I cannot tell you how much I "hate" country clubs. It is not so much that I hate the facilities or the people who go there. It's as if some unseen hand described who belongs and who doesn't, and all of us "play the game." We all can visit, be nice, even interact elsewhere according to open, socially-accepted behavior, or not, but those who belong somehow know it, and I can't stand it. We know they are clubbers by their smug.That was a great paragraph and it is mostly unchanged from the original email. Let's look at this from the church perspective. The community church is the Biblical and accepted place to hear the Gospel and receive the sacraments. That statement is not controversial. Without picking on any denomination or particular church, I'm sure all of us have experienced being the one who doesn't belong at a particular church. There are families who have been in the same church for generations. There are the uber-volunteers. There are the various staff members and ministry workers. There are the elders and vestry. There are many ways to make a clique in a church. If you are new, you may try as you wish, but you may never fit into a new church. I attended one church for seven years and never felt as if I belonged.
Some Evangelical and Pentecostal churches have an institutionalized way of doing this. There are levels of Sanctification taught. The whole nonsense about jewels in your crown and carnal Christians are examples of this stratification. There is some experience that must occur to legitimize your faith. Faith is no longer an intellectual understanding of the truth of the Gospel as described in the Bible, but some endorphin driven experience said to be of the Holy Spirit. This stratification alienates believers, and yet it is not only pervasive but institutionally condoned.
Without discussing these overt displays, the situation can be encapsulated in a much less obvious, but equally subversive mechanism by examining the coffee hour. Your church might just have standing around talking without coffee. That's fine. The argument here is not against fellowship or against coffee; the argument is against closing your circles and showing your backs to newcomers. Even those newcomers who have been in church for a decade or more can feel alienated. This is very much like the country club mentality. Old money knows new money without effort. New money recognizes the disdain towards them. The categories at church may be different, but the same dynamics exist.
Why do we go to church? To whom are we to minister, and in what priority? We go to church to hear the Word preached, to receive the sacraments, and to be accountable to other Christians. We should minister first within the church and secondarily outside the church. One very important and largly overlooked ministry in most churches is the ministry we owe each other as fellow Christians. The boundaries we bring into church never really come down. Paul describes a much different church in the first century, at least he envisions a different church. He may not actually have witnessed that other church.
Here is my challenge. Next service, when you meet the people around you, instead of seeing that you have talked to your friends, shaken hands with the most people, shaken the hands of the four people immediately around you, or whatever your routine might be, do this instead. Slow down. Make eye contact. LEARN THE NAME of just ONE other person. Repeat their name back to them. Commit to finding this person after church at coffee and actually talking to them. Don't just go through the motions. All of the parts of the liturgy exist for a reason. They deserve more than just our lip service.
Which way do you finish the song?
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love....
or
And they'll know we are clubbers by our smug, by our smug....
--Ogre--
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