggles?

Worship is life

Worship is not different in kind from life – worship is life with the singular focus of telling the story of God. To assume that there is a proper distinction between religious and moral laws is to ratify the distinction between worship and life. It is to reify the bifurcation between theology and praxis. It is to do violence to the coherence of a life of faith. To decide how we ought to act, we should never ask “is that a moral law or a religious law?” The question should be “is this kind of action necessary if I am to live as a witness to the life God is and makes possible?” We either facilitate relationship or we stand in God’s way – it makes no difference what we happen to think we’re doing when that happens.

Separation of worship and life is but one manifestation of the project to separate the religious and secular – it might make some academic pursuits easier to offer such categories of thought but the divide isn’t real. The divide is at best a temporary mental exercise but more often it becomes a lie to suppress the incoherence of our lives or to convince ourselves that we can be the authors of our own life and destiny.

When claiming to speak from a “biblical point of view,” it is especially important not to divide religious law from moral law. To presume a distinction between the two is to inhabit a world different than that of the Bible and thereby separate any potentially “biblical” argument from the world presumed by all the men and women whose lives are documented in the Bible.

Church Models

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I’m not really sure where this image came from originally, but it has been circulated on the internet for years to (somewhat sarcastically) illustrate the basic ethos of reporting models and values of the businesses it depicts. I enjoy thinking about this chart in relation to church governance.

Amazon – I’d have to say that is probably best represented by the Roman Catholic church; a very clear hierarchy that increasingly expands at each level.

Google – I think the United Methodists are closest to this model. Our General Conference would be at the top and pretty much everything that gets up to that level is mutually influencing and a jumbled mess of cross pollination/attempts to control one another with a theoretical hierarchy that doesn’t actually have the power or structure to do anything about disagreement.

Facebook – I’d put the Southern Baptists here. It’s a big web of people supposedly doing the same thing and talking to each other some, but without anyone or anything at the top to settle disagreements for and between churches.

Apple – I clearly have to put the mega/non denominational church phenomenon here. One charismatic pastoral leader is so often the center of gravity for the whole organization.

Oracle – I don’t know. I might put Anglicans here, but probably could put Roman Catholics and frankly any mainline denomination here for the same reason – centuries of bureaucratic build up and layer after layer of stuff that was built for a world that presumed the church was at the center of life and public influence have led to a reality in which what we say we do and what the organization actually looks like aren’t always equal.

Microsoft – I skipped this because I don’t know enough church history to offer one separate tradition. But if I can expand the rules a bit, I’d definitely say this fairly well represents the liberal vs conservative vs evangelical vs progressive vs [pick your favorite buzzword faction] dynamics that exist within and across most denominational lines these days.

Anger, terror, and the reality we don’t want to talk about

Anger, terror, and the reality we don’t want to talk about

I’m not sure there is anything that bothers me more right now than the constant rhetoric about ‘Islamic terrorists’ and ‘illegal aliens.’ I don’t agree with those characterizations and I have said why at length. But that’s not what brings me to the point of anger. I am angered because the VAST majority of crime that actually destroys lives and dehumanizes children of God has nothing to do with the big scary boogeyman waiting around the corner.

Every time we participate in the culture that vilifies and dehumanizes the ‘others’ of our world, we are actively creating the space in which a blind eye is turned toward the people who actually do the most harm. I could say this alluding to a variety of offenders, since more than half of violent offenses are committed by someone the victim actually knows. But one particular type of violence is especially on my mind.

Every time we cheer on the rhetoric that says people of a different religion or race or culture are in any way to be feared merely bc of who they are or our views of what they believe, we are actively creating the space in which crime survivors are shamed and silenced because their attacker is too ‘normal’ or ‘so nice’ or because we don’t talk about it. For domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, justice rarely comes.

In the last 40 years, foreign born people have killed 3,024 Americans in terror attacks on US soil. That includes 2,983 deaths on 9/11. That means an average of 75 Americans have died on American soil each year from terrorism, or 0.205 each day. Every day, 3 women are killed by an intimate partner (a spouse, boyfriend, or ex) – but that is only the tiniest fraction of the iceberg in domestic violence.  

