Christians: Stop Going to Church

First a disclaimer: I very much enjoy leading worship and singing up front in a worship service.
However, over the past few years, I have become increasingly unsatisfied with the way most people think of and “do” church. Going to a massively expensive building to listen for an hour, then go into another room to listen for another hour (unless you are the one talking, but still preaching to the choir) seems to me to completely miss the point of what church is supposed to be.

To the exception of teaching little kids and leading worship (which I do on a regular basis), everything else for me seems like a complete waste of time, effort, resources, money, rhetoric, and it’s probably not at all what God had in mind when He established the church.

I’m ready to BE the church by hanging out with my neighbors helping fix a house, I’m ready to BE the church serving food to the hungry, I’m ready to BE the church by making my city a better place to live and building His kingdom outside our protective “bubble-wrap walls”.

Some people will say we can still “go” to church and volunteer: go sing, greet, teach, cook and do the other things outside of those 2 “hallowed” hours, but I think that’s thoroughly missing the point. There’s absolutely no reason to spend tons of money, effort, time creating a program, an experience, a show inside a building the majority of the world wouldn’t go into. WE ARE the church and should do those things out here, we shouldn’t “go to church” in a building.

More and more I feel like I get nothing from just going to the building and staying there for 2 hours. There’s got to be something better, something bigger, something way more relevant and important.

I can’t help but think that it’s primarily why young adults leave the church in droves. It’s irrelevant to them. It’s mostly a passive experience. When it does engage them, ultimately it doesn’t speak their language and forces them to build community inside a room in a building they have no attachment to. It’s not an environment to truly ask and debate the hard questions, the hot topics. People either judge them too much, completely ignore them or are “creepily happy” to see them there, so it’s no wonder those people get nothing from “going” to church.

I’m ready to do something different, something bigger. If you are with me, please let’s continue the conversation and let’s change our community. Let’s REVIVE our city and let’s make God relevant to people who want nothing to do with the church, as they currently think it is.

In the Lincoln, NE community, my friend Shayne is already giving up the “norm”. What about where you live?

#IamtheChurch

photo credit: PeterThoeny via photopin cc