I wanted to pass along to you these two post by my friend Ryan Mahoney. He is currently serving as a pastoral intern at our church. He's right this place has stretched and challenged everything I thought I understood about worship and church.
Worship Local Vol. 2: Worship Local
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Every week I attend church with:
Drug addicts
Ethnic minorities
The elderly
The homeless
Long time church goers
First time attenders
College grads
Adults without high school diplomas
Military families
People in recovery
Alcoholics
People recently released from prison
People who come to church to be warm
People who come to church and insist on being cold
Believers
Doubters
Cynics
Optimists
And everyone in between…
Our church averages 60 people on a Sunday.
We meet in a church that looks like 3
others in town. No really, the architectural plans are all identical to
three other churches in town. We lease our parking lot because we come
up short a few thousand dollars each month. We’re trying to rent our gym
and office space, we’ve even offered the exterior of our building to be
used for advertisements. We’ll try almost anything to keep the lights
on.
Why? Because I worship local.
I could drive a little further and go to my
local Walmart, I mean mega church, or to churches designed to target my
age group. I could go to whatever church is doing the latest thing, or
has the best technology. I could go to churches where I will feel like
my time and energy will be part of everything that my friends will think
is cool.
But I worship local.
I have reached a place recently where I
wonder if I’m identifying with the wrong characters in the story. I’m
wondering if the gospel is even for me.
There are beautiful scenes in the Bible
about everyone from every tribe and tongue worshipping God. I used to
assume that this would be awesome! One day everyone will be like me.
Everyone will be white and English speaking.
But then I began to wonder, what if the
worship in those scenes was set in Africa? What if we were singing in
Romanian? What if the liturgy was in Chinese? What if the socially
accepted worship attire was a loin cloth? What if the pastor spoke
Korean? What if the deacons and elders were each divorced several times?
What if the treasurer was homeless? What if the kingdom of God looks
nothing like me?
What if instead of trying to form my community in my image I started to form myself in the image of my community?
What if I was able to lay down my
theological and aesthetic pretenses just long enough to learn something
from someone different?
What if the church’s proximity to my
community was a bigger determining factor in my decision to worship
there, than it’s choice in music?
What if I could put up with awkward people, and funny smells, and ratty furniture?
This is why I worship local.
If you’ve ever been to a local farmer’s market or organic food store, you will notice one thing very quickly…it costs more.
Why?
It costs more because there is not mega
machine behind it. There isn’t a board of cigar smoking directors behind
the scene counting the pennies and trying to eek out as much profit as
possible by outsourcing and wasting. The reason it costs more is because
you are no longer paying for an ear of corn or a bushel of apples. You
are paying for the corn and apples and the livelihood of the person that
grew them. You realize that not only is healthy food important, but
supporting the person/family/community that produces it is equally as
important as feeding yourself.
I believe this is true of worshipping local. It costs more.
I give up convenience. I give up taste (in
art, music, whatever my hang up is that week), I give up a product
tailored for me. I give up fog machines and light shows, and the
greatest sermons since Moses came down the mountain. I talk to people
that make me uncomfortable. I talk to sex offenders and unwed mothers.
It costs.
At the same time that it costs my comfort, I also open up to a whole new world.
I open up the potential that Jesus really believes I have.
I open up to the belief that I can really
make a difference right where I am. Without millions of dollars, and the
latest and greatest whatever, I believe that God has a role for me to
play right here, and right now. I don’t have to wait for a giant
mega-insertwhateverthebigmoneypeopleproduceris, because I can help my
community and my community can help me.
I worship local.
I open up to the idea that maybe I help
serve homeless folks from time to time, but in reality about 100
homeless folks speak prophetically and compassionately to me ever single
day. In the socio-economic paradigm that Reagan so nicely laid out for
us, it’s the rich that drive an economy. Their goods and money will trickle down and make everyone better. So it would appear that I, with my resources, am serving the so-called poor, BUT
This is the polar opposite of the economy that God has been showing me.
In this economy the flow is bottom up. It’s
an economy where the wealthy push around shopping carts containing all
their possessions and mark their spot under the bridge with signs like,
“some people are so poor all they have is money.” It’s an economy where
character counts more than bank accounts. It’s an economy whose currency
is generosity. It’s an economy where every meal is a gift, and every
moment of warmth in the winter is precious, and every moment of cool in
the summer is a gift from God.