18.3% of women will be raped in their lifetime. An estimated 43.9% of women and 23.4% of men will be victims of some form of sexual violence. 1 in 5 women and 1 in 7 men will be victims of severe physical violence. A great majority in each of these cases is perpetrated by someone the victim knows. It is likely that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are victims of sexual abuse before age 18, although precision is difficult because as little as 12% of instances are reported. Of all childhood sexual abuse cases, around 93% are victimized by a family member or acquaintance.

The National Network to End Domestic Violence did a 24 hour census of domestic violence agencies. A few stand out stats – 25,735 domestic violence victims sought emergency shelter…in one day; 21,332 local, state, and national hotline calls were made by people seeking assistance…in one day; and 12,197 requests for help in that one day went unmet because of a lack of resources.

The result of such encounters, when survived, can be depression, anxiety, PTSD, reproductive problems, chronic pain, unwanted pregnancy, STIs, suicidal behavior, an increased likelihood for alcohol or drug dependence, and any number of other social, mental, job related, or physical ailments.

Domestic violence and sexual abuse cross over all age, socioeconomic, racial, religious, and whatever other lines you want to draw. With a very conservative estimate, at least 1/5 of the people you know (and far more likely close to ⅓) have been directly affected by these heinous crimes. And yet we almost never try to root out the perpetrators or start a war on the actual terrorism taking place in the American home. To spend almost any time focusing our energies and our fears on people who scare us by their differences is to further isolate and victimize the people whose lives are actually being turned upside down by people who look no different than us.

I’ve heard the argument that we have to be careful not to ruin the lives of good people, almost exclusively good men, if a baseless allegation is made against them. The two salacious cases of the Rolling Stone article and the Duke lacrosse team are sure to be referenced. The myths and misinformation surrounding false reporting are far too complex to do justice here, but suffice to say false reporting is not at all common and there are a lot more reasons to recant an accusation than to push through to a trial.

But any meaningful worry about the effects of an allegation on men, false or not, have absolutely zero standing to me after November. The US elected a president who has been accused of the things he himself claimed to do, accused of spousal rape, accused of raping a 13 year old, and accused in multiple other instances of groping; he has ‘defended’ himself of an accusation of abuse by implying he prefers better looking women; and he has been implicated in so many cases that it’s hard to keep track of which case is which. And we elected him president. We don’t need to be more careful about accusations, we need to be willing to open our ears to the cries of the people whose voices we have not heard and whose struggles we cannot understand.

It’s far easier for us and makes us feel safer to paint the Middle East or Mexico as the land of all the evil extremists than it is and feels to actually confront the abusers who look and talk and act just like us most of the time. But buying into the terrorism narrative necessarily turns a blind eye to the plight of our vulnerable neighbors who are deeply harmed by the rampant, actual crimes that are committed every day. And that is what makes me so angry right now. I’m not at all convinced that any of the recent executive orders will do anything to make us more safe. But I am entirely certain that vilifying the ‘others’ rather than confronting our own will actively harm the most vulnerable among us. I refuse to do so.

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The very notion of a spectrum implies that possibility resides in the space between extremes. But the possibility between two extremes is like a corridor between Earth and Pluto. To my eyes, it may be an unimaginably large space. But infinitely more space exists beyond and around that corridor than inside of it.

The Insidiousness of Complementarianism

It’s been a long time since I’ve been part of a church culture that does not affirm the equality of Women and Men at every level of church leadership. Granted, there are some subtle and sometimes not so subtle biases and comments about the “lady preacher” – but in the communities that I have served, the comments have always been a reflection of upbringing and discomfort rather than a systematic and intentional way to discourage Women from preaching and/or leading. I’m not suggesting that makes such comments acceptable, but I see an entirely different set of issues at play in careless speech as opposed to systematic devaluing.

I happened upon a tweet conversation recently in which I was once again forced to see the reality of both the kind of simplistic arguments that are made and also the kind of hateful and demeaning rhetoric that bleeds through even when people are trying to calmly argue for a “traditional” view of equal but different gender roles. Ultimately, I followed the rabbit trails until I found this transcript from John Piper that concisely makes one such argument.

I realized two things while meandering through the arguments.

