What is Church About?

Of course, the easy answer is to offer worship to God. However, if you were (or are) not a Christian, what would you think church was about? On the Out of Ur blog, I read this post: Razzmatazz or Ragamuffins? Two non-Christians paid to visit churches are impressed with charity not facilities.

A couple of interesting quotes. This one after visiting a "mega-church."

Why is it that I should not seek out possessions and money, but the church is permitted to do just that? Does taking 10% of every congregant’s income not count as seeking out money? Why should the institution be rich, and the congregation not? If you really believe you should be living the aesthetic life led by Christ and his apostles, why aren’t you doing it? If money and possessions aren’t important, why aren’t you meeting to discuss the meaning of Christ’s ideas and life in the local park? Notwithstanding the need to broadcast to your rather large congregation, and obviously you’d have to come up with a solution during the winter months, but really: why the son et lumiere ? I found the medium more than a bit out of whack with the message.

Which brings me to another point: all that razzmatazz kind of unsettles me. We live in a culture where distraction is often misdirection - like a magician who gets you to look at his left hand while he’s disappearing something with his right. I found myself wondering why a group that liked its preacher so straightforward felt most at home in a medium of flashing lights and sound.

And this after visiting a downtown church...

I could tell then and there we had found what this experiment was set out to accomplish, a church that saw past the money, power and the heighten sense of moral superiority that we have grown accustomed to. Charity, real charity. About time....

I was floored, for close to a month now I have been told of all the wonderful things the Christian church provides without any physical evidence of its truth, but here it is, in the flesh. I have to smile, we have traveled to the city’s massive churches where thousands worship and yet we find what we are looking for in a turnout of 35 on Sunday....

This is the only Church where the majority of time, finances and energy is NOT spent on the Sunday service. At Sanctuary, it actually would have been unfair to only score them on their Sunday service, the smallest part of what they do.

Now, it would be easy to write these reactions off as the desires of a youth culture that seeks substance over flash, or is seeking action without real meaning. In other words, these people might have found meaning in a Buddhist temple that engaged in social action.

What I think is more telling is that there are certain expectations built around what it means to be a Christian, and churches are falling way short. Maybe.

I grant that it is very, very possible that mega-churches aren't very involved in their communities. And it's frankly easier to believe that, which makes it easier to scorn mega-churches and their supposed corporate approach to doing church. (No really, I don't have a log in my eye, but thanks for asking).

Or maybe churches (even mega-churches) are doing good and the good that's going on isn't getting "publicized" more. Now that goes against some of our ideas about not letting the left hand know what the right one is doing, and humility in doing good works. Perhaps there will come a point that when you talk about how you're a Christian or follower of Christ, the natural assumption that someone will make is not about how judgmental we can be, but the good we're seeking to do in our communities, both those that come into our walls and those that would never think about darkening the door.