I have learned more about generosity and compassion from people who appear to have nothing, than I have from anyone else.
I have learned this because I worship local.
I am learning to let go of any sense of
entitlement that I have to the stuff in my life. I have began to ask
existential questions like, “what is it about me that deserves an
education, or money, or any of the friends I have?” or “Why me, and not them?” Why?
I do not know.
I’ve recently been wondering about one of
Jesus’ parables. In the parable Jesus describes a person that goes out
to get workers for their vineyard (Matthew 20: 1-16).
Workers are collected at the beginning of the day, nine in the morning, the middle of the day, and at the end of the day.
When wages are dispersed they are all paid the same amount. Almost everyone is pissed about this decision.
This seems like a foolish way to run a
business. Some might even say, “see that’s what’s wrong with left wing
politics, they just want to give everyone a hand out.”
I trust that Jesus is brilliant, and his stories are compelling.
Perhaps what this parable is trying to
point out is that the workers all received the same wage, as they were
promised, but they were all actually paid unequally. The only way to
understand this parable is to shift one’s view of rewards.
What if the reward is not the pay that one receives at the end of the day? What if instead the work itself is its own reward?
If this is the case, then the workers who
began working early in the day were actually paid more. They got to do
more work and thus received a bigger reward.
The work itself is the reward.
I wonder if this plays out in today’s
American church climate. The theology that has shaped much of the
‘old-time religion,’ fundamentalism and later evangelicalism says that
one day we will all get out of here, if we have a relationship with
Jesus. Therefore, my individual salvation is the chief goal. Since my
individual salvation is the chief goal, then I should pursue the
so-called worship experiences that make me feel closest to Jesus.
(What follows is judgmental)
These worship experiences can take on the
form of pursuing the best show, or the biggest emotional highs that seek
to affirm that the individuals involved in them are in fact “saved” and
will one day depart.
I think that this view is akin to the
workers who are pissed at the end of the day that they got the same wage
as those hired at the end of the day, “wait, I sang all the songs, went
on the mission trips, voted for x,y, and z and you let a homosexual in
here?!”
For them the grace of God seems to be an injustice.
If, however, the work itself was its own
reward this would be a foolish observation…If working for the master is
itself a reward, then one’s attitude would have to be excitement that
more and more people could get in on it. They would be excited about
doing the most good for other people, with disregard for their own sense
of entitlement to a so-called fair wage. They would feel that it is the
work here and now that matters, not any far off future reward.
I wonder what would happen if churches
began to root their eschatology* so firmly in the ground they were
standing on, that they couldn’t imagine anything more than trying to
develop community relationships that would change their community for
the better, even if it meant that the church would have to sacrifice the
appearance of ‘orthodoxy’*. I wonder what would happen if a Southern
Baptist Pastor would approach a Catholic priest and agree to work
together on a community project. I wonder what would happen if a
Pentecostal small group leader would approach an Immam at a local mosque
and ask if there’s anyway she could help? I wonder…
The point is that the preservation of
so-called ‘orthodoxy’ and personal holiness for the sake of bolstering
one’s own eternal security is nonsense. The only reason to maintain such
things is to see that you get what’s coming to you at the end. It is
instead the work of the Kingdom. The only goal is to share it with as
many people as possible.
This is why I worship local. I don’t want
to be the kind of person that feels that I’m entitled or should pursue
the best worship. I don’t want to be the kind of person that thinks only
on what’s coming to me at the end of a life of perceived holiness.
I want to be the kind of person that helps change the world. I want to be the kind of person who loves people.
More than that, I want to be the kind of
person that couldn’t imagine living any other life, because I’m so
captivated by the work God has given me to do right here and right now wherever I am that I can’t imagine doing things any differently.
So I say, sell the fog machines, save the
lights, unplug the speakers, quit absorbing local churches by promoting
the first church of Walmart, and…
Worship local.
If you want to join the worship local movement, set this picture as your profile pic!
*Eschatology is the theological term that describes the study of what will happen at the end of “time.” The historic Christian view has been that Jesus will return, set everything right, and restore, renew, and reconcile everything! (That’s Good News!)
*Orthodoxy is a term that means right thinking i.e. having all of one’s theological ducks in a row.
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