First, As I’ve said before, “separate but equal” doesn’t work any better in the complementarian context than it has elsewhere. The implication nor the truth of that statement didn’t really settle in until now. How do you expect it to sound to say women get to lead the kids, but men have all top level authority? Or women can quote scripture, but only men can preach and interpret?  Or wives have to follow the spiritual direction of their spouses? No matter the intention, it is demeaning and belittling to the roles of women. And that mentality actually puts women in abusive situations in which it seems reasonable to think the man is still right. If you cannot teach complementarianism in such a way that no woman ever wonders if it is OK for her husband to abuse her* AND no church member or leader ever requires a woman in an abusive relationship to be silent or stay put, then something inherently problematic exists within the doctrine.

One further point: perhaps one of the more nebulous, but problematic undercurrents of how the gender role distinction plays out is that no one seems to question that the ‘traditionally’ male is somehow superior or more important or valuable than the ‘traditionally’ female role. There are fewer men clamoring to be a stay at home dad than there are women desiring to be CEOs or full time workers. A value differential may not be written down anywhere, but the statistics about what people actually try to do with their lives makes a clear statement about which roles are seen as more desirable or important in our current context. It is just as misogynistic to devalue the roles women often play as it is to keep them out of roles claimed for men. I can’t help but think the complementarian mentality that bifurcates the world along gender lines is a significant part of the culture that enshrined the respective values of each kind of role, even outside the church walls.

Second, arguing against complementarianism is like arguing against fake news. There is just enough information in the Bible that you can shut off your mind, ignore culture and context, and think only about the static and precise wording of a couple of stories or letters and come up with a bullet point list of complementarian roles for men and women. Once you’ve made the commitment to reading that way and using those filters, there is nothing that could persuade you away from the position; in just the same way that once your favorite deeply slanted fake news site shares just a little nugget of truth or conspiracy theory, there is no persuasion.

How can you prove, for a clear example, that there is no child sex ring in a pizza parlor when the only “evidence” that there is one in the first place is the super narrow fact that it has weird symbols and some powerful people mentioned it in an email? If you’re unwilling to consider the lens through which you evaluate information, nothing could ever persuade you of change. You can’t produce documents that prove the evidence of a story is false when there is nothing to disprove.

What is perhaps most difficult about arguing for a different lens when others have a myopic and literalist view of scripture is that it isn’t the text that we’re arguing about. The Bible says tons of things that are not taken literally – “sell all you have and give it to the poor;” “the meek shall inherit the earth;” “even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief.” – but without an acknowledgment of the tradition of thought and values and choices that lead you to take one thing literally and another not, there is no ground upon which to change viewpoints.

The Christian faith is ALWAYS a dynamic tradition in which the very values and shapes of discipleship and faith are constantly called into question and given new life for the present day. Peter and Cornelius is one of the most fascinating examples of a moment in which, even inside of scripture, we see a very deeply held, key marker of faithful life challenged and changed because of a new direction the Spirit of God is showing. When your assumption about what the bible is and how to read it do 95% of the work toward an interpretation, there is little chance you’ll be convinced of anything significant by reading another verse.

 

*It happens enough that a Psychology today article actually mentions ‘based on the bible’ as a reason men sexually abuse women.

Movies, Parables, and Bias

Movies, Parables, and Bias

I’ve heard it said that movies are modern day parables. Parables are all over the Bible and are short and simple stories that illustrate a much deeper and more significant point. I found a clip from Ellen today that beautifully illustrates that very point.

One of the significant, but often underappreciated characteristics of Jesus’ ministry is the frequency with which he told a parable to answer a question. That decision flies in the face of many of the loudest voices in modern Christianity – belief statements, analytic reasoning, and biblical literalism are employed (especially in conservative evangelical circles, but elsewhere too) in order to clearly and definitively spell out what it means to follow Jesus. There are at least two problems with abandoning the way in which Jesus actually made so many of his points:

1) Human minds are story tellers and don’t change based on logical reason. Our minds are changed by hearing the stories of others that tear down our mental walls and create new filters through which we experience the world. Neurological research in emotional intelligence actually shows how our brains process the world through our emotional centers first, and only then through our rational side.

First is the reflexive part of the brain. If someone smiles at you, your brain and body actually start to smile back before your conscious brain even registers the smiling face. Second, the shape of your memories pushes you toward action. If you see a raised hand, for instance, you might start to raise your hand for a high five or you might shudder in fear if it triggers a memory of abuse. Finally, your conscious brain kicks in and can offer thoughts like “I know who this is and that they are friend or foe and here is how I should respond.”

