Jared Wilson brings up this issue and states it well enough to make some basic outlines clear. It’s worth a read.
Sometimes the church makes me feel like a summer camp counselor for kids. You do the program and the kids show up to consume, you get the check and everybody goes about their way. Where did we get this craziness? When did church become this? I have found it to generally be true that those who show up during the week in community groups, bible studies and ministries don’t need half the stuff the church does on Sundays in order to show up. They not only don’t need the bells and whistles. They get in the way.
The great question that isn’t getting answered is what is church anyway? Answer that and a lot of the other issues fall into place.
I remember thinking in seminary how boring ecclesiology was, the study of the church. I wanted Christ, not the church. But I was wrong. How you do church has a lot to do with how much Christ you get. Make the church an inspiration center for Sundays or a “best place to Christianize your kids” or a ritual to help us feel we are in some sense religious or a (you feel in the blank) and you end up losing what the church really is.
I have always been amazed at how easily people change friends when they change churches. It makes me wonder what they were doing in the first place. I have to shake my head. Apparently there is a deal of some sort here at work, as in “I will get this if the church does that; if the church doesn’t do that, then I will find a church that does that” and change all my friends, to boot.
Believe me, I have nothing against people going to church where they want to go to church. I don’t question why people marry who they marry or why they go to church where they do. It’s the “deal” that I question. In that deal the church always loses even when it is winning. And that is because the relationship it encourages is an economic one. I don’t mean money. I mean an exchange, an implicit agreement. If you give X, I will give you Y – and often that Y why is mere attendance.
Since when is that a good deal? Since when does that produce something good?
It’s time to move on. And part of moving on is not using Sundays as a means to keep people coming who have no real interest in living out their lives in the fellowship of the people who love Christ and are seeking to enthrone Him in every aspect of their lives.
It’s time pastors move from summer camp counselors to building up the church, those called out by Christ to live Jesus-exalting lives.