That process is why it is so easy to read about ‘terrorism’ and think it reasonable to support radical measures of war and discrimination – but read about a ‘lone wolf shooter’ and simply lament the problems with kids these days. By the time logic and reason kick in, we’ve already shaded the evidence in such a way that whatever conclusions we draw are infinitely more likely to reflect the impulse underneath our thoughts rather than the statistical evidence or the response most likely to have the desired long term effects.

The fact that we are so deeply wired to react to buzzwords or certain types of people is why racism is so insidious and why things like structural racism are so easy to ignore if you’re not on the wrong side of it. But, that kind of biased processing of the world is not a bug to be overcome, it is the deepest sense in which we are wired to experience the world. What we need is not ‘fact based reporting’ or ‘unbiased sources’ – we need compelling stories that begin to challenge the shape of our emotional expectations and expand our views beyond the simplistic boxes into which we place each other.

The deepest problem I find in conservative Christian culture is that it lacks the imagination to see how God is challenging our little boxes, even when reading the biblical stories in which those walls are torn down again and again and again and again and again. The conservative push is for all to be an eye, an ear, or a foot; but to reject that we need each other and we need to embrace the gifts that each child of God brings to the table.

The deepest problem I find in the liberal Christian culture is the implication that we can be pushed enough to overcome our bias by the flaccid call to ‘be nice.’ It takes a far more radical call to self sacrifice and a far deeper challenge to our individualistic priorities to not only embrace that we need each part of the body, but also that in the one body of Christ we lose the autonomy of self determination.

The greater story of the call of Christ is that the church is God’s chosen ones; the elect of the world whose sole purpose in being on the inside is to live, work, and die for the sake of the whole world, and especially those who have not experienced the greater love of God. I don’t see any other way to change the world than to embrace and embody the larger story of God’s mission to love and transform the world in which we are invited to participate.

2) To assume that we can meaningfully present who Jesus is apart from the story in which his life takes part is to fundamentally misrepresent the narrative character of human existence and understanding. Who we are is not a static and fixed thing. The kind of arguments for the supremacy and the authority of God that were made by John Calvin, for instance, make an entirely different kind of sense today than they did when the men at the head of the church ran the world. Luther’s arguments for being able to read scripture and talk directly to God made an entirely different sense in a world where the church controlled every aspect of the faith as opposed to our world in which the only assumption is that my reality and faith are mine alone.    

In many ways, every argument we make is an acceptance or a rejection of the present world that has been passed on to us by previous generations. We are the product and producer of the context in which anyone can try to talk about God. To think that there could ever be a static or everlasting list of the characteristics of God that could be objectively presented without comment or bias is to deny every aspect of the process whereby God is revealed throughout scripture and church history, and to reject the fact that we can never know or follow God without the active grace of God helping us to see more clearly and follow more closely. To think of God without story is to reject God’s active presence in our lives.

Even the early church creeds were not so much a list of attributes about God as they were a set of bullet points that helped draw out the most important cliff notes of the stories about God. The extent to which that is a true statement certainly varies over time, but it is quite clear that the main strands of the historical church have consistently and ruthlessly defended the fact that we cannot abandon the stories of God in which our understanding of God is grounded and without which our words mean something else entirely. That’s why we don’t cut out the Old Testament, why there are 4 gospels that don’t say precisely the same thing, and why churches keep arguing about the bible even when we don’t agree on what it says.

Jesus doesn’t fit into a box of words. And life is far too dynamic for our words to keep meaning the same thing even if Jesus did fit. We need modern parables and stories that bring Jesus to life rather than just repeat the same old words.

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Movies have a powerful way of capturing the imagination and reshaping our expectations and experiences of the world long before we even realize what they are doing. I would much rather the world be exposed to a story that radically challenges us to empathize with someone who doesn’t look and think and act like me but makes no mention of the name Jesus; rather than watch a movie all about Jesus that never challenges us to think outside our predefined and limited boxes. We need more compelling stories and a much greater reliance on the parable if the church is ever going to offer a more compelling alternative than the hateful and vitriolic ‘isms’ that so readily dominate the news right now.

The church needs to embrace, rather than reject, the art of storytelling as a means of bringing the Word of God to life once again. I’m more and more convinced that preaching, to the extent that it is a thing worth continuing to do, is the art of making God’s word alive in the moment – whether that takes the form  of a monologue, a skit, a movie, a poem, or anything else that can bring to life the Word of God. Now is the time to explore new ways of embodying the call to preach the compelling story of Jesus Christ. There is no more fundamental threat to our ability to be the hands and feet of Christ than a world more entranced by the story of fear and terror than God’s story of love and hope.

 

Q&A – 5 Things Pastors Are Rarely Asked (But Should Be!)

Most pastors think constantly about their churches and how to improve them, but rarely do we receive insight from our most important audience – the people not being reached by the church. It’s way too easy to get caught up in the ‘insider’ point of view and, without any intention or malice, fail to address the questions and concerns that aren’t brought to us. I was sent an email by a friend who shared a few thoughts and questions from that fresh perspective, so I thought it might be helpful to say how I would address them here. This friend grew up taking part in the church, but for a variety of reasons hasn’t been active much recently. These questions were sparked by a recent choice to go back and visit a church. I hope these questions (italicized) and my responses are illuminating and helpful!

To give context, I would consider myself a Christian, but also a skeptic. It sounds a little oxymoronic, but I basically view the Bible as a collection of stories, with varying degrees of actual historical accuracy, that give a very good compass to living a good life. I think that if the church is going to continue to be relevant it has to learn to appeal to people like me. I know a lot of people in the same boat. A few thoughts below form this perspective:

Before diving into the questions, I have to stop and say I don’t find that oxymoronic at all. I think it’s a fundamental mistake to contrast faith with doubt or certainty with skepticism. Not your mistake, of course, but one that Western churches have built themselves upon since at least the reformation. The kind of knowledge and epistemology it takes to make the contrast relies on assumptions that didn’t even exist before Modernity. I could recommend some super long writings like After Virtue to help ground that claim, but something more like an article from Hauerwas probably makes the argument enough for now.

I start with this point to affirm that the church has a great deal of growing to do to get beyond the categories of thought and belief that no longer make sense to a world rejecting the project of Modernity. I really enjoy the Liturgist Podcast for a good and open discussion about what Christianity can be and contribute once we get past the black and white thought boxes that still define evangelicalism and in many ways define our views on life even if we never go to church.

You’re not at all alone with skepticism and I have explored how discipleship (in a sermon – esp the first 5 minutes illustrate what I mean), membership, and purpose might need to change to create the space in which we can actually live out the faith. In a sentence, if you don’t have some sense of doubt and wonder about God, then you have almost definitely put God in a box in which God cannot actually fit. Faith is much more about coming to see the world through the eyes of God than it is about having a finite set of propositional bits of knowledge about which we all agree. One day I intend to write a ‘reset button’ series in which I describe what I would create if I had a blank slate to set up church, denomination, leadership, worship, etc.

With respect to scripture and whether it is historically accurate and true, etc., I think an incredibly accessible book that does a great job of how to think about scripture is called Inspiration and Incarnation by Pete Enns. I’d summarize the argument by saying that the human influence and character (as opposed to some divine infallibility and perfection) of scripture is not a flaw or problem about the bible – it is the point of scripture precisely to the same extent that it is significant to say Jesus was both God and man. God becomes incarnate through the faithful tradition of the church passing along and living into the stories and arguments we find in scripture. On to the actual questions!

1) Last week I was asked to consider my relationship with material goods and talk with god about how much I can/should give by a man standing in front of $50k+ of audio/visual equipment. It made me feel like the request was quite hypocritical.

I’m not the type that thinks there is any value in trying to hide or smooth over the tensions we find in our faith. It’s hard not to feel a profound disconnect between the message of scripture and the realities of almost all of modern day American life. Jesus actually says things like ‘wealth is bad,’ ‘give away everything,’ and ‘sell all your possessions and give them to the poor’ a lot more often than he says anything related to heaven, spirituality, or any of the things we typically equate with ‘faith.’ If you want to have a crisis of how you understand your obligations as a Christ follower, just read Luke a few times in a row.

All that is to say, any pastor or church leader who isn’t just flat out lying to you will admit that they feel the tension between ‘the benefits that can come from financial investment in church buildings and equipment’ and ‘the call to give it all away and trust in the Lord.’ But here’s the real problem as I see it – there isn’t a magic formula that we could ever use to get it ‘right’ and find the balance between spending enough to stay open for worship and spending enough on the people who need it most.

To think that there is a perfect formula for balance is to think that we can master the faith in such a way that we don’t need God pushing us and growing us and guiding us every step of the way. I think what we have to ask ourselves (as church leaders) and you (as a church goer) is this: “do I trust that the investment made in equipment and such is proportional to how much it empowers the full mission of the church?” Again, there are no formulas – but if $50k in equipment is all it takes to create the compelling worship space that generates $5 million a year for direct aid missions, that is probably a solid investment. If that money just makes it more exciting for those who come to worship to be entertained, that’s a very different scenario.

It’s not easy to know where the lines of trust are drawn, but I for one would welcome the challenge to make our church budget reflect our commitment to fulfilling the mission of God. I would love for someone to be willing to ask me how we set our priorities rather than just sit in the seats (or leave). There is a huge amount of growing that many churches need to do in terms of aligning spending and mission, but, again, I think it really comes down to how much you trust that this congregation treats that kind of spending as an investment in the full mission vs using it to make itself look and feel better.

2) A lot of the “ceremony” of church (the service I attended anyways) felt very self-congratulatory. That isn’t a great word, but a precisely descriptive one eludes me. Basically, I think that all the screens, lights, flat screen tv’s, etc. seem to serve no purpose other than to make the people that are already in attendance feel they are at the best or most hip church. How much of this is pure vanity? And how many dollars are wasted on appearance over giving back to the community?

The architecture and technology of a church service has a fascinating history. The magnificent gothic architecture of ancient churches was constructed to send a very concrete message about who God is and the hope God offers. If you were a poor peasant that faced untold struggle and poverty everyday, getting a glimpse of the heavenly splendor in a church building could be a more powerful taste of the glory God promises than anything a pastor could say or do. Done right, the uniting of humanity from all walks of life in this cathedral that quite literally proclaims the glory of God is a sermon in itself.

But of course that’s often not how real people experienced the cathedrals. Even in the bible (for instance, 1 Cor. 11), where the body gathered often became a means of replicating social division rather than overcoming it. The time of the Reformation (both Protestant and Roman Catholic) was the logical conclusion to the increasing concentration of wealth within the church and the elite classes of people. When the vanity of church wealth became too much, people revolted.

In many ways, the buildings we inhabit are still a rejection of the splendor of prior cathedrals. Protestant churches tend to be pretty sparsely decorated and that is increasingly even more the case with non denominational churches. Compare what we see with the Eastern Orthodox worship spaces. The most ornate we get is a high roof and wooden beams. Very little, if any, thought is given to what message is sent by the space in which we worship.

In the vacuum of a coherent sense of what a worship space ought to be, the one thing that has captured the hearts (and wallets) of many modern churches is technology. Technology is probably the easiest and most familiar thing that binds groups of people together, whether at theaters or concerts or presentations. I suppose what I’m getting at is that technological spending is a crutch many churches rely on to stay ‘relevant’ since it has been so long since we have taken the time to imagine what items or spaces or set ups might actually help convey the message of the gospel.

There is a lot of vanity in how technology actually gets used, but there is certainly some utility. A simple projector can be used for words or videos or to put an image to a sermon; and you couldn’t hear anything without some kind of sound system, for instance. The options aren’t tech or no tech, but how much is appropriate. Research certainly suggests that churches embracing the new technology are more comfortable and more attended. In some ways, it does become a rat race to keep up with other churches, but I’ll conclude with a consistent theme here: what matters most is how much the church’s decisions reflect and empower their mission. If the goal is to have young families come to worship, then that probably will involve a lot of glitz and you have to decide if that is a goal you share enough to take part in that church.

3) What does an average church budget look like? It’s hard to look at a nice, modern church and not feel that they are spending where they don’t need to. Is this feeling misplaced? Is there actually any kind of correlation with having these things and attracting previous non-believers (not just people changing churches to go to the “good one”)?

There is no standard church budget and some churches keep that information quite close to the vest. It would vary a lot by denomination and especially by the church model – for instance, big building and staff vs meet in a coffee shop and only have volunteers. If a church is unwilling to at least offer some clue as to percentages or priorities, that’s a big red flag. Most of the best churches I know attempt to at least budget something like half the income for external ministries and half for internal uses. Staff is often one of the biggest expenses, which could be a great thing if staff is there to empower the mission work or problematic if they serve the membership.

One of the main reasons it is hard to set external priorities is that people very much do equate the feel of the building with their expectations of the place. Imagine walking into any other establishment these days, if it’s run down you’ll assume no one cares and it’s probably dying. As a hole in the wall restaurant, maybe it’s quaint. As a church where you’re considering devoting a lot of time and resources, it quite often conveys that you shouldn’t bother to care about us because we don’t care about ourselves. Especially if you have kids, that’s unlikely to be attractive. I don’t know a lot of specific research on this, but it is said in a lot of church leadership resources and I know I have that feeling when I walk into a church for the first time. The space you create for worship tells a story about what you value and who you are.

It comes down to the need to be inviting enough to make people comfortable and feel like this place is alive and well, but still prioritize the external enough to challenge that comfort zone. As above, there are no formulas for present day churches, so it can be difficult to prioritize. I’d say that the most important consideration is the willingness to at least discuss the framework and percentages for how a church thinks about its budget and priorities. If a church is unwilling to at least share that kind of information, it’s a red flag that they either don’t think systematically enough to ensure that they actually do ministry or that way more of the money is spent on themselves than is reasonable.

Bottom line, if you don’t feel comfortable that the church sets its priorities in a way that makes you feel like it has a mission worth joining, you should either get on leadership and fight to change priorities or you should find a community wherein the ministry that they do better matches your priorities and expectations.

4) It does feel like an awful lot of this is just to lure members of other churches so that more donations can be had to add more wings to the building and more flat screens, and more bands and more services, etc. what is  the end goal here? Is this completely unfounded?

It’s not unfounded at all. There is plenty of research to suggest that the majority of what happens in new churches has been people changing churches as opposed to new people joining. And the newest trends suggest that the Nones (never went to church) and Dones (put in their time leading churches, are often nearing retirement, and no longer feel compelled to stay at church) are or will soon be the largest demographic in the US. That makes for a scary reality to be a church leader and has led some churches to almost shamelessly devote their efforts toward being ‘better’ than the other churches in town for exactly the reason of poaching.

That said, I believe the reason the church has gotten to this place is because we are in a profound season of transition. Through my parent’s generation, church was the most important institution in the US and it was not a question of if you belonged to a church, but which one (even if you didn’t go). That’s obviously not the case and we’re now dealing with the loss of that identity and with the loss of the assumption that ‘if you build it they will come.’

For some churches, that means the fastest, most obvious, easiest response is to invest in what people seem to like outside the church (screens, bands, exciting services, video montages, etc). In the long run, that emphasis was only ever going to be a band aid and won’t solve the long term need for church to redefine itself and figure out what it is. Part of the problem is that we need strong leaders with the vision of what a new identity for churches might actually look like in practice. More often, those with grand visions for change simply leave and go somewhere else; which often puts more pressure on churches to attract people through the screens and such. It’s not an easy place to be in, but I have hope that the church will generally come out strong on the other side someday.

The last thing I would say is that some traditions are better than others at various aspects of ministry, depending on their own understanding of the goal. If you go to a church primarily devoted to ‘saving souls,’ you are more likely to see a heavy emphasis placed on worship spaces where you can guide people to the point of saying the sinner’s prayer and being saved. Other churches think the point is not a ticket into heaven, but a new way to live now, in which case you will often see a much greater emphasis placed on community engagement or other ministries outside of worship. United Methodists have always tried to balance the personal with the social, the salvation message with building God’s kingdom now, the mind and heart, etc. But you can definitely tell what a church’s actual goal is (stated or unconscious) by how they spend their money.

5) I do understand that churches need donations to keep the doors open. I also understand that church members desire more than just a building where they hear a message. Is there anything biblically to help define what a church should be/do in regards to having too much “flash” as distraction?

If there is anything the bible has to offer about appropriate worship/church styles, it’s an caution about what not to do. 1st Cor. 13 is such a beautiful and transcendent piece of poetry about the greatness of Love – until you realize that Paul is actually going point by point in telling the Corinthian church exactly what they are not. Love is patient, you are not. Love is kind, you let the poor starve. Love is not envious, you get jealous over who you call your leader. You can pretty much go through every statement and find somewhere else in the letter that Paul calls the church out for doing the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to do.

I bring that up to start because it is foundational in my mind for any conversation about what a church is or should be to recognize that there never has been a perfect model or example of church. The bible is less an instruction manual for life and more of a sustained argument about what is good and right and holy for the people of God. You find austentatious beauty and splendor, especially regarding the temple in the old testament. And you find Paul and Jesus basically saying give away every possession and wander through life without so much as a bed.

In many ways within scripture, when God’s people have money and power in culture, it’s a great thing to build lavish and beautiful buildings. When God’s people are poor and out of power, simplicity is the word of the day. There are different reasons why it might be important to have some pizzazz in church (like the welcoming feel of a warm space as explored above) and other reasons why you need to get down to the bare essentials (so as to keep the focus on Jesus and not on the building).

I think what is most important for a church is to define what their particular piece of God’s mission is and align all their decision making around fulfilling their part. If that means being a radically simple community (like the Amish), then act accordingly. If you’re trying to attract primarily parents and teach the kids, you better at least have a very nice children’s area. Getting back toward your earlier concern, if the message of how and why to give feels deeply hypocritical, then that’s probably a good reason to start asking for clarity about the church’s goal and priority or find a place that can offer a level of flash with which you’re more comfortable.

5) Why is offering conducted in such a way that the people around you watch you give your donation, and why is it done this way every week? I really don’t like this. And I understand it encourages accountability, but it also feels like you are being strong armed a bit. Even if the offertory message is not, the method of passing the plate around seems a bit intrusive to me and, again, a bit self-congratulatory for those who (can) give regularly.

Honestly, this is the question that I’ve thought the least about in the past, but it might very well be the most problematic for people coming to church for the first time. Thanks for asking! A big part of the way offerings happen is that it is the way things have always been done. It wasn’t long ago at all (maybe 100 years?) when there really wasn’t much of an alternative, given the fact that cash was about the only form of money people used and you pretty much had to collect in person or not at all. There is certainly an element of accountability involved when others can see what you give, but I imagine accountability from strangers in the pew does more harm than good – real accountability can only happen in the context of a loving, safe, encouraging relationship. I have actually heard of some large churches that have installed credit card kiosks at the entrances and done away with ‘pass the plate’ altogether. Now that it’s possible to do that and to have online and recurring drafts taken out, it probably is time to give some thought as to the value of how the offering is done.

But there is one aspect of the offering that I would not want to lose entirely. At a variety of churches, the offering is brought back up and presented to God on the altar during the doxology. That’s common, but what is meaningful to me is that at some churches when a communion Sunday rolls around, they actually take the offering and then bring up the communion elements instead of the monetary donations. That is a very concrete reminder that no matter what humble offerings we give to God, God offers His body and blood in return. There is a profound theological significance to that statement of how much more God offers than we could ever offer back. One simple way I’ve tried to lessen the awkwardness of ‘passing the plate’ is by having our attendance cards put in the plate as well – in a concrete sense, even if all you have to offer is your presence, that is more than enough.

As I come to the end of this thought, I’m realizing that I need to work to find a better way to 1) make the deep theological statement of what an offering is more explicit and accessible within the actual worship service; and 2) actually think through how we can make the structure of our offering reflect the statement we are attempting to make. This, and many other things, are weighed down heavily by the ‘how we’ve always done it’ mentality. This would be a good topic to also explore some day in terms of how to do things if starting from scratch.

I want you to know all these come from a place of wanting to improve. My boss always told me the worst kind of customer is a quiet one. Because they will walk away without even telling you why, or what you can fix to keep them around. Maybe all of this is unreasonable and unfounded, but it is something the church (I know that is a gross generalization) needs to address to keep people like me around. Even if others won’t say it.

Again, none of this is unreasonable at all and I appreciate your boss’s wisdom! These are topics and questions I think about all the time, but rarely do I get the perspective of someone who hasn’t been knee deep in it for a decade. One of the single greatest problems in the church is that we’re afraid to ask questions or to let something come up until we have an answer. That seems to me to be the exact opposite of the way a faith journey worked for anyone in scripture and for most of church history. If the church is what it is supposed to be, it ought to be the safest space in which to explore the most important topics in life, within a community that will love and walk with you no matter what. I hope this is somewhat helpful to you and that you will continue asking questions along the